An excerpt from, "How the NSA Helped Turkey Kill Kurdish Rebels" by Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Michael Sontheimer and Holger Stark, The Intercept, August 31, 2014:
On a December night in 2011, a terrible thing happened on Mount Cudi, near the Turkish-Iraqi border. One side described it as a massacre; the other called it an accident.This report proves once again that only fools put their trust in the snakes in Washington. The governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, as well the KRG in Iraq, who believe they are the allies of the U.S. today will be double-crossed tomorrow in a heartbeat because that is the treacherous nature of Washington.
Several Turkish F-16 fighter jets bombed a caravan of villagers that night, apparently under the belief that they were guerilla fighters with the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The group was returning from northern Iraq and their mules were loaded down with fuel canisters and other cargo. They turned out to be smugglers, not PKK fighters. Some 34 people died in the attack.
An American Predator drone flying overhead had detected the group, prompting U.S. analysts to alert their Turkish partners.
The reconnaissance flight—which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2012—and its tragic consequences provided an important insight into the very tight working relationship between American and Turkish intelligence services in the fight against Kurdish separatists. Although the PKK is still considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, its image has been improved radically by its recent success in fighting ISIS in northern Iraq and Syria. PKK fighters—backed by U.S. airstrikes—are on the front lines against the jihadist movement there, and some in the West are now advocating arming the group and lifting its terrorist label.
Washington will use these countries and allies up and then cut their throats when they're usefulness has ended. The leaders of Egypt found that out when the Arab Spring began, and consequently they're not as respectful of Washington as they were in the past. Saddam learned that in 1990. The leaders of Saudi Arabia will also learn just how snake-like Washington can be.
This news also puts a dent in the image of Washington as the saviour of minorities in Iraq who have come under attack from ISIS, a transnational terrorist group that has been funded, trained, and armed by the CIA via Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar.
The PKK, whose members Washington has been killing and spying on alongside Turkey, came to the rescue of Yezidis in the Sinjar mountains while Washington's allies in Iraq were retreating from the fight against ISIS. The PKK essentially cleaned up the mess of the Iraqi army, the KRG Peshmerga, the U.S. government and its foolish regional allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
