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01/09/2006:

"Kurdistan: A Gangster State"

Arrest of government critic Dr. Kamal Said Qadir

...Semi-official U.S. protests over his detainment are belied by the news that the Kurds are rounding up their internal political opponents – with the active assistance of U.S. military forces – and stashing them in secret jails. Qadir is now on a hunger strike, and his health is rapidly deteriorating.

The Kurdish authorities – who have launched an ethnic-cleansing campaign against Arabs and are now readying themselves to seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq – were doubtless enraged when Radio Free Europe cited Qadir in this piece about Kurdish corruption:

"Kamal Berzenji wrote in an article published by kurdishmedia.com in December 2002: 'The members of the [Kurdish] security services … try to make a business out of their powers by accusing and arresting anybody whom they think they could blackmail and extract money from.' He says the practice has its roots in Hussein's Ba'athist regime, but was also practiced during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990s. 'One of the reasons [for that war is] business – and profit-making by some Kurdish warlords on both sides. Some of them grew [into] millionaires by confiscating and stealing the property of his fellow Kurdish brothers.'"

It's as if reporters for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other major media outlets were arrested for reporting on the buying of the Republican congressional caucus by Jack Abramoff & Co. They don't dare do that in America – quite yet – but in Kurdistan, to speak out against the corruption of empire is illegal: that's "democracy," Iraq-style.
antiwar.com