Daily Kos: 10,000 Kurds In Iraqi Army Ready To Fight In Civil War

Daily Kos: 10,000 Kurds In Iraqi Army Ready To Fight In Civil War:

by georgia10
Wed Dec 28, 2005 at 08:26:47 AM PDT

From Knight Ridder News Service, this sad and disturbing news:

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops who are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga -- the Kurdish militia -- and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

My friend, Anton Saurian, is convinced that Iraq will disintegrate and in the process set off World War III. This report, regretably, supports his hypothesis. Will we come to regret Bush's zealotry even more than we ever thought possible?