Novak: Bush planning covert war against Kurds

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday July 29, 2007 · 9:13 PM PDT

2007/07/29 · 21:13

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.

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Comments are closed on this story.