Check out the progress on this area outside erbil.

 www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001055.html

Actually, I do care about the Kurds. And you will never see this building project on the regular news. The IED smoke is not ignored, you will see that on the news. 

Bob you are all concerned about the Gitmo prisoners and yet can't muster up concern for the Kurds after 30 some years under Saddam? The city is real not imaginary.

Oh, I'm not sure I'd go that far out on a limb, Raymond. But I've already posted a piece with similar sentiments over on the Poor Prisoners of Gitmo thread, where I urge those who, while quite neutral about Kurds, are passionate about the tortured boys in orange, to rethink their priorities. Hope springs eternal.

Well, as usual, I see this a bit differently. The world is one big village these days. Cartoons in a Danish newspaper hitherto unknown by Americans causes rioting, arson, murder and death threats not only to our allies, the Danes, but -- alas! -- to the US as well. Until it is understood that a thriving community of Kurds is preferable to a warring community of Kurds and Turks and Shiites and Sunnis (oh my) -- and that, yes, it does make a difference with each incremental success in the Middle East -- we are kidding ourselves into believing we could conceivably return to a September 10th world of greater isolationism. Please get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand cuz the time's...

Now you may feel the upheaval and any proliferation of terrorists are all a result of the US war in Iraq. Others of us see the invasion of Saddam's Iraq as a lancing of a festering pus-filled boil. Pre-emptively too, as it were. If you think that the Jihadists of the "Whole International World", as the late Yassir Arafat used to say, were going to be placated after the brief orgasm of watching Twin Towers fall and replicating the image on their cell phone screens, I say Capital Tee Capital Hee. It was a long time coming and it appears to be a long time before the dawn. And if you think simply hanging around Tora Bora until we captured Bin Laden would have put the genie back in the bottle, I repeat my chuckle. A simple chronology of Islamist terrorism since Sirhan Sirhan assassinated RFK should lay that notion to rest.

A feather may fall at the same rate of speed as a camel but they do not have the same weight.

Old Arabic saying.

Susan

PS GO KURDS! Although I'm unlikely to ever visit your Emerald City.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Caring or not about the Kurds is one thing.

But the fact that they are able to do this and are now working toward doing this suggests (but does not prove) one important possibility - Iraq is NOT some messy quagmire because if it were, there's no reason nor no time for the Kurds to take this project on. This project IMHO flies in the face of the "Iraq is a quagmire" argument.

But then again, if we only hear about hte bad stuff on the news (except for this week due to Birdshot-Gate), then who would know that the Kurds are actaully working to improve their own life (something the Palestinians haven't yet figured out).

Jordan .