I’ve been looking for an excuse to post this video all day. This one is for elected folk, because it’s important you all stop giving in to the warmongers so much on the whole “we’re making progress” line. No, we’re not.

The Sunni Arabs who removed their support for the deal did so, in part, because of a contract the Kurdish government signed earlier with a company based in the United Arab Emirates, Dana Gas, to develop gas reserves.

The Kurds say their regional law is consistent with the Iraqi Constitution, which grants substantial powers to the provinces to govern their own affairs. But Mr. Shahristani believes that a sort of Kurdish declaration of independence can be read into the move. “This to us indicates very serious lack of cooperation that makes many people wonder if they are really going to be working within the framework of the federal law,” Mr. Shahristani said in a recent interview, before the Hunt deal was announced.

You can just see Green Zone bunnies acting like this when they speak with their comfortably ensconced in London “governing” Iraqi buddies:  Read more 

Via Juan Cole this morning:

The LAT reports on the three bombings that roiled the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday and which its interviewees blamed on “al-Qaeda.”

I am horrified at the loss of innocent life, and hate to see the incident used for politics. I would be very suspicious of assigning blame to “al-Qaeda” for this one. The bombs hit the party offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Kirkuk as well as (Kurdish) policemen. The Kurds are trying to annex oil-rich Kirkuk province to their Kurdistan provincial confederacy. Turkmen and Arabs do not want to be annexed. Turkey does not want to see it annexed.

We now pause for some background notes.

One of the many horror stories told about Saddaam Hussein over the buildup-to-war years, and one that actually happened to be more or less true, was about his persecution of “ethnic minorities” in Iraq, particularly the Marsh Arabs in the South and the Kurds in the north. The flashpoint was always said to be the city of Kirkuk on the ill-defined “border” between the area historically occupied by Kurds and that of the rest of Iraq.

While experiments in using (lest we ever forget) US SUPPLIED POISON GAS were carried out in smaller more out-of-the-way villages, the campaign for Kirkuk was good old fashioned ethnic cleansing. Kurds are identifiable in part by their names. I’m not enough of a linguist to define just how, but you know the way it works anyway. Somebody named Cohen or Goldberg is most likely a Jew. One named O’Brien is probably Irish, et ethnically cetera.

So Saddaam passed a clever little law:  Read more 

I hereby propose a rule to be known as Bush’s First Law: there is no geopolitical situation, no matter how bad already, that this nitwit and his fluffers cannot make indescribably worse. From Juan Cole today:

Before W. got into the White House and ruined the world, 56% of Turks had a favorable view of the United States and the country was a firm NATO ally. Last I knew, the favorability rating had fallen to 12%, largely because Turks are afraid Bush’s misadventure in Iraq will blow back on them. Now they think the US is a greater threat to them than the major terrorist organization that has menaced them for the past 30 years! It would be like the English public saying the US is a greater threat than the Irish Republican Army, or the French public saying the US is a greater threat than the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armé).

This was Dr. Cole’s comment on the news story he had just cited, from a report by that radical IslamoCommie media outlet…um, Voice of America (oops.)  Read more 

I know there’s a lot going on, but you’d think words like “Iranian troops massing” and “Turkish shelling” would get the attention of at least one or two Murkin journamalists:

Al-Quds al-Arabi (www.alquds.co.uk, Tuesday September 12, item on page 1) says 902 Kurdish farming families have been forced out of their homes in the area where the Turkish-Iranian-Iraqi borders meet, because of continued shelling of the area by both Turkish and Iranian forces. The shelling has already caused several deaths and injuries, as well as the destruction of hundreds of head of cattle.  Read more 

Mark has some really important reading about what’s going on in Iraq and Kurdistand. It’s important to try to keep this part of the war in mind, for all the reasons in the articles he mentions. But this is my favorite part:

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