Not content with shaking hands with Palestinian terrorists, Condi now tries to screw the Kurds

The Kurds have been showing signs lately of seceding from the mess that Iraq has become.

We can't have that now, can we? Might upset our dear `friends' in the Arab Street. Or the Saudis.

Secretary Rice took a surprise trip to Iraq and made a detour to Kurdistan, where she met with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, who showed what the writing on the wall is last month when he ordered all Iraqi flags removed from government buildings in the region and replaced them with the Kurdistan flag.

Condi laid down the law and informed Barzani that Washington would not endorse the Kurd's basic autonomy law, which covers territory as far as a line south of Baghdad.

Oil, of course is at the bottom of things. Kurdistan is the richest oil producing part of Iraq and the Kurds, after enduring near genocide under Saddam and essentially being under self rule since 1991 want to use the oil according to what they claim are the autonomous powers given to them by the constitution passed last year that laid down a federal system in Iraq. So they've been making deals to sell it to foreign nations, do oil leases and open up areas for exploration.

Needless to say, as these deals went public the Sunnis and Shiites wanted their cut, and Shiite Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said the central Iraqi government would `review contracts signed by the Kurdistan government' - which provoked Kurdish president Barzani to threaten to break away from Iraq.

"The people of Kurdistan chose to be in a voluntary union with Iraq on the basis of the constitution...If Baghdad ministers refuse to abide by that constitution, the people of Kurdistan reserve the right to reconsider our choice."

So Secretary Rice was designated to lay down the law.

After the arm-twisting from Rice, Barzani stressed his people'’s "right to self-determination", and said he was committed to a "federal, democratic and pluralistic Iraq," but refused to endorse proposed national legislation to abrogate the Kurd's right to their oil and place new rules on the`distribution' (theft) of The Kurds' oil revenues.

Kurdistan is the most peaceful part of Iraq, largely because the Kurdish army, the Pesh Merga, takes major precautions to control their borders rather than leaving it to the American or other coalition forces. Any Sunni and Shiite Arabs who want to enter Kurdistan must go through elaborate permit procedures, and as a piece I highlighted by journalist Michael Totten revealed, any al Qaeda types who manage to slip into the country are hunted down like rats.

The Kurds as a group have consistently been our only trustworthy allies in Iraq, and they're grateful to us for protecting them after the Gulf War via the `no fly zones.'
And the Pesh Merga (Kurdish for `those who face danger') are the strongest non-coalition fighting force in Iraq, and the only Iraqi force capable of standing up to Iran's Shiite proxy militias in the country like Moqata al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

If the Bush Administration was truly concerned with our national interest,let alone with promoting democracy in the Middle East, we'd support an independent, democratic and loyal ally with a strategic location - not to mention oil wealth- who'd be glad to have us around on a long term basis and be tickled pink to let us stick a base there.

Instead, the president is obviously more interested in looking good to the Arab `street'.(The Kurds are not Arabs, for those who don't realize that little fact)

In fact, one way out of the Iraqi quicksand we've gotten ourselves into would be to redeploy our troops to Kurdistan, stick a major base there and let the rest of Iraq fend for themselves, as they so obviously want to do.

The other, of course, would be to confront Iran and Syria, knock out the Iranian Shiite proxy militias, secure the country and tell the pro-Iranian Iraqi government that we expect a lot more loyalty and pro-western sentiment out of them.

But that kind of victory oriented thinking doesn't appear to be part of our agenda just now.

Pity.