"Kurdish troops surround Turks in worst confrontation yet in Iraq"
"by LEILA FADEL and YASSEEN TAHA/ McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD | Iraqi Kurdish troops on Thursday encircled Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq and threatened to open fire in the most serious standoff between the two nation’s forces since Turkey threatened late last year to go after guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party sheltering in Iraq.
The standoff began when Turkish troops in tanks and armored vehicles left one of five bases they’ve had in Iraq since 1997 and moved to control two main roads in Dahuk province, Iraqi officials said.
Kurdish soldiers from the peshmerga militia, which is loyal to the Kurdish Regional Government, moved to stop them. For an hour and a half, the two sides faced off before the Turkish soldiers retreated to their base, which is about 27 miles northeast of the city of Dahuk. The peshmerga surrounded the base and remained there late Thursday.
The Turkish troop movement was accompanied by artillery and airstrikes that targeted mountain areas held by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is known by its initials as the PKK. A spokesman for the peshmerga, Jabar Yawar, said the shelling began at about 11 a.m. and continued past midnight. Two bridges were knocked out over the Great Zab River, he said....
Falah Bakir, the head of the foreign relations department of the regional government.... said the regional government has tightened security at checkpoints, airports and hospitals to stop PKK movements, but that the Turkish military has continued its buildup. He called for the Iraqi central government and U.S. military to step in to stop what he called Turkey’s “abnormal movements.”
In Baghdad, Iraqi government officials held tense meetings with American civilian and military officials to stem the crisis in one of the only peaceful areas of Iraq.
“We have to do something,” said a senior Iraqi official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. “We cannot keep quiet and keep digging our heads in the sand.”
The growing tension between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan has wedged the United States between two allies. Turkey is a NATO member, and the Iraqi Kurds have been among the biggest supporters of the American presence in Iraq.
But the PKK, which has battled Turkey for decades for an autonomous Kurdish region in southern Turkey, also has broad support in northern Iraq, despite being labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.
There were no PKK casualties from Thursday’s Turkish shelling, said Ahmed Dennis, a spokesman for the group.
Meanwhile, violence hit elsewhere in Iraq. In Diyala province, 24 bodies were found in two graves.
The Iraqi army discovered 15 men buried under a thin layer of dirt about 10 miles north of Baqouba, the province’s capital, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The corpses appeared to be about 10 days old. Each had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot, Iraqi police said. Ten of the bodies were Iraqi soldiers.
The second grave also was near Baqouba; a police patrol uncovered the bodies of six men and three women.
Fighting between Shiite Muslim militias and the Iraqi army also broke out in Baqouba. An Iraqi army spokesman said the militias were affiliated with both Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the country’s most influential political party. It was unclear how many people had been killed in the fighting."
Now why would the New York Times want to hide the violence in Iraq yesterday, readers?
Huh?
I mean, really, WHAT IS WITH THEM?
AP carries this report in the New York Times-owned Boston Globe, but the Times has nothing today?
What is with the outright censorship, NYT?
You guys SUCK now!!!
"Fate of Iraqi cease-fire hangs on cleric's word, to come today"We've gone over a year of surge to have our fate hang on Sadr's word?
That right there DEFINES FAILURE, doesn't it?
"by Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Associated Press | February 22, 2008
BAGHDAD - Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has decided whether to extend his Mahdi Army's cease-fire, and sent the message in sealed envelopes to be opened at the beginning of today's sermons, one of his officials said.
Although the content of the message, delivered yesterday to 200 loyal clerics around Iraq, was not known, there were strong indications from officials in his organization that the anti-American firebrand would extend the six-month cessation of what had been an undeclared war against the US military since 2004.
The cease-fire has been one of three important factors that have helped reduce violence since mid-2007. The two others are the influx of thousands of US troops last summer, and emergence of Sunni-dominated groups that are fighting against Al Qaeda in Iraq.
You just get tired of the lies like me, don't you, readers?
In the latest violence, the US military announced the deaths of five soldiers and a Marine, and a roadside bombing wounded four British troops in the southeastern city of Basra, followed by clashes. Police and morgue officials also said a grave with 15 bodies was found in an orchard elsewhere in the same province.
The US deaths included three soldiers killed Tuesday night by a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad; one soldier killed and three wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the northwestern city of Mosul; and a soldier killed by a roadside bomb who was assigned to Multinational Division-Center, which is responsible for territory south of Baghdad.
The Marine was killed yesterday in fighting in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad....
Fighting in Anbar?
I thought the SURGE drove them out of the west.
WTF?
And that is a pretty limited violence report.
What about all the IRAQIS that McClatchy reported on, Globe?
Also yesterday, the Turkish military shelled Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq, days after Ankara said it was weighing a ground operation against the guerrillas, Reuters reported, quoting Kurdish officials. An Iraqi border official said a bridge was destroyed in Nerva Rikan, an area close to Iraq's border with Turkey in Dahuk province....
That's all the Zionist-controlled AmeriKan MSM has to say on that?
What about the Turkish troops in trouble?
Why is AmeriKa's MSM "newspapers" CENSORING SO MUCH, readers?
No wonder the American people are stoo-pid: even if they READ a PAPER they would STILL BE IDIOTS!!!
Better hit the blogs, America!!!!
In a show of force ahead of the expiration of the cease-fire, thousands of Mahdi Army members marched through the streets of Sadr City yesterday, unarmed but dressed in black with green kerchiefs.
Yeah, it was an UNARMED show of FORCE!!!
Pffffffftttt!
Fuck off, stink Jew Media!!
I'm tired of the bias and shit journalism passing as "news."
The march was ostensibly to celebrate battles against US military forces in 2004, when the militia fought them to a standstill in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf and Sadr City.
Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, the head of the local Sadr media office, addressed a crowd in the thousands with nonviolent rhetoric.
"We have to fight by peaceful ways," he said. "We have to think of another way to martyrdom, this time not by attack or assassination but by a doctrinal stand."
YES!!!!!
But some Mahdi Army members were prepared for any eventuality.
"If he lifts the freeze, then according to army standards it's war," said Abu Ali al-Rubaie, a local commander. He said that would mean Mahdi Army members would fight against any American attempting to arrest their members.
"Now they are going in and arresting people and they don't fight back. If he lifts the freeze then they will fight," Rubaie said.
Some of Sadr's followers, frustrated by US raids against what the Americans term splinter groups from the Mahdi Army, have called for their leader to put his fighters back on the streets."Well, he said no, the bloodthirsty devil... Sadr Extends His Militia’s Cease-Fire
Oh, now the Times gets around to it:
"Turkish Military Tells of Incursion Into Iraq"
"Turkey’s military said it had sent ground troops into northern Iraq Thursday night, in an operation aimed at weakening Kurdish militants there, but it was unclear how many or how long they would stay.
I'd say it is an open-ended stay based on the U.S.' experience in Iraq, huh?
The Turkish General Staff, in an announcement on its Web site on Friday, gave no details on the size of the incursion. An American military spokesman in Baghdad said the ground offensive would be of “limited duration.”
Also see: The Language of Zionism
The Turkish offensive appeared aimed at dealing a surprise blow to the Kurdish militants, the Kurdistan Workers Party, before the snow along the mountainous border between the two counties melts and the guerrillas make their traditional spring advance into Turkey.
If you read the McClatchy report above, you will find it was the Turks who were surprised.
The New York Times lying again is, of course, no surprise!
Look at how they are painting the Kurds as the aggressors!
I guess that's why Turkey's Kurdish genocide never makes their "news" pages, either!
The militants, known as the P.K.K. want greater autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority and have fought the Turkish military for decades. Some of their hideouts are in Turkey, but some are in northern Iraq, and the rebels have crossed the border into Turkey repeatedly to attack.
It was not clear what role the United States had played in the incursion. But it sets two of its closest allies in a troubled region against each other. Turkey is a NATO member that borders Iran, Iraq and Syria; the Iraqi Kurds, who control northern Iraq, are the most important American partners in the Iraq war.
What about P.J.A.K., readers?
Ever hear of them again?
The United States controls the airspace over Iraq, and the Bush administration agreed to share information and to open the airspace to the Turkish military last year, after the Kurdish group intensified its attacks on Turkish soil. Turkey began bombing Kurdish targets in northern Iraq in December, in operations that were largely allowed by the United States, which, like Turkey, considers the P.K.K. a terrorist organization.
Until now, Turkish attacks have been limited to bombings in remote areas, though there have been repeated, unconfirmed reports of small troop incursions.
Huh.
Never saw a word of it in the New York Times -- when I was buying the New York Times, that is!!!!!
It was unclear how a major ground offensive, however narrowly focused, would complicate relations, in particular between the United States and Iraq’s Kurds....
Early American reactions struck troubled tones. A deputy assistant secretary of state, Matthew Bryza, speaking in Brussels, said the incursion was “not the greatest news,” Reuters reported, and added that “a land operation is a whole new level.”
.... The military said troops would return, “as soon as planned goals are achieved,” and said that the reason for the operation was to “prevent the region from being a permanent and safe base for the terrorists.”
So how can the US be complaining about an INVASION?
He meant, THESE "terrorists," right?
So how long you think Turkey will be there (even though they ALREADY HAD bases inside Iraq), readers?
A decade?
A 100 YEARS?
And NO VIOLENCE in EITHER PIECE, 'eh, New York Times?
Wow.
Case closed on that propaganda shit sheet, readers.
