Exclusive -- Bill Clinton: We Need To Stay in Iraq to Protect the Kurds From The Turks

This is America's nightmare.

Just before Christmas, Turkish warplanes (F-16s made in the USA) and helicopter gunships bombed 200 Kurdish targets in northern Iraq, killing 150 people, after dozens of Turkish soldiers were blown up by a large contingent of Kurdish terrorists.

There are reports that some 60,000 Turkish troops are massing on the border for a land invasion of "Kurdistan". The bombings continue today.

It is a thorny dilemma, emblematic of what is so schizophrenic up about our policy in the Middle East. In the 1980s, the US gave Saddam chemical weapons to gas the Kurds. Then we gave the Kurds arms and money to rise up against Saddam; now the Bush administration is giving the Turks military intelligence, money and arms to blast the Kurds.

Ironically, the Turks and the Kurds are the only people in the Middle East who seem to be able to tolerate Americans and now they are in a slowly escalating war with each other.

Bill Clinton, in prescient talks to 50 wealthy supporters at a fundraiser last summer, off limits to the press, said:

"The two wrinkles in her policy that some of the purists won't like, but I think she is absolutely right, are that she would leave some troops in the Kurdish area in the north because they have reconciled with each other and they enjoy relative peace and security...And if we leave them...not only might they be gone into a long civil war...the Turks might be tempted to attack them because they don't like the fact that the PKK guerrillas sometimes come across into northern Iraq and hide after staging attacks in Turkey."

"We don't want that," the former President went on to say.

Last June, in answering questions at a leadership conference, Hillary Clinton made headlines in the largest newspaper in Turkey with her mildest of answers about the Kurds, calling them close US allies. None of this was reported in the US press.

But Bill Clinton, in his "off the record" remarks, carried Hillary's statement much further and will cause much consternation in Turkish ruling circles.

The Turks, our most loyal Muslim allies (most of the arms and weapons that the US needed for our invasion and occupation in Iraq came overland through Turkey) have been worried about this flip-flopping American policy for some time.

Opposition to an independent Kurdish state has been a longtime linchpin of American policy in the region, going back to the Clinton era, because of fears that it would threaten Turkey, a major regional ally, which has a large Kurdish minority of more than 10 million who seek independence.

In March of 1995, 35,000 Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq using the US imposed "No Fly Zone" as protection for its own jet fighters, a move which annihilated dozens of Kurdish villages and killed tens of thousands of Kurds.

Not surprisingly, Turkey used Pentagon supplied weapons to attack the Kurds in this latest foray and the Kurdish rebels used US bombs and other US weapons to blow up the Turkish military convoy. America is supplying arms to two "friendly nations" at the same time to fight each other!

This is nothing new. America in recent decades has a zany history of arming third world countries and then of sitting back and watching their arms be used against each other and us. Let us not forget that the Taliban weapons used against American troops were largely manufactured in the United States to help defeat the Soviet occupation. Many of Saddam's weapons were originally supplied by the US to help Iraq in its war against Iran.

George Bush is in a tricky position. According to a headline in the Washington Post, the US, "HELPS TURKEY HIT KURDS IN IRAQ" by providing real time intelligence to the Turkish military.

Previously, the US warned Turkey not to invade Iraq, as this would interfere with our invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Kurds - with large oil reserves now pledged to US companies - have a history of divided loyalty. One large faction was allied and close with Saddam Hussein; another sizably large group was allied with Iran and still another group was allied with the Kurdistan Workers' Party. During the invasion, the US could not figure out which group to back and, ironically, ended up supporting the Iranian faction to rebel against Hussein.

Naturally, as the Arab proverb says, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But the conundrum is: which of my friends do I support if they start fighting each other and will I lose my one friend if I support my other friend?

It's awfully messy out there. And watch the price of oil skyrocket.


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Comments

[Grulg]

In other words, we wanna make sure that the Kurds don't get in the Way?

[MAX1]

.

So then, does this make Bill Clinton a supporter of the continued occupation of a sovereign nation that NEVER posed an imminent threat to America?

DOES BILL CLINTON SUPPORT THE BUSH DOCTRINE OF ILLEGAL INVASIONS AND OCCUPATIONS?

R E M E M B E R:
BUSH gave tacit permission for Turkey to become involved in his debacle that is known as IRAQ.

.

[mommadona]

Well, just another FINE example of DEMOCRACTIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL thinking and maneuvering....

"It's about the money, honey"
It's allll about da bucks.

That's another reason for the DNC to kick out the DLC. Clintonian "Business as Usual" is NOT progressive.

[ljsfolly]

I thought that the US is giving the turks intelligence on where the kurds are hiding therefore letting the turks kill off the kurds. I fail to understand why the us is all about democracy unless the people wanting their own country and deserving a portion of the countries that a agreement said they should have is wrong. What is wrong with the kurds having their own country? Am I stupid or naive about this?

[midtown]

Dont be ridiculous. Kurdish oil has never gone to us. It's going to Israel. Google: Paritzky April 2003 pipeline

Is B. Clinton paying back some old backers with this bullshit? Avoid a Kurdistan slaughter? It's rich with petrodollars. Stinking rich: they can afford to buy their own army or mercenaries. All this hand-ringing? Where is America on Zimbabwe?

[dshwa]

The real fun will be, do we support our only partial success story in Iraq (the Kurds) or our NATO ally who we're required to defend (Turkey) And when do those of us who saw this comming right from the start of the invasion get to say "I told you so."

[dshwa]

One minor possible correction, I believe the reason we gave Saddam Chem/bio weapons was to fight the Iranians, not the Kurds.

[ChristosAnesti]

The critical issue facing the United States is our totally hypocritical policy of support for Turkish oppression of the Kurdish people. The Turkish nation has a horrific record of persecution and genocidal actions against the non-Turkish inhabitants of Anatolia which was once populated by Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds. These people were the indigenous population prior to the Turkish conquest and all except the Kurds were either murdered or driven into exile. The US has supported Turkey out of a misguided desire to have a "stable Muslim ally" when in reality the Turks have played us for as much money as they could get their hands on. When we needed our so-called ally to open the northern front to US troops they screwed up our war plans big time by refusing to cooperate. Every country surrounding Turkey has dealt with the aggression of this fanatically nationalist nation yet the US looks the other way. Armenia is blockaded, Kurdistan is bombarded and threatened if they try to assert their rights to govern themselves, 37 percent of Cyprus is occupied by the Turkish army and Turkish jets violate Greek airspace on a regular basis. The apologists for Turkey in the US and Europe are blind to the vile nationalistic hatred that the Turks have exhibited time and time again. The Kurds were to have achieved their independence in what is now southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq in 1919 but the victors of World War I betrayed them to the Turks and the new state of Iraq that the British created. One needs to look at the injustice of our past actions towards the Kurds and realize that our foreign policy should be structured so that we support them now to make up for the past. The Turks have no right whatsoever to dictate what the Kurds can or cannot do in Kurdistan and frankly their persecution of the Kurds in Turkey should be grounds for the international community to enforce an autonomous region within Turkey where they can live in peace without persecution from the Turkish state.

[bookish]

And on and on and on...

[LizM]

You make a very sound argument for the nomination of Joe Biden.

[syllepsis]

As long as the price of oil skyrockets, I don't think Bush or his advisers care whether the Turks and Kurds go at it with each other.
This is the same crew that in the Reagan era armed the Iranians and Iraqis during the bloodiest war of that decade.
Blowback from that war was Gulf War I, which spawned many disasters, not just this present botched attempt at nation building.
What will come from this war will surely be worse.
There will be no exoneration for Bush in the history books, even if somehow we are the ones who end up writing them.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think the whole sick story makes a GREAT case
for 'right-sizing' the Pentascam. Also makes
a great case for throwing Bush out of office.
http://www.impeachbush.org

[oldpotsmuggler]

"It's awfully messy out there" is true, but it would be a mistake to believe that the mess represents anything other than official BUSHCO policy. And not some policy that has misfired. It is BUSHCO policy that has been designed and implemented to perfection, and the resulting mess is exactly what was desired.

First, please understand the difference between this situation and the Taliban/Russia, or Iraq/Iran examples cited. Those things, while they did occur, did not occur simultaneously. That is we did not give weapons to the Taliban at the same time that we were fighting them, and Saddam got his arsenal from us a good many years before he turned it on us.

In "Kurdistan" we are facilitating the Kurds in being able to attack Turkey by sending BUSHCO oil allies over to set up deals that the Kurds need to put a firm financial floor under their aspirations for a unified Kurdish country. Not only have we helped that process out, the Kurds sent representatives to the U.S. in the past couple of months who were feted in parties hosted by ex-administration BUSHCO operatives in Washington, and were introduced to more BUSHCO oil allies. We have set Northern Iraq up to be able to be an effective threat to Turkey and did it for that exact purpose.

On the other side, we are facilitating the Turkish incursions by giving explicit approval, and by sharing critical mission specific intel. In other words, the Kurds can't provoke the Turks without our help and the Turks can't retaliate against the Kurds without our help.

If any of this seems schizophrenic, don't take your eye off the posted price of oil on world markets. The chaos on that border is now being cited as a specific contributing factor supporting higher oil prices, and the creation of the chaos was patently intentional. There is a pattern here that has been repeated throughout the terms of both Bush Presidencies and that is impossible to misinterpret with a little study.

[Doofus]

I see some revisionism in process here. One of
the reasons the US invasion of Iraq got f*cked
up early on was Turkey's refusal to allow our
troops to enter Iraq via Turkey, and to generally
not cooperate with US forces in the run-up to
the invasion. Troop arrivals were delayed, and
with fewer boots-on-the-ground at the beginning,
mistakes were made - munitions depots left un-
guarded, for example. US-Turkey relations were
soured for several years after.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 27 March - 2 April 2003 (Issue No. 631)
Cold Turkey over Iraq
The US has begun to close bases in Turkey and abandon its plans to open a second front against Baghdad amid growing fears of a possible clash between US and Turkish forces in northern Iraq. Gareth Jenkins reports from Istanbul

On Sunday 23 March, the US closed down one of its logistics bases in Turkey amid growing tensions between Washington and Ankara over the refusal of the Turkish parliament to allow American troops to transit Turkey and the substantial Turkish military presence in northern Iraq. ...

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/631/sc13.htm

But, yes, it is true that Turks & Kurds do not
get along & never have. Just as Turks have not
exactly gotten along with most of the countries
in the region, since not all that long ago it
was *their* empire that controlled them all.