Aussie paper: Bush offers to bomb the PKK

Well well well. Sez here in the Oz-accented Herald Sun,

THE Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq.

The move would be an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of that country to fight the rebels. …

According to an official familiar with the conversation, Mr Bush assured [Turkish president Abdullah Gul] that the US was seriously looking into options beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

“It’s not ‘Kumbaya’ time any more – just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough,” the official said. “Something has to be done.”

This leaker is obviously American, since s/he’s quoted, “[T]he red line was always, if the Turks were going to come over the border, it could be so destabilising that it might be less risky for us to do something ourselves. Now the Turks are at the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing.”

The Herald Sun also says that the use of US ground troops “would be the last resort,” but Bush is willing to launch air strikes on the PKK and “has discussed” using cruise missiles (though strikes by manned aircraft “may be an easier option because the US controls the air space over Iraq”). Apparently the U.S. is also trying to persuade the Kurdistan Regional Government to order its Peshmerga forces to form a ground cordon around the PKK’s camps.

Wouldn’t you like to know why only an Australian paper has this development, and the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and AP don’t? They’re all banging on about everybody else’s shelling and vowing, not Bush’s.

I don’t necessarily assume that the topic of air and cruise-missile strikes is one our papers want to avoid (though Juan Cole today discusses some disastrous results of the U.S. preference for urban air strikes). No, my experienced-based better guess would be that the White House press corps is just being lazy again (toujours, toujours).

Maybe they are helping keep this quiet as long as possible. But if so, why?

lotus

Tags: Abdullah Gul, Bush Administration, cruise missiles, ground troops, Herald Sun, Juan Cole, Kurdistan Regional Government, peshmerga, PKK, Turkey, Turks