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| Axis of Evil |
| U.S. To Ready Kurd Areas in Iraq for Possible War |
| 2002-12-22 |
| With Washington and Baghdad at loggerheads over the degree of Iraqi compliance with U.N. inspections, more American war preparations are under way in northern Iraq, reported a leading U.S. news paper Sunday, December 22. American intelligence officials have been working alongside Kurdish officials in recent weeks, and recruiters for an American-sponsored opposition group have been selecting candidates for a program to train scouts and translators that one day may help American forces inside Iraq, the New York Times quoted Kurdish and Western officials as saying. I thought just training 5000 men for the Iraqi force was a bit light. 5000 scouts and translators might actually be a bit heavy, so there are probably a few other duties included in that number, like MPs and interrogators. American military planners have visited secluded corners of the country to examine potential basing sites for use in a war, according to a Western expert familiar with the activity. No American military forces are based here yet, Kurdish officials said, claiming that recent Turkish and Arabic news reports of sizable military deployments were unfounded. But teams from the Central Intelligence Agency have been working with the principal political parties in the Kurdish region - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the east, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the west - for upward of two months. Probably pretty sizable teams, too. I'm not sure if I like the long-term implications (long-term being a 50-year window in this case) of the CIA having its own armed force, but at this point it's certainly handy. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |