Clinton decried the troop movement and ordered a missile attack on the south of Iraq. At the time, a few people asked, "If the troops moved into northern Iraq, why was the south blasted?" only to receive no reply. The following is an account from CNN News of September 3, 1996:

President Clinton said Tuesday that the U.S. missile attack against Iraqi targets was in retaliation for Iraq's assault on a Kurdish-controlled city in northern Iraq.

Navy ships and Air Force B-52 bombers fired a total of 27 cruise missiles at "selected air defense targets" in southern Iraq for about a 45-minute period beginning midmorning, the Pentagon told CNN.

"Our objectives are limited, but clear," the president said. "To make Saddam pay a price for the latest act of brutality, and to reduce his ability to threaten his neighbors and America's interests."

The attack in the south was to divert attention from what was really happening. First of all, Iraqi troops were not assaulting a city. They were invited by Barzani, a Kurdish leader, to help him in his fight against a Kurdish rival. But, it goes much deeper than that.

The Iraqis discovered the largest CIA operation in the world in Irbil, northern Iraq. Their military incursion included the toppling of the operation. Quisling Allawi, whom nobody had heard about at the time, was in cahoots with the CIA to oust Saddam Hussein. The previous year saw terrorist attacks in Baghdad that killed more than 100 people and they were orchestrated by Allawi. Eventually, the Iraqis found out that Allawi was behind them and he also was working with the CIA in Irbil.

When the Iraqis captured the CIA operation, an anxious operative in Jordan called to see what was going on. He had no idea the Iraqis had overtaken the operation. When the phone rang, an Iraqi officer picked it up and when he realized it was a CIA person on the line, he told him, "Gotcha!"

With the capture, the CIA left Iraq. Except for a few individuals over the following years, this action kicked comprehensive CIA activities out of Iraq until March 2003.

At the time, the only extrensive account of the incidents appeared in the magazine that I published, The Alternative. Following is the article, written by Husayn Al-Kurdi, president of News International.

CIA Coup, Iranian Invasions, Subversion of Kurds Covered Up

What really happened in Iraq

by Husayn Al-Kurdi

(Originally published October, 1996)

Among the items covered up or ignored in establishment media coverage of recent events in northern Iraq were a failed CIA coup against Iraq and the end of an extensive covert operation which cost at least $500 million. Events which were barely reported included invasions of part of Iraq by Iran, which occurred shortly before Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces intervened at the behest of one of the two major political factions in the north of Iraq. An entire CIA operation based in the area was subsequently sent packing, leaving an estimated $20 million worth of unspecified military equipment in its wake.

The two CIA-backed and funded factions, the traditionalist Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), an outfit which branched off from the KDP in the early 1960s and led by Jalal Talabani, had been waging warfare against each other for over two years in their respective bids to control the proceeds of smuggling and other economic activities, ferociously repressing the Kurdish population in the process. These two parties had taken turns selling their services to a variety of regimes while selling OUT the freedom and rights of the Kurds in the process. Besides killing over 2,000 of each other's supporters over the last two years, they have attacked a variety of Kurdish critics and people of differing persuasions, also victimizing the Kurdish population in the "safe haven" area through extortion and intimidation. They have collaborated with Turkish forces in attacking the Kurdish liberation movement directed against Turkey and led by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party).

PUK leader Talabani has openly courted Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Saddam Hussein and Turkey, entering in a variety of "understandings" with all of these states in recent times. Such machinations have earned him the sobriquet "Everybody's Agent." The PUK has also earned a reputation for ruthless killing — a car bomb reportedly planted by supporters of the group killed over 70 people at one blast in a KDP-inhabited area of Zakho in February, 1995.

Starting in late July, the PUK began facilitating the entry of Iranian armed forces into internationally recognized Iraqi territory, at first to attack and disperse a Kurdish organization resisting the Iranian occupation of one part of Kurdistan and then joining the PUK in its attacks against its long-time rival. The Iranian incursion penetrated up to 150 miles over the internationally-recognized Iran-Iraq border. It was only after the PUK was joined by Iran in attacking the KDP, and after the KDP leader pleaded unsuccessfully with the United States government to intervene to halt the PUK/Iran onslaught, that Massoud Barzani turned to Saddam Hussein to send his forces in to assist the KDP in gaining the upper hand. The United States responded by letting matters take their course in Iraqi Kurdistan. The U.S. government and President Bill Clinton made a show of hitting Iraqi locations away from the north with 44 cruise missiles in early September, just after the Iraqi-KDP victory over the PUK and its Iranian backers.

Only a month before, a CIA coup had been exposed and smashed by Saddam. The coup involved senior Iraqi military officials, and may have been the last try in a failed campaign to oust Saddam but retain a regime amenable to international financial interests. The bombing and bluster were used as a coverup and a distraction from the failed coup and the liquidation of an entire major destabilizing operation conducted by the CIA in northern Iraq since the establishment of the "safe haven" area following the U.S.-led war against Iraq in March, 1991. The headquarters for the operation was in Zakho, with close coordination among U.S., Turkish and PUK/KDP "assets." The "Iraqi National Congress" was the "oppositional" front serving the CIA's purposes. The only parties in the "Front" with any substantial following were the two Kurdish parties.

News media got a glimpse of the CIA operation when two helicopters were mistakenly shot down by "friendly fire" in April, 1994. Among the 26 people on board who lost their lives were 15 U.S. citizens, including operatives from the CIA and military intelligence services, three Turkish officers, one French person, two British employees, and five Kurdish passengers. The establishment-dictated "spectrum of opinion" which predominated in the news media centered on the question of "how hard to hit and punish Saddam Hussein and Iraq." Of course, the "safe haven" was praised as a "noble humanitarian mission" to "save the Kurds" in most media accounts of the crash.

The wisdom of U.S. policies of intervention in the Middle East, involving such acts as the war and the sanctions-induced genocide directed against the Iraqi people, were not called into question. The failed CIA coup and the Iranian invasions of Iraq were barely mentioned anywhere in mainstream or even alternative news analyses of the situation. Instead, administration officials propounded ad mixtures of aggressive bluster and "new speak" — now everything is a "humanitarian mission" and/or in the interest of "peace and stability" as they bomb and destabilize their way to their objectives. The lapdog press dutifully regurgitated the "public relations gruel they were fed by government spokespersons. Visible and vocal opposition to U.S. actions were scanty in the United States, whose "progressive community" has been notoriously unforthcoming in condemning aggression of non-Israeli Middle Eastern people.

The extent of U.S. taxpayer participation in the CIA operation in Iraq and Kurdistan has only recently been confirmed: a minimum of $100 million in CIA expenditures plus an additional officially acknowledged $350 million in what is termed "humanitarian aid" in "Operation Provide Comfort," actually a cover for destabilizing operations against Iraq and the use of the CIA puppet Kurdish gangster formations against more politically responsible and determined Kurdish elements waging their struggle for freedom and liberty, particularly against Turkey, which occupies over half of Kurdistan and has been conducting a systematic genocide against the Kurdish population under its sway. Kurdish Museum Director Vera Beaudin-Saeedpour, a highly-respected campaigner for Kurdish rights residing in Brooklyn, New York, accurately identified the role that the PUK and KDP were assigned to play when she noted that, "Protected by the allies, the Kurds of Iraq will be the buffer to keep 25 million Kurds divided."

Turkey had over $7 billion of its foreign debt forgiven as a condition of participation in Desert Storm in 1991, and gets close to $1 billion in "official" U.S. foreign aid yearly, a figure surpassed only by two other major CIA government players in the region, Israel and Egypt. Turkey has signed two major military cooperation pacts with Israel this year as the two belligerent states come on-line as the overseers for the New World Order in the Middle East. Turkey is occasionally touted as being more "progressive" and "democratic" than Iraq and other countries in the region. Actually, many more Kurdish people have been killed by government design by Turkish forces than by the other states occupying or "administering" Kurdistan. Kurds did not even enjoy very basic cultural rights, such as the right to use their own language and to give their babies Kurdish names, until the 1990s. Under the ferocious rule of Kemal Ataturk, over one million Kurds were killed. Most of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan was closed off to outsiders until the 1960s.

Turkish-occupied Kurdistan today resembles El Salvador during the 1980s. Imprisonment, torture, group punishment, summary executions and the destruction of whole towns and villages are carried out routinely by the Turkish state. In one two-year period, roughly corresponding to the calendar years 1993 and 1994, some 1,390 Kurdish villages were evacuated and destroyed by the Turkish army, two million Kurds were displaced, with some five or six million pushed out of Kurdistan toward western Turkey and more than 2,000 Kurds were killed by death squads. At least 22,000 have died during the PKK-led struggle against Turkey, which started in 1984. During an airborne offensive against Kurds around Mr. Djoudi in 1989, Turkey was reported to have used napalm and defoliants, along with toxic gas and nerve gas.

Kurdistan, occupied by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and rich in oil, water, gas and other precious resources, constitutes over 30 million people and a highly-defined, very recognizable geographical area, has been denied self-determination by New World Order policy makers and their precursors dating back to the aftermath of World War I. At that time, Kurdistan was divided among various states set up in the area. Kurds have suffered genocide at the hands of a variety of regimes ever since. Council on Foreign Relations author Gidon Gottlieb pronounced the "multinational corporation" line when he said, "The Kurds can at best hope for an internationally protected, internationally guaranteed, and internationally recognized autonomy within nominal Iraqi sovereignty," necessitating the repudiation "of any claim to the territory and provinces of Turkey, Iran, and Syria." Of course, Gottlieb adds the proviso that the Kurds "will have to demonstrate their effective control of Iraqi Kurdistan" by aiding Turkey in its drive to "restrain the violence of the Kurdish PKK rebels in Turkey."

Colonel Richard Wilson, in charge of the "safe haven," claimed, "These mountains can't sustain a viable country. To survive, Kurds must be part of a larger government." The mania for "larger government" entail suffering and pain for both Kurds and Americans, who are being swayed by what disguises itself as "their" government to underwrite policies they would not condone if they were informed of the facts of the situation. To correct the situation, Americans must mobilize to resist the drive for "big government" at home, in part by curtailing the odious activities of the entity that poses as "their government" abroad.