The Turkish government continues to terrorize civilians in Kurdistan. RUDAW reports:
Two members of a family in northern Duhok province who had previously
been hospitalized with health problems after exposure to a possible
chemical compound following a suspected Turkish airstrike, have been
rushed to hospital again on Sunday after bombs fell near their house.
Three bombs fell near the home of Abdullah Hassan in Hirore village, the
head of the village Azad Adeeb told Rudaw's Yousef Musa. Hassan and his
daughter Zhiman were given oxygen and taken to hospital in an
ambulance.
So not only is Turkey sending ground troops into northern Iraq, not only are they bombing northern Iraq but now they're suspected of using chemical weapons? And using chemical weapons on civilians? Didn't the US posture over and over with outrage over Iraq's use of chemical weapons under Saddam Hussein? US diplomat Peter Galbraith explained at Lebanon's DAILY STAR:
On August 25, 1988 - five days after the Iran-Iraq War ended - Iraq attacked 48 Kurdish villages more than 100 miles from Iran. Within days, the US Senate passed legislation, sponsored by Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island, to end US financial support for Hussein and to impose trade sanctions. To enhance the prospects that Reagan would sign his legislation, Pell sent me to Eastern Turkey to interview Kurdish survivors who had fled across the border. As it turned out, the Reagan administration agreed that Iraq had gassed the Kurds, but strongly opposed sanctions, or even cutting off financial assistance. Colin Powell, then the national security adviser, coordinated the Reagan administration's opposition.
The Pell bill died at the end of the congressional session in 1988, in spite of heroic efforts by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to force it through by holding up a raft of administration nominations.
The next year, President George H.W. Bush's administration actually doubled US financial credits for Iraq. A week before Hussein invaded Kuwait, the administration vociferously opposed legislation that would have conditioned US assistance to Iraq on a commitment not to use chemical weapons and to stop the genocide against the Kurds. At the time, Dick Cheney, now vice president, was secretary of defense and a statutory member of the National Security Council that reviewed Iraq policy. By all accounts, he supported the administration's appeasement policy.
In 2003, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld all cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons 15 years before as a rationale for war. But at the time Hussein was actually doing the gassing - including of his own people - they considered his use of chemical weapons a second-tier issue.
Maybe in ten or twenty years, when the US government needs to justify another war, they'll suddenly 'care' about what Turkey was doing in 2021?
At THE NATIONAL, Mina Aldroubi offers:
Iraq’s elections are unlikely to bring about real change unless turnout is high and new candidates do not compete for the same seats, experts have said.
Millions of Iraqis are set to head to the polls on October 10 to vote for a new parliament, a poll seen as a vital test of whether the government will uphold its promise of reform and democracy.
“Elections will only bring about real change if voter turnout is high and if the youth-led movement coordinates not to compete for the same parliamentary seats,” Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The National.
Turnout, of course, is expected to be low. KURDISTAN 24 notes one person who is urging voters to turn out at the polls:
Vala Fareed, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Minister of State for Parliament Affairs, urged Kurds to vote in Iraq’s upcoming October parliamentary elections.
The minister stressed that Kurdish participation in the election is both a right and an obligation.
“People should vote for the Kurdish candidates, to strengthen Kurd’s position at the decision-making center,” she said, referring to the Iraqi parliament, in an interview published on the KRG’s Media and Information Department website on Friday.
Fareed, 46, became Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in July 2019. She was previously elected the first female Speaker of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament in February 2019.
She was born in the Kurdistan Region’s capital Erbil.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
