-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 30, 2007 6:27:20 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Bush to Betray Iraq's Kurds to Turkey (Again)
Bush planning covert war against Kurds
by quaoar
Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 09:13:20 PM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/30/01320/2568
None other than Bob "Novakula" Novak has a stunner of a column out
for Monday's papers, detailing a covert war that Bush has
authorized against Kurdish guerillas in Kurdistan. The purpose of
the special forces operations against PKK fighters is to prevent
Turkey from invading.
WASHINGTON -- The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in
Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking
on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. At a high
level, U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts
on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and
capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to
forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.
While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the
broad outlines have been presented to selected members of Congress
as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the
Turkish Army to suppress the Kurds’ guerrilla campaign. The Bush
administration is trying to prevent opening another war front in
Iraq that would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks
major exposure and failure.
The details of this operation were provided in "secret briefings,"
as Novak says, to Congress.
Novak says those briefed were stunned, but apparently not stunned
enough to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment.
What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling
each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq? The surprising answer
was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S.
Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and now under
secretary of defense for policy. A Foreign Service officer who once
was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, he revealed to lawmakers plans for a
covert operation of U.S. Special Forces helping the Turks
neutralize the PKK. They would behead the guerrilla organization by
helping Turkey get rid of PKK leaders that they have targeted for
years.
Edelman’s listeners were stunned. Wasn’t this risky? He responded
he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be
concealed and always would be denied. Even if all this is true,
some of the briefed lawmakers left wondering whether this was a
wise policy for handling the beleaguered Kurds who had been
betrayed so often by U.S. governments in years past.
Yes, the Kurds have been sold out repeatedly for decades, starting
when the British and French colonialists carved up the Middle East
after WWI and created the nation of Iraq out of thin air, screwing
the Kurds out of their promised country altogether.
Leave it to Bush to find a way to alienate the only people in the
mess that is Iraq who actually still like the United States.
--------------------
Will the US Betray the Kurds In Iraq (Again)
« H E » Andy Heyman :: email
posted Wednesday, 20 June 2007
http://blackwhite.blog-city.com/
will_the_us_betray_the_kurds_in_iraq_again.htm
After the Gulf War the the first President Bush called on Iraqis to
rise-up and overthrow Saddam Hussein, but then backed-out of
supporting them, which resulted in Saddam committing massive
atrocities against Iraqi Kurds to suppress it.
We also supported Turkey's near (if not actual) genocide against
the Kurds in that country. Despite all of this history, the Kurds
have been the one ethnic group in Iraq that we could trust, and
that have been able to secure their area in Northern Iraq, which
has been mostly free of the violence that has swept the rest of the
country.
Well now Turkey is looking to invade Northern Iraq in order to make
war with Kurdish rebels in Iraq that want Turkish Kurds to be able
to join them in a future Kurdistan. IraqSlogger reports:
The Turkish government would authorize a military cross-border
operation into northern Iraq to crack down on Kurdish PKK rebels if
required, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late
Tuesday.
"We are continuing discussions with the armed forces. If needed we
will take the necessary steps (for a cross-border operation)
because we cannot allow the PKK any longer to carry out attacks,"
Erdogan told Reuters in an interview aboard his plane while
campaigning in eastern Turkey.
Asked whether he believed Iraqi and U.S. authorities would honor
promises to combat the PKK, Erdogan -- speaking via an interpreter
-- gave a lukewarm response: "I wish to remain positive."
The reluctance of the US to once again betray the Kurds should be
obvious. Any incursion invasion of Kurdish Iraq would inevitably
result in massive civilian casualties if not atrocities. The last
thing the US needs in Iraq is a new set of enemies.
---------------------
US Opposes Independent Iraq Kurd State, says Bush
Paula Wolfson
VOA, White House
28 Jan 2004, 20:05 UTC
http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2004/01-28-9.htm
President Bush has met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan at the White House. Mr. Bush reassured the Turkish leader
that the United States does not want to see Iraq's Kurds get their
own state.
It is a crucial issue for Turkey, which has been dealing with a
Kurdish separatist movement within its own borders.
President Bush tried to ease the concerns of Turkish leaders. He
did not refer specifically to the fate of the Iraqi Kurds, but his
meaning was clear.
"I assured him that the United States' ambition is for a peaceful
country, a democratic Iraq that is territorially intact," he said.
The Kurds of northern Iraq have lived in relative autonomy since
the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Mr. Bush left no doubt he sees their
future as part of a multi-ethnic Iraq, and not part of a breakaway
nation that might inflame separatist ambitions among Kurds in
neighboring countries.
His words were generally in line with past administration comments,
although officials have gone to some length to note that the matter
will ultimately be decided by a new Iraqi government once the
transfer of power from coalition authorities is complete.
Speaking to reporters at the end of the White House meeting, Prime
Minister Erdogan seemed pleased with the words he heard from the
president.
"We share the same views regarding our strategic partnership in
restructuring Iraq," he said.
Both men also spoke of the ongoing war on terrorism, with Mr. Bush
taking note of the bombings late last year that rocked Istanbul.
"Both of us understand what it means to have our fellow citizens
destroyed by merciless killing of terrorists," the president said.
---------------------
http://www.representativepress.org/evenafter.html
Even After the Gulf War, the U.S. helped Saddam Hussein stay in power.
"Notice that contrary to the line that’s constantly presented about
what the Gulf War was fought for, in reality it had nothing to do
with not liking Saddam Hussein - as can very easily be
demonstrated. So just take a look at hat happened right after the
U.S. bombardment ended. A week after the war, Saddam Hussein turned
to crushing the Shiite population in the south of Iraq and the
Kurdish population in the north: what did the United states do? It
watched. In fact, rebelling Iraqi generals pleaded with the United
States to let them use captured Iraqi equipment to try to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. The U.S. refused. Saudi Arabia, our leading ally in
the region, approached the United States with a plan to support the
rebel generals in their attempt to overthrow Saddam after the war:
the Bush administration blocked the plan, and it was immediately
dropped." [see footnote] ( p168 Understanding Power Noam Chomsky )
Brent Scowcroft served as national security adviser in the George
H. W. Bush administration. In this interview he discusses why
Saddam Hussein is a separate problem from going after bin Laden's
terrorist network, explains why the coalition against terrorism is
even more important than the coalition built during the Gulf War,
and defends the decision in the earlier Bush administration not to
go after Saddam at the end of the Gulf War and not to support
uprisings in the northern and southern parts of Iraq. He was
interviewed in October 2001.
Interviewer: We didn't cut off their gasoline supplies.
Brent Scowcroft: First of all, one of our objectives was not to
have Iraq split up into constituent ... parts. It's a fundamental
interest of the United States to keep a balance in that area, in
Iraq. ...
Interviewer: So part of the reason to not go after his army at that
point was to make sure there was a unified country, whether or not
it was ruled by Saddam?
Brent Scowcroft: Well, partly. But suppose we went in and
intervened, and the Kurds declare independence, and the Shiites
declare independence. Then do we go to war against them to keep a
unified Iraq?
Interviewer: But why would we care at that point?
Brent Scowcroft: We could care a lot.
Interviewer: I thought we had two interests. One was to evict the
Iraqi Army from Kuwait. But the other really was to get Saddam out
of power.
Brent Scowcroft: No, it wasn't.
Interviewer: Well, either covertly or overtly.
Brent Scowcroft: No. No, it wasn't. That was never... You can't
find that anywhere as an objective, either in the U.N. mandate for
what we did, or in our declarations, that our goal was to get rid
of Saddam Hussein.
footnote: On the rebel Iraqi generals' rejected pleas, see for
example, John Simpson, "Surviving In The Ruins," Spectator (U.K.),
August 10, 1991, pp. 8-10. An excerpt: "Our programme [Panorama on
England's B.B.C.-1] has found evidence that several Iraqi generals
made contact with the United States to sound out the likely
American response if they took the highly dangerous step of
planning a coup against Saddam. But now Washington faltered. It had
been alarmed by the scale of the uprisings [against Saddam Hussein]
in the north and south. For several years the Americans had refused
to have any contact with the Iraqi opposition groups, and assumed
that revolution would lead to the break-up of Iraq as a unitary
state. The Americans believed that the Shi'as wanted to secede to
Iran and that the Kurds would want to join up with the Kurdish
people of Turkey. No direct answer was returned to the Iraqi
generals; but on 5 March, only four days after President Bush had
spoken of the need for the Iraqi people to get rid of Saddam
Hussein, the White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, "We don't
intend to get involved . . . in Iraq's internal affairs. . . ."
An Iraqi general who escaped to Saudi Arabia in the last days of
the uprising in southern Iraq told us that he and his men had
repeatedly asked the American forces for weapons, ammunition and
food to help them carry on the fight against Saddam's forces. The
Americans refused. As they fell back on the town of Nasiriyeh,
close to the allied positions, the rebels approached the Americans
again and requested access to an Iraqi arms dump behind the
American lines at Tel al-Allahem. At first they were told they
could pass through the lines. Then the permission was rescinded
and, the general told us, the Americans blew up the arms dump.
American troops disarmed the rebels."
Jim Drinkard, "Senate Report Says Lack of U.S. Help Derailed
Possible Iraq Coup," A.P., May 2, 1991 (Westlaw database # 1991 WL
6184412). An excerpt: "Defections by senior officials in Saddam
Hussein's army -- and possibly a coup attempt against Saddam --
were shelved in March because the United States failed to support
the effort, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff
report. . . . [T]he United States "continued to see the opposition
in caricature," fearing that the Kurds sought a separate state and
the Shi'as wanted an Iranian-style Islamic fundamentalist regime,
the report concluded. . . .
"The public snub of Kurdish and other Iraqi opposition leaders was
read as a clear indication the United States did not want the
popular rebellion to succeed," the document stated. . . . The
refusal to meet with the Iraqi opposition was accompanied by
"background statements from administration officials that they were
looking for a military, not a popular, alternative to Saddam
Hussein," the committee staff report said. . . . The United States
resisted not only the entreaties of opposition figures, but of
Syria and Saudi Arabia, which favored aiding the Iraqi dissidents
militarily, the report contended."
A.P., "Senior Iraqis offered to defect, report says," Boston Globe,
May 3, 1991, p. 8; "Report: U.S. Stymied Defections," Newsday (New
York), May 3, 1991, p. 15;
Tony Horwitz, "Forgotten Rebels: After Heeding Calls To Turn on
Saddam, Shiites Feel Betrayed," Wall Street Journal Europe,
December 31, 1991, p. 1.
For more on the immediate decision by the U.S. to allow Saddam
Hussein to massacre the rebelling Shiites and Kurds -- in part
using attack helicopters, as expressly permitted by U.S. commanders
-- at the conclusion of the Gulf War, see for example, Michael R.
Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals' War: The
Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, Boston: Little Brown,
1995, pp. 446-456 (on Saudi Arabia's rejected plan to assist the
Shiites who were trying to overthrow Saddam, see pp. 454-456).
(from footnotes for Chapter 5 of Understanding Power Noam Chomsky
-----------------
http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/sover/emerg/
2003/0126kurds.htm
Following a possible air and land invasion by the United States,
many officials in these neighboring countries are fearful of civil
war and general instability reigning in the Kurdish enclaves of
northern Iraq; this area, when included with the neighboring
country's respective Kurdish regions, is known as Kurdistan.
Kurdistan boasts vast oil deposits as well as minerals like
chromium, copper, iron and coal. Oil is found in commercially
viable quantities in the Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Khanaqini, the
Turkish cities of Batman and Silvan, and the Syrian city of
Rumeglan. This is an important factor in the attitudes of the
various national governments regarding the question of Kurdish self-
determination and has strengthened the Kurds' own feeling of being
treated unfairly.
Of these politically and ethnically disparate countries, Turkey is
the key U.S. ally, receiving much in the way of loans and military
hardware as well as frequent visits from top U.S. brass, especially
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Ankara's biggest concern
is no secret: the prevention of a Kurdish nation in northern Iraq.
Turkish officials fear a Kurdish state would incite their own
Kurdish population leading to a possible uprising as Turkish Kurds
express their solidarity with Iraqi Kurds realizing their long-
lived dream of statehood.
Turkey is also hoping for additional loans or the further waiving
of debt in exchange for letting the U.S. use their soil as a point
of departure for as many as 75,000 troops whose focus would be the
Kurdish-held areas of Iraq. Ankara has reported that they've
suffered $60 billion in lost trade since the end of the Gulf War in
1991 due to Iraq's destroyed infrastructure, and such aid would be
of great benefit.
Though Wolfowitz has assured Ankara that a Kurdish state will not
be allowed, Washington has cautioned Turkish leaders about any
imperialistic notions concerning a de facto Kurdistan. Popular
among many Turks is the idea that much of northern Iraq, formerly
part of the Ottoman Empire, should be annexed by Turkey in the
inevitable power vacuum that will follow after the ouster of Hussein.
Numbering two million, Kurds account for a significant portion of
Syria's seventeen million residents and reside in the northeastern
part of the country.
Damascus' concerns mirror Ankara's: they fear Kurdish separatist
sentiments spilling over into Syrian territory and fanning domestic
feeling. The Syrian leadership is all the more concerned with such
feelings because of recent events like the first demonstration held
by Kurds in Damascus in over 15 years on December 10th,
International Human Rights' Day. Kurdish language and culture is
banned throughout Syria.
Tehran and the government of President Mohammed Khatami share the
same feelings as Damascus and Ankara when it comes to the
preservation of boundaries in northern Iraq and the denial of a
greater Kurdistan, whether it be de facto or otherwise.
Though most Kurds -- based upon their cultural hatred of Saddam
Hussein and the travesties he's committed against them -- welcome a
U.S. invasion of Iraq, they are also leery of the U.S.' commitment
to their cause.
Following the end of the Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush
encouraged the Kurds to take matters into their own hands in an
effort to foster domestic unrest in the hopes of toppling Hussein.
The Kurds, expecting U.S. support, staged revolts against Baghdad.
The Bush administration, in a change of policy, offered no support
to the revolting Kurds who were subsequently killed by the thousands.
Leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Jalal Talabani,
had this to say about the U.S.' decision: "U.S. policy, in my
opinion committed three big mistakes. First, George Bush when he
stopped and didn't do anything [at the end of the Gulf War]. They
[U.S.] showed the Iraqi people that they want Saddam in power. They
don't want to interfere in the general affairs of the Iraqi."
Now, Kurdish leaders have requested gas masks and other protection
from chemical and biological weapons, but have heard nothing from
Washington.
An atmosphere such as this, where Kurds have long seen the United
States as a fair weather ally, complicate their desire to see
Saddam Hussein removed from power. Many feel they don't know how
long to trust the U.S., and, if Hussein is still in power the next
time the U.S. withdraws their assistance, further atrocities could
result.
The Kurds also resent the U.S. for their support of Turkey, which
is the country that is home to the greatest number of Kurds,
numbering about 15 million. Turkey has long crushed Kurdish
rebellions in its southeastern corner and has long battled the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The main Kurdish parties -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
and the PUK -- have been visited recently by not only Moscow's
Ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Tetrinko, but also by U.S. Senators
Chuck Hagel and Joseph Biden.
There's also been much diplomatic activity with Iran as of late
with PUK leader Jalal Talabani and KDP leader Massoud Barzani
visiting Iran and meeting with other opponents of Saddam Hussein to
discuss regional security and the governmental system that may
replace him.
Though such high-profile diplomatic visits are rare in the region,
such as the ones by Moscow and the U.S. Senators, it is not
necessarily a sign that any kind of Kurdish state is close at hand,
but more so a recognition that the Kurds, even with their limited
military power, will play an important role in the transition from
the Iraq of Saddam Hussein to an Iraq experiencing widespread, post-
war reconstruction.
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