‘Practically Speaking, Iraq Has Broken Apart’

The Daily Beast ^ | June 15, 2014 | Eli Lake

[2ndDivisionVet]

With Baghdad’s army disintegrating and terrorists on the rampage, the son of Iraq’s president—himself a top Kurdish official—says Iraq is effectively a single country no more.

American presidents and Iraqi strongmen have been trying for decades to keep the country intact. But that effort is now failing under pressure from the Islamic extremists who are taking over more and more of Iraq’s cities. “Practically speaking, the country has broken apart,” a top official in Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government told The Daily Beast.

In an interview, Qubad Talabani—the Kurdish government’s incoming deputy prime minister and the son of Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani—said Kurdish leaders do not seek the dissolution of Iraq, but that it’s happening nonetheless.

“Iraq, in a sense, has broken apart from us,” he told The Daily Beast. “Geographically we practically have to cross another country to get to Baghdad. We have to cross through territory that is governed and secured by forces that are not loyal to the federal government in Baghdad.”(continued)

[Fitzy_888]

As Jimmy Carter created Iran, so Barrack Hussein Obama will create Jihadistan.

The only difference between Jimmy Carter and Barrack Obama is they gave Carter a Nobel Preace Prize AFTER he was a failure.

[ExNewsExSpook]

Here’s a recent blogpost that makes many of the same points:

http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2014/06/saving-kurdistan.html

With the pending collapse of Iraq—and Iran on the march—an independent Kurdistan may be our only friend (and hope) in that region.

You’ll note that the ISIL has, so far, largely by-passed Kurdish territory and the Peshmerga. There were reports of clashes in Kirkuk between the ISIL and Kurdish fighters, but they didn’t last long. Kirkuk is under Kurdish control and the ISIL opted not to press its luck. They know what happens to Islamic terrorists who are captured by the Kurds.

[GraceG]

We should have invaded Saudia Arabia after 9/11 and taken out the terrorist funding mechanism and gotten all the oil wells that fund terrorism in one fell swoop, not to mention turn Mecca into a above ground nuclear testing site after evacuating it...

We did do Afghanistan properly in the first few years, but then Iraq always did seem like a great big distraction to take pressure off the Wahabi Saudis...

Hindsight being 20/20 and all.

[silverleaf]

speaking of regional friends .... how does our NATO ally TURKEY feel about an “independent Kurdistan”?

[Corporate Democrat]

I don’t know about that. If we had partitioned it I think it would’ve ended up better than the way it is now. The Kurds are more than capable of setting up their own state, Iran would help prop up the Shia state and the Saudis would be forced to prop up the Sunni West.

A fair enough balance of power, and we could then withdraw and threaten to lay the smackdown on anybody who broke the peace, ala Kuwait. Much preferable to getting bogged down in the place, but of course hindsight is 20/20.