50 years ago today on July 14 1958,the bloody overthrow of the Hashemite Iraqi monarchy took place in Baghdad.On the orders of Colonel Abdul Karim Qassim,the traitorous leader of the military coup,King Feisal II and several members of the Iraqi royal family were lined up in a palace courtyard and brutally gunned down.
The King was just 23 years old.

The massacre of the King and his family bears some resemblance with the fate that befell the last Russian Czar and his family almost exactly 40 years earlier.In each case,these bloody murders presaged the similar killings of millions more of their innocent countrymen and women and decade after decade of violent political repression.In the case of Iraq,the political turmoil,the deaths and the misery continue unabated,all rooted in the events that took place on this day in Baghdad 50 years ago!