calling for an invasion of northern Iraq

* reuters via mizgin:

"Two former senior U.S. officials suggested on Monday deploying NATO forces in northern Iraq to forestall the risk of a Turkish invasion.

In a policy paper issued before a summit of the 26-nation alliance in Riga next week, Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus said NATO members had an interest in doing everything possible to maintain Iraq's unity and prevent a full-scale civil war.

"Already today in Turkey there are voices openly calling for an invasion of northern Iraq to deal with the constant raids into southeastern Turkey by the terrorist organization known as the PKK," they wrote in a study published by the German Marshall Fund transatlantic think-tank.
[]
Holbrooke and Asmus contend that a NATO presence as part of a deal with the Iraqi Kurdish regional leadership to rein in Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas would help prevent Turkish military intervention."

that's not comforting. of course, there's no way that NATO will go into N. Iraq. What will it take for Turkey to invade Iraq?

* meanwhile, indy:

"Nato's fragile unity over Afghanistan has begun to crack ahead of an important summit - with one public call to discuss an exit strategy from the Allied forces' bloody confrontation with the Taliban."

* meanwhile, daily star via mizgin:

"MOUNT QANDIL, Iraq: The United States government is in contact with Kurds struggling against Iran, a top rebel leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said Thursday. Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, a founder of the movement that has struggled for Kurdish self-determination for the past 30 years, said the United States was in touch with the Party for Freedom in Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, but that it was not helping actively.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed recently in the New Yorker magazine that American forces were supporting the PJAK as part of their strategy to destabilize the Tehran government.

"American authorities want to have contact with PJAK, and as a matter of fact they do have contact with PJAK," Bayik said in an exclusive interview at his headquarters deep in Iraq's remote Qandil Mountains on the Iranian border.

"But to say that the United States is supporting the PJAK is not right," he added. "PJAK is until now continuing their struggle just with the support of the Kurdish people and the PKK."

[ . . . ]

"If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well," Bayik said. "The PKK is the one who formed PJAK, who established PJAK and supports PJAK.""

Mizgin has been saying that he was wrong re PJAK since Hersh's article.

Mizgin adds:

"Meanwhile, back in the States, there are a number of lawmakers who have been specifically agitating for wide support for the anti-Kurdish MEK. These lawmakers include Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT), Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY), and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).

The single biggest difference between MEK's position on The List and PKK's position on The List is that MEK targeted and killed US military personnel in the 1970s and supported the takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979. PKK has never targeted or killed Americans.

Why is Seymour Hersh covering up high-level US support for MEK while making up stories about PKK?"