THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Assumptions and logical leaps are not mutually exclusive, ican. The assumptions you've made that I've quoted are logical leaps.

Bush and co. had long had a hard-on for Saddam and used 9/11 as a pretext for their invasion. If they wanted to avoid futility, all they had to do was to look at what they accomplished in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was not destroyed; Cheney himself said they were merely scattered. Their leader of leaders, Osama bin Laden, is still in the area, and the Taliban are still around. Our stooge, Karzai, controls all of Kabul and little else in Afghanistan. The country is now the worlds largest producer of opium, and the country, save Kabul, is controlled by warlords involved in the illicit drug trade, our other war of futility.

Saddam's entrance into the autonomous area was not unilateral. It was by the invitation of the KDP, a realpolitik allegiance of convenience, and the US was OK with it. According to the KDP, by 1996 all of Saddam's soldiers had left the area. There was no need to involve Saddam and his army in the attack and capture of Ansar al-Islam and it's leaders, and it is highly unlikely that the KDP or the PUK would invite Saddam into Iraqi Kurdistan to do a job they had accomplished before--deal a blow to Islamist terrorists there. By then they had both made amends and had begun to work together towards a unified autonomous self-governance. By 2002 the PUK and the KDP were prepared to deal Ansar al-Islam a blow, but what ultimately prevented their move was the growing imminence of a US attack against Baghdad.

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Irony of ironies, Saddam had a verifiably closer relationship with our own allies, the Kurds, a people we were protecting from him, than he ever had with al Qaeda.

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ican711nm wrote:

[my comments are in bold blue]

revel wrote:
Ican, Where is the proof for the following information?

[I assume you meant where is some evidence in stead of where is the proof]

Quote:
...We've already had a chance to learn that many many of the prisoner abuse accusations are false or terribly exaggerated.

[First, from what I have read and seen, all the prisoner abuse accusations are limited to small groups of less than a dozen people for each abuse situation. They are not systemic throughout all our troops in Iraq and throughout the rest of our military. Second, almost all of that which is termed abusive treatment of non-uniformed prisoners does not really constitute torture abuse as I understand it. That is, it is not wounding, disabling, crippling or killing. It is at worst only terribly obnoxious. Third, in some cases of actual killing of prisoners, the killing was actually justifiable. I'm thinking of one soldier who shot a moving prisoner he first thought was dead. I think the insurgents who booby trap their dead, or booby trap or arm their wounded to kill their captors, forfeit their own, and their dead and wounded's rights to humane treatment. Why? Because captors have a right to human treatment and should be free from the risk of being wounded or killed when tending to the enemy's wounded, or transporting and burying the enemy's dead.]

From what I have been reading lately the earlier reports of the abuse were whitewashed as more and more information comes to light.
[Can you provide some evidence of such whitewash? Anecdotal evidence will, for me, suffice as some evidence]

The pentegon is investigating and prosecuting itself, so what it is actually happening in the courts is not really proof of guilt or innocence.

The following is some fresh links about the widespread and sytematic abuses in the detainees in Iraq. (some may have been used in the past)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3759923.stm

Iraq prison abuse 'widespread'

Evidence of abuse has emerged from a marine camp at Nasiriya and army camps at Baghdad International Airport, Qaim and Samarra, the Associated Press says.

Detainees were allegedly beaten or forced to stand for long periods of time in scorching desert heat.

AP examined court transcripts and investigator interviews.

The abuses allegedly committed at Abu Ghraib, the feared Saddam-era prison now run by coalition forces, outraged the world after a stream of photos apparently taken by guards emerged.

According to the military documents seen by AP, at least two detainees held at other sites died of their injuries.

The allegations concerning military intelligence troops include the following:

At Camp Whitehorse near Nasiriya, guards were allegedly told to prepare prisoners for interrogation by keeping them in hoods in temperatures of up to 49C degrees (120F) for 50 minutes at a time over periods of 10 hours. One Iraqi detainee choked to death.

At a camp near Qaim, interrogators allegedly stuffed an Iraqi general into a sleeping bag, sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Maj Gen Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who had also been questioned by CIA operatives, eventually died.

At a camp near Samarra, prisoners were reportedly choked and beaten and had their hair pulled.

At Camp Cropper, at Baghdad International Airport, prisoners were allegedly beaten and forced to adopt painful positions for hours at a time.
'Guantanamo team'

Two marines are facing charges related to the death at Camp Whitehorse in June 2003 although nobody is charged with actually killing the prisoner.

Military records state the victim, named as Nagem Sadoon Hatab, died when a marine guard grabbed his throat in an attempt to move him, accidentally breaking a bone which cut off his air supply.

The other marine is charged with kicking Mr Hatab in the chest in the hours before his death.

In another development, the New York Times newspaper reports that military interrogators from the Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba played a key role at Abu Ghraib.

The interrogators at Guantanamo, which houses al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects, were sent to Iraq last year by the head of the Cuban prison camp, Gen Geoffrey Miller.

Gen Miller was himself sent to Iraq to recommend improvements in the way prisoners were detained and questioned.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/22/documents_detail_widespread_allegations_of_detainee_abuse/

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make clear that both regular soldiers and special forces took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.
The variety of the incidents and the fact that they occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon's past insistence -- arising out of the summertime scandal surrounding the mistreatment at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison -- that the abuse largely occurred during a few months at that prison, and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050106/REPOSITORY/501060358/1013/NEWS03

Journal:Doctors complicit in abuse
Military says report is not accurate

By JOE STEPHENS
The Washington Post

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 06. 2005 10:00AM

W
ASHINGTON - U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to a report in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the report claims. It says medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who deprived detainees of sleep, restricted their diets and exposed them to extremes of heat and cold.

"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the four-page article, which is labeled, "Perspective."

"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it," the article says.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=911

Aug 30, 2004 - While the latest reports investigating the widely condemned events at Abu Ghraib prison attempt to close the book on the Pentagon's culpability with a somber critique, new evidence gathered for a class action lawsuit filed against two US-based private contractors could prove that the scandal at Abu Ghraib was far from an isolated series of incidents perpetrated by a few rowdy "bad apples" working the night shift during Ramadan.

An attorney representing former detainees says his recent fact-finding mission to Baghdad uncovered dozens of cases of physical and psychological abuse, sexual humiliation, religious desecration and rape in ten US-run prisons throughout occupied Iraq.

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Quote, "An attorney representing former detainees says his recent fact-finding mission to Baghdad uncovered dozens of cases of physical and psychological abuse, sexual humiliation, religious desecration and rape in ten US-run prisons throughout occupied Iraq."

Why would the Iraqi's complain about treatment of their citizens when we're sacrificing our soldiers, now over 1,300, and spending billions every month to bring them democracy? They just don't understand what's good for them.

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This is what I think an interesting article from MSN - and a reporter in Iraq:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6786282/

Here are some excerpts:

ANALYSIS
By Richard Engel
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:18 a.m. ET Jan. 7, 2005BAGHDAD, Iraq - A cab driver trolled down Baghdad's Karadah Street, past rows of barber shops and electronics stores just lifting up their gates for the day, fishing for a final fare to cap off a long night of kidnap and murder.

My friend flagged down the taxi and, according to one of many fraternal Arab customs, sat in the front seat, so as not to make the driver feel too much like a driver.

"Where you going?" the cabbie wanted to know.

"Dora," said my friend, who, without casting aspersions, looks remarkably like Saddam Hussein when he was in his 40s, with a bristly mustache, an athletic build and deep-set brooding eyes.

But their conversation was interrupted by a convoy of Humvees that cut them off, an American gunner in the turret pointing a machine gun at the car, telling the driver in no uncertain terms to stay back.

"Where I'm from they can't do that," the driver grumbled acerbically.

Thus began their conversation about Mahmoudiya, a Sunni Muslim town south of Baghdad overrun by rebels, bandits, bullies, hijackers, Islamic militants and others who specialize in organized nefariousness.

"If we see a Humvee, we destroy it. The Americans can't come into our city," bragged the driver, also in his early 40s, but unlike my fastidiously groomed friend, he had an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard and a strong yet plump physique like an aging fisherman or a construction foreman............

..........The rules are simple. My friend ?- also a Sunni Muslim ?- listed his family's credentials, ticking off names of prominent relatives, some alive, most distant and long dead. The two men were not from the same tribe, but were both descendents of giant extended families known to be friendly to each other, powerful and, most important in Iraq, "honorable."

So now the two acted like reunited cousins. The driver explained that he lived in Mahmoudiya, but came every day to Baghdad to work the cab, which he used for his "real job."

"And what's that?"

"I specialize in killing women," he said.

A long bloody blade
The atmosphere in the car turned stifling and tense, as if an inconsonant note had been played on an unseen piano.

"I kill whores, women who go to the Green Zone and have sex with the Americans," the driver added as a justification.

The Green Zone is the sprawling American headquarters in Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's erstwhile Republican Palace, then and now, a forbidden city within the Iraqi capital where rumors continue to circulate about what goes on behind its high concrete walls.

My friend eyeballed the road for a place to get out.

"I use this," continued the driver, taking a nearly foot-long folding knife from under his seat. He opened the long blade. It was encrusted with blood.

"I pick up the women as they leave the Green Zone, drive them to a quiet area and kill them," he said, waving the big knife like a violin bow........

......Depressingly, when we met for coffee the next day, my friend was not surprised that Baghdad had become a place where people can butcher women like joints of meat and show their freshly used tools to strangers, confident there will be no repercussions.

"It's not a good sign of the times," I said.

"No, it isn't." ..........

............The chief Iraq's of intelligence service General Mohammed Abdullah Shawani has questioned the effectiveness of the Fallujah operation, saying in an interview with the French news agency AFP, "What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed.. and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."

Militants have gone elsewhere
U.S. commanders agree with Shawani that many insurgents escaped Fallujah, but few in the military or U.S. civilian administration in Iraq seem to be addressing why Mahmoudiya and Fallujah became rebellious safe-havens in the first place, or that there are still many "little-Fallujahs," all of them home to Sunnis. One is Haditha, 78 miles northwest of Baghdad.

In Haditha today all institutions linked to the U.S.-appointed government of Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi do not function.

Schools are closed as often as they are open. In October, insurgents stormed police stations in Haditha and executed 21 officers. After that, the police stopped going to work. The insurgents declared their own state of emergency and use bullhorns to tell people the timing of their curfews.

The people of Haditha listen, mostly out of fear no doubt, but also because many have no love for the American occupation or what the U.S. administration is promising for the future of Iraq ?- which people in this Sunni town see as Shiite and therefore Iranian domination, and a favored, autonomous status for the Kurds..........

...........Shiites looking to seize majority rule
It's safe to say that the majority of Iraqi Shiites appreciate the American gift of "democracy," which many of them oversimplify to mean strict majority rule.

Estimated to be 60 percent of Iraq's population, Shiites ?- especially the once-oppressed, now- invigorated clergy ?- are convinced the elections will sweep them to power.

The most senior Shiite religious leader, the grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa (religious edict) declaring that voting is more important than praying and fasting during the sacred Muslim month of Ramadan, and said women should divorce their husbands if they prevent them from going to the polls. This is extraordinary.

For religious Shiites ?- the vocal majority in Iraq ?- this is a historical moment, a chance to regain power in Mesopotamia lost with the death in the middle of the 7th century of their first imam, Ali ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, in Kufa, a city in modern Iraq near Naiad. ........

....Iran, the world's leading Shiite power, is clearly excited about the prospect.

It has reason to expect to have friendly relations with the future Iraqi Shiite leaderships. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim ?- the top politician whose house was destroyed near our news bureau last week ?- was the leader of a militia trained by the Iranian government before he came to Iraq, from Iran where he was living, after the fall of Saddam's government.

Al-Hakim has already suggested that cash-strapped Iraq should pay Iran reparations for the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

The Sunni countries, nearly all of them Arab, are nervous about having a new Shiite neighbor. Jordan's King Abdullah for one has accused Iran of trying to create a Shiite "arc" of hegemony and of allowing one million Iranian Shiites to cross the border into Iraq to vote. ......

.........Like the Shiites, this is a historical moment for Kurds in Iraq. Making up roughly 15 percent of the population, if the Kurds win enough seats in parliament, they hope to codify their autonomy in law. In Iraq's future parliament, the Kurds will be pushing for a great deal of freedom to act apart from the central government.

Like the Shiites' ascendancy, the growing autonomy of the Kurds is also felt regionally.

After World War I, the Ottoman province of Kurdistan was divided among Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Since then, the central governments of each of these states has worried that Kurdish nationalism ?- at times in the form of armed revolts ?- could undermine its authority.

Today, these states, foremost among them Turkey, are uncomfortable with the de-facto creation of a Kurdish state; it's a source of tension in the region which is not being addressed.............

..........Will the forthcoming election improve the situation in Iraq?

It's therefore not surprising why so many Sunnis are fearful about the elections, and why Sunnis make up the core of the insurgence, especially when considering that many of the militants are former members of Saddam's security services who oppressed the now-vengeful and empowered Shiites and Kurds.

Iraqis discuss these divisions in their society every day, but, troublingly, the American officials in Iraq seldom do.

It seems Iraq's problems are unlikely to be resolved until actions are taken, or at the very least discussions begin, at home and with Iraq's neighbors about the Sunnis' disenfranchisement, the Shiites' newfound religious political and religious zeal, and the Kurds' national aspirations. Only then can there be national and regional reconciliation.

NBC's Richard Engel is on assignment in Baghdad. His book, "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest," was published by Hyperion Books in 2004.

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I suppose what I find the most troubling is this easy opportunity for people not living in Iraq to come and vote. If the Shiites from Iran might come over and do it, maybe others from other tribes and countries are going to to do it, and how in the world will anyone know the difference with the totally uncontrolled way the election is shaping up to be?

Also a very scary story about the guy with the wicked knife. We sure are doing a good job of making Iraq a better place to be than it was under Saddam Hussien. Crying or Very sad

What I am wondering is if the women are doing for the money and if so what is going on there, a prostitution ring or what?

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revel wrote:

I suppose what I find the most troubling is this easy opportunity for people not living in Iraq to come and vote.

Do you know, if there are ballot stations in foreign countries, and when 'yes', where and how many?

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Quote, "What I am wondering is if the women are doing for the money and if so what is going on there, a prostitution ring or what?"
Revel, Prostitution is/was common in most countries that struggled to make a living during and after wars. When one has no money, shelter, and food, the only opportunity for many women was to turn to prostitution. Let's not make judgements about those women; we can understand the conditions by which all cultures have experienced at one time or another.

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if they are 'citizens' of iraq and temporarily living outside the country i assume they are entitled to vote in the upcoming election. hbg

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I wonder how they verify citizenship?

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I think, like all the others, who live in a fpooreign and vote for/in their home country. Some kind of documents...

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Cut em in half and count the rings ... no .... wait ..... that's age .... never mind

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probably not much different than in western countries. if u.s. administration can vet prospective iraqui members of the new security force, they'll have to rely on some kind of identification. that should work for the election too, shouldn't it. probably safer than picking names from the local cemetary (as done in some western countries - now that is RE-SURRECTION !). hbg

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revel wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
And Revel I don't expect some here to believe anything is good in Iraq when they want so badly for the current administration to be as bad as they think it is and for the effort in Iraq to fail so they can be right. And I think many in the media are of that same mindset. I don't think anybody really wants anyone to experience pain and suffering. But I come from a military family and know lots of folks who are over there. Unless you have talked to people there yourself, you have no basis whatsoever to conclude I'm lying.

I have never concluded that you are lying. I said how do you expect us to accept on blind faith that what you are saying and what you say others are saying is really the truth and the reports in the news are false?

Whom shall we believe? Why?

The following quote consists of the first and last few paragraphs of a very long article. I'll post the whole article if anyone requests I do that. It will probably take up an entire page in this discussion.

Quote:

AFTER THE WAR
Voices of Freedom
A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

BY ARTHUR CHRENKOFF
Monday, January 3, 2005 12:01 a.m.

An interesting experiment recently took place in Iraq seeking to uncover a rarely explored aspect of life in the country, writes Jeff Jacoby:

How would Iraq appear if we saw it through not the reporting of Western
journalists, but the candid testimony of Iraqis themselves? American reporters accustomed to freedom and the rule of law experience Iraq today as a place of danger and violence. Iraqis who lived under Saddam were accustomed to tyranny, cruelty, and secret police. What do they make of their country today?

To find out, three Americans (two filmmakers and a former Marine) distributed 150 digital video cameras to ordinary Iraqis, asking them to record anything they considered worthwhile and then pass the cameras on to others. The resulting 450 hours of footage from 2,000 Iraqis was distilled into an 80-minute documentary, "Voices of Iraq." As Jacoby writes, the documentary "is by turns heartbreaking, exhilarating, and inspiring. The war and its destruction is never far from the surface. . . . But bad as the war is, the horror it ended--Saddam's 24-year reign--was worse. . . . Yet for all they have been through, Iraqis come across as incredibly optimistic, hopeful, and enthusiastic. And above all, normal."

Occasionally--but not too often--we catch in the media the glimpses of that other Iraq: the optimistic, hopeful, enthusiastic and normal one. More often than not, however, our access is restricted to the now very familiar Iraq of constant bloodshed, rampant terrorism, political instability, stalled reconstruction and widespread disillusionment and frustration. Only time will show which Iraq proves to be more resilient and consequential. But for the time being, as the struggle for the soul and the future of the country goes on, it pays to bear in mind that this struggle if far from a one-sided one--that as the violent Iraq strikes, the normal Iraq fights back, on thousands of fronts and in thousands of small ways. Here are some of these stories from the past fortnight.

...

In recent security successes: "Iraqi Security Forces defeated two separate attacks in Mosul by anti-Iraqi insurgents as they attempted to ambush an Iraqi National Guard patrol and seize a police station in northern Iraq"; the capture of remote-controlled rockets smuggled in from outside Iraq for use against election infrastructure; the capture of two senior al Qaeda operatives active in Iraq; seizure of another significant arms cache near Ar Rutbath; and the defeat by Iraqi security forces of an attack on a police station in Mosul ("the sixth time since Nov. 10 where insurgents have tried but failed to overrun police stations").

In addition, 353 foreign terrorists are currently in custody in Iraq. This total includes "61 Egyptians, 59 Saudis, 56 Syrians, 40 Jordanians, 35 Sudanese, 22 Iranians, 10 Tunisians, 10 Yemenis, eight Palestinians and five Lebanese, among others."

And so Iraqis continue on their journey. The situation is difficult and dangerous, no doubt, but for the first time in generations there is hope and there are real possibilities of a better future. As the election approaches and the building of the new country continues, the shape of things to come in Iraq is not entirely new and certainly not an alien imposition. It is here, after all, on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates more than four millennia ago that concepts such as government by consent and the rule of law made their first appearance in the history our civilization. The new Iraq will hopefully be able to recapture and reincorporate into its fabric that lost legacy.

Mr Chrenkoff is an Australian blogger. He writes at chrenkoff.blogspot.com.

Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Quote, "What I am wondering is if the women are doing for the money and if so what is going on there, a prostitution ring or what?"
Revel, Prostitution is/was common in most countries that struggled to make a living during and after wars. When one has no money, shelter, and food, the only opportunity for many women was to turn to prostitution. Let's not make judgements about those women; we can understand the conditions by which all cultures have experienced at one time or another.

I was mostly wondering about the johns.

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Ican like the article says, only time will tell if sometime in the future things seem better in Iraq. I believe those stories from the Iraqi's themselves. Right now the bad far outweighs the good.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

revel wrote:
I suppose what I find the most troubling is this easy opportunity for people not living in Iraq to come and vote.

Do you know, if there are ballot stations in foreign countries, and when 'yes', where and how many?

Gosh, are you seriously asking me? I don't know. I was merely responding to reports about people from other countries coming to vote like those from Iran who I assume to be Iranians.

If people that have not lived in Iraq for a long time get to vote, then it may not be all be all but certain that the shiites will be in power. This is shaping up to be a really confusing thing.

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It doesn't matter who is in power so long as they are committed to human rights, personal freedoms, and some sort of democratic structure. If the ones committed to that are the Shi-ites and the other parties are not committed to that, then let's get behind the Shi-ites. From what I have observed to date, the Shi-ites seem to be the prominent religious/political group in Iraq least likely to form a strict theocracy. That should not be interpreted that it wouldn't happen if those winning the election are Shi-ite. I just mean that because Shi-ites are elected does not necessarily mean that all the grand hopes are dashed.

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Foxfyre wrote:

It doesn't matter who is in power so long as they are committed to human rights, personal freedoms, and some sort of democratic structure.

And what if the "democratic structure"...in other words, the desires of the majority and to hell with the minority...what if that majority is not commited to human rights and personal freedoms???

What if the majority simply does not want all these "freedoms" we seem to be determined to shove down their throats?

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[my comments are in boldface blue]

InfraBlue wrote:

Assumptions and logical leaps are not mutually exclusive, ican.
[I agree.]
The assumptions you've made that I've quoted are logical leaps.
[Again, please re-post those specific assumptions you allege to be logical leaps, or remind me where I can find them. I will then review them to see if I have some evidence to support them.]

Bush and co. had long had a hard-on for Saddam and used 9/11 as a pretext for their invasion. If they wanted to avoid futility, all they had to do was to look at what they accomplished in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was not destroyed; Cheney himself said they were merely scattered. Their leader of leaders, Osama bin Laden, is still in the area, and the Taliban are still around. Our stooge, Karzai, controls all of Kabul and little else in Afghanistan. The country is now the worlds largest producer of opium, and the country, save Kabul, is controlled by warlords involved in the illicit drug trade, our other war of futility.
[With regard to Afghanistan, I agree that the Taliban in Afghanistan are scattered--what's left of them. I also agree that the al Qaeda are scattered--what's left of them. I claim we are now helping secure the Afghanistani's developing democracy. Many Taliban are surrendering by returning to the cities and requesting amnesty. Too many al Qaeda escaped to Iran and subsequently to Iraq. The opium trade problem continues to be very difficult to solve. However, so far we've made far more good progress in Afghanistan than either the Soviets or the Russians did before us. But what has all this got to do with the question of whether or not the al Qaeda in Iraq had to be removed by us, because we couldn't get Saddam to do it?

The three underlined sentences in the following were put there by me]

Saddam's entrance into the autonomous area was not unilateral. It was by the invitation of the KDP, a realpolitik allegiance of convenience, and the US was OK with it. According to the KDP, by 1996 all of Saddam's soldiers had left the area. There was no need to involve Saddam and his army in the attack and capture of Ansar al-Islam and it's leaders, and it is highly unlikely that the KDP or the PUK would invite Saddam into Iraqi Kurdistan to do a job they had accomplished before--deal a blow to Islamist terrorists there. By then they had both made amends and had begun to work together towards a unified autonomous self-governance. By 2002 the PUK and the KDP were prepared to deal Ansar al-Islam a blow, but what ultimately prevented their move was the growing imminence of a US attack against Baghdad.
[I think you are guilty of several logical leaps here. I have underlined three.

You apparently assume that one invitation implies there were no subsequent unilateral entries by Saddam. We disagree. Here's why I think there were subsequent unilateral entries by Saddam.]

Quote:
From Britannica.com (boldface emphasis added by me)
Iraq Under Saddam Hussein, from the Iraq article, page 90.
...
In April 1991 the United States, the United Kingdom, and France established a “safe haven” in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which Iraqi forces were barred from operating. Within a short time the Kurds had established autonomous rule, and two main Kurdish factions—the KDP in the north and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the south—contended with one another for control. This competition encouraged the Ba'thist regime to attempt to direct affairs in the Kurdish Autonomous Region by various means, including military force. The Iraqi military launched a successful attack against the Kurdish city of Arbil in 1996 and engaged in a consistent policy of ethnic cleansing in areas directly under its control—particularly in and around the oil-rich city of Karkuk—that were inhabited predominantly by Kurds and other minorities.

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THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

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