corrente

Our dilemma: What to give the Islamist militant who has everything? A nice recruiting poster from Abu Ghraib? Naah, got that. How about evidence that Israel's helping dismember Iraq by supporting the Kurds? Wow! Just what I wanted! Anyhow, Seymour Hersh is at it again (though this story is not yet published on the New Yorker site):

Israeli military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilise the entire region, according to a report in the New Yorker magazine.

The article was written by Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who exposed the abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib.

By supporting Kurdish separatists, Israel also risks alienating its Turkish ally and undermining attempts to create a stable Iraq. "If you end up with a divided Iraq it will bring more blood, tears and pain to the Middle East and you will be blamed," a senior Turkish official told Mr Hersh.

According to Mr Hersh, Israel decided to step up its role in Kurdistan last summer after it was clear that the United States incursion into Iraq was failing, principally because it feared the chaos would strengthen Iran.
(via The Guardian)

"Failing"?! How come we didn't hear about this? And "last summer"? This has been going on for a year?!

In the autumn the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak told the US vice president, Dick Cheney, that America had lost in Iraq. Israel "had learned that there's no way to win an occupation," he told Mr Cheney, and the only issue was "choosing the size of your humiliation".

Thanks for sharing, Ehud. And thanks for tipping the American people off, Dick. Oh. You didn't?

If the June 30 transfer of sovereignty does not go well, "there is no fallback, nothing," a former National Security Council member tells Hersh. "The neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat in Iraq," a former intelligence official says. "What's the plan? They say, 'We don't need it. Democracy is strong enough. We'll work it out.'"

"[BULLWINKLE:] Hey Rocky!...." "[ROCKY:] And now for something you'll really like!"

One Turkish official told Mr Hersh that Kurdish independence would be calamitous for the region. "The lesson of Yugoslavia is that when you give one country independence everybody will want it. Kirkuk will be the Sarajevo of Iraq. If something happens there, it will be impossible to contain the crisis."

Translation: You think it's been bad so far?

Eesh.