...politicians call things
divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never
divisive,they're
principled...
government, leaders of the country's Kurdish region said Thursday they now believe they have a better chance than ever to break away and create an independent nation.
The semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north has for years threatened to separate from the rest of the country, and it has feuded with both the Shiite-led government in Baghdad over oil revenues and the Sunni tribes who claim authority over territory the Kurds believe is theirs.
Now, with Baghdad battling a bloody Sunni insurgency, Kurdish officials say Iraq is already split along sectarian and ethnic lines.
"Iraq is divided. We have got a new reality," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Kurdish regional President
Massoud Barzani... hereditary head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, maybe a little too close to the Medes and the Persians for most people's tastes...
, told news hounds Thursday. He was in Washington to update senior B.O. regime officials on Kurdish aspirations for "self-determination" — the region's term for breaking away from the central government in Baghdad.
Hussein said the government of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
, a Shiite, had for years pushed divisive policies that made Iraq's current unrest inevitable. But he said it became clear in early June, after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original...
took over the northern Sunni hold of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, that the country was breaking into three distinct parts.