A New Power Rises in Iraq

[HOZ]

Michael Totten is turning into one of my favourte reads. I really recommend his site if only for the pictures!!!


Three major obstacles to independence remain. The first is Iraqi Kurdistan’s relationship with Turkey. That relastionship is bad but improving despite the Turkish military’s well-publicized threats to invade Northern Iraq to eject the (Turkish) Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the PKK, from using Iraqi soil to launch attacks against military and civilian targets in Turkey. Relations between the (Iraqi) Kurdistan Regional Government and the Turkish government have quietly improved at the same time. Iraq’s Kurds genuinely want a civil relationship with Turkey because they can’t safely declare independence without it.

[Hack&Lube]

If Kurdistan is avoiding the partisan conflict bathing southern Iraq in sectarian civil war...that's a great thing for Iraq. Hopefully, the battle doesn't seep north. It's kinda funny...that the occupational force is basically South Korea.

Kurdistan is pretty much what the ignorant planners in the Bush administration thought Iraq would be like...then they dove in, specfically drove one sect against the other, and then removed the entire infrastructure and all the people with authority and experience...literally installing 20 year olds in their places and expecting Iraq to run. Sheesh. You can't destroy all institutions and assume that the culture will assimilate to your ideas. You can't "bring" democracy when there is no democratic instiution or desire in the first place. If only one of the political strategists in the Bush administration had read Burke.

Where is all the oil located in Iraq again? If it weren't for that, partition would be the best chance for Iraq.