Anyone who is well-read knows that Daddybush screwed the Kurds over BIG TIME during the Gulf War and afterwards.

Like daddy like DimSon - - isn't that sweet?


The Kurds, remember, guarded the nothern border of Iraq during 'w's invasion and the Kurds fought insurgents too. IN fact they did such a good job in their region that very few of our troops were needed up there and hardly any incidents of sabotage, suicide bombers, etc have occured there.

Keep in mind also that the Kurdish area has been autonomous (look it up, neo-cons) for a decade under the watchful protection of American forces patrolling the no-fly zones that used to be in place before 'w' screwed the pooch there. In fact the nothern no-fly zone was setup to protect the Kurds.


Since the Kurds have proven to be good allies - TWICE - it would be natural to hink the 'w' regime would reward them for their loyalty and give them at least the authority and autonomy they had before 'w' destroyed that country, right?

You would be wrong.

The 'w' regime promised the Kurds 2 positions as ministry heads - foreign affairs and defense. The Arabs squealed about the defense minister being a Kurd, so the 'w' regime CAVED IN and left the Kurds with only the foreign affairs ministry. Then they created a sinecure to put the other minister into - a no-power post as Deputy P.M.

This is one of at least three rectal intrusions the 'w' regeime has inflicted upon those ALLIES of ours.

The RESULT doesn't take much imagination, but obviously more than the no-nuts on the 'w' regime are working with:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kurdish parties warned Wednesday that they might bolt Iraq 's new government if Shiites gain too much power. In another challenge to the interim administration, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline, forcing a 10 percent cut in electricity output.



http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?o...AC0A1EAA2F9359
But a day after the United Nations put aside differences over the Iraq war and gave unanimous support to the country's political transition, signs of potential problems with the handover of power surfaced. The two main Kurdish groups in northern Iraq have written to President Bush, threatening to disrupt Iraq's return to sovereignty.

They say the new U.N. resolution threatens Kurdish interests by failing to provide explicit assurances that the autonomy Kurdish groups have enjoyed for more than a decade will be respected when the country's new constitution is finally written. Leaders of Iraq's majority Shi'ite community have said such rights go too far toward accommodating a minority group.




http://www.agonist.org/archives/016226.html
June 07, 2004

Kurds Threaten Withdrawal

The main Kurdish political parties are threatening to pull out of Iraq's interim government unless a new United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq endorses Kurdish autonomy.

Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan made the threat in a publicly-released letter to President Bush.

The two Kurdish leaders said Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq should be included in the new U.N. resolution or otherwise recognized as law-binding on the transitional government, both before and after elections.

Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani also expressed what they called their bitter disappointment that no Kurd was chosen to be either interim prime minister or president of Iraq.


Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

Saddam’s capture: was a deal brokered behind the scenes?




When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has been engineered



For a story that three weeks ago gripped the world’s imagination, it has now all but dropped off the radar.
Peculiar really, for if one thing might have been expected in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture, it was the endless political and media mileage that the Bush administration would get out of it .

After all, for 249 days Saddam’s elusiveness had been a symbol of America’s ineptitude in Iraq, and, at last, with his capture came the long-awaited chance to return some flak to the Pentagon’s critics.

It also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of America’s elite covert and intelligence units such as Task Force 20 and Greyfox .

And it was a terrific chance for the perfect photo-op showing the American soldier, and Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”, hauling “High Value Target Number One” out of his filthy spiderhole in the village of al-Dwar.

Then along came that story: the one about the Kurds beating the US Army in the race to find Saddam first, and details of Operation Red Dawn suddenly began to evaporate.

US Army spokesmen – so effusive in the immediate wake of Saddam’s capture – no longer seemed willing to comment, or simply went to ground.

But rumours of the crucial Kurdish role persisted, even though it now seems their previously euphoric spokesmen have now, similarly, been afflicted by an inexplicable bout of reticence.

It was two weeks ago that the Sunday Herald revealed how a Kurdish special forces unit belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had spearheaded and tracked down Saddam, sealing off the al-Dwar farmhouse long “before the arrival of the US forces”.

PUK leader Jalal Talabani had chosen to leak the news and details of the operation’s commander, Qusrut Rasul Ali, to the Iranian media long before Saddam’s capture was reported by the mainstream Western press or confirmed by the US military.

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the entire emphasis had changed however, and the ousted Iraqi president had been “captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters”.

In the intervening few weeks that troublesome Kurdish story has gone around the globe, picked up by newspapers from The Sydney Morning Herald to the US Christian Science Monitor, as well as the Kurdish press.

While Washington and the PUK remain schtum, further confirmation that the Kurds were way ahead in Saddam’s capture continues to leak out.

According to one Israeli source who was in the company of Kurds at a meeting in Athens early on December 14, one of the Kurdish representatives burst into the conference room in tears and demanded an immediate halt to the discussions.

“Saddam Hussein has been captured,” he said, adding that he had received word from Kurdistan – before any television reports.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the delegate also confirmed that most of the information leading to the deposed dictator’s arrest had come from the Kurds and – as our earlier Sunday Herald report revealed – who had organised their own intelligence network which had been trying to uncover Saddam’s tracks for months.

The delegate further claimed that six months earlier the Kurds had discovered that Saddam’s wife was in the Tikrit area. This intelligence, most likely obtained by Qusrut Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit, was transferred to the Americans. The Kurds, however, are said to have never received any follow-up from the coalition forces on this vital tip-off and were furious.

Whatever the full extent of their undoubted involvement in providing intelligence or actively participating on the ground in Saddam’s capture, the Kurds, and the PUK in particular, would benefit handsomely.


Apart from a trifling $25 million bounty, their status would have been substantially boosted in Washington, which may in part explain the recent vociferous Kurdish reassertion of their long-term political ambitions in the “new Iraq”.

For their own part the Kurds have already launched a political arrangement designed to secure their aspirations with respect to autonomy, if not nationalist or separatist aspirations.

To show how serious they are, the two main Kurdish groups, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have decided to close ranks and set up a joint Kurdish administration, with jobs being divided between the two camps. They have made it clear to the Americans that their leadership has a responsibility to their constituency.

Last week Massoud Barzani, leader of the KDP, called for a revision of the power-transfer agreement signed between the US-led coalition and Iraq’s interim governing council to recognise “Kurdish rights”.

The November 15 agreement calls for the creation of a national assembly by the end of May 2004 which will put in place a caretaker government by June, which in turn will draft a new constitution and hold national elections

“The November 15 accord must be revised and ‘Kurdish rights’ within an Iraqi federation must be mentioned,” Barzani told a meeting of his supporters.

“The Kurds are today in a powerful position but must continue the struggle to guard their unity,” he added.

This renewed determination to fulfil their political objectives is shaking up other ethnic residents in northern Iraq, who fear at best being marginalised; at worst victimised. Over the last week there have been increasingly violent clashes between Kurdish and Arab students, and between Kurds and Turkemens, in the oil rich city of Kirkuk.

Such ethnic confrontations point to another dangerous phase in Iraq’s power-brokering. If the Kurds did indeed capture Saddam first, and a deal was struck about his handover to the US, then it’s not inconceivable that the terms might have included strong political and strategic advantages that could ultimately determine the emerging power structure in Iraq.

04 January 2004

Yah...until the 'w' regime SCREWS them - - AGAIN!!!!

I'm not the only one who saw this coming, right? The only reason the Kurds backed us from day one was so they could get the US to back their position in Iraq? And I'm sure that the US promised to do just that, thats why there is recognition of the Kurds in the Iraqi Transitional Constituion. But now that we have what we want, we are just going to hang them out to dry...again.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Geez. I would have thought that Dems and libs would be promoting a real democratic government in Iraq. How 'democratic' is it to assure one minority group that they get two positions in the new government.....even before the voting starts?

Thats not what the issue is about. The Kurds want a gurantee that they will be recognized and given equal representation when the Iraqi Gov't makes it's own constitution. Equal rights and representation for all of it's citizens sounds democratic to me, doesn't it to you?

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Perhaps the first story was nonsense and they stopped blabbing it for that reason...Kind of like Palast's stuff, so you should be familiar with the concept.

And I say that not only as a reader of the news. A coworker of mine, who sits about oh 25 feet from me, has a cousin, who is a soldier in Iraq. He was one of the soldiers who stumbled on that hole that Hussein was found in. I've seen pictures, heard stories, and know it wasn't staged.

P.S. Why are you always trying to put the Kurds in the whey?

Not if having a leadership position is a "guarantee." What kind of democracy is that? That would be like our giving the green party......which is certainly a minority in our country.....a guarantee of a certain number of Congressional spots. Now....yes, they should have equal rights and they should not be discriminated against. But a "guarantee" of a leadership position, I don't think so. Don't get me wrong. I like the Kurds and I wished they would have some leadership roles. But I'm not sure having a "guarantee" is the way to go. I could be wrong about it, though. Explain to me how and why that would make sense and maybe I'll change my mind.

they could take a page from the founding fathers of our nation and enact a system which protects the smaller states from being completely disregarded (via the senate) and still protects the rights of the majority...I know its an old idea, but hey, it works...still