NORTHERN SHOWDOWN? U.S. POWS IN IRAN?

Very rough draft.

HEADS UP!

1. THE WAR MOVES NORTH.

--Iran recently had moved troops to its borders with Iraq.

--Turkey has assembled a total of 250,000 troops in its Kurdish southeast and in the area bordering northern Iraq, and is conducting operations within Iraq.

--The Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade have sent companies into Kirkuk and the area surrrounding it. These militiamen are armed with the latest IED techonology and sniper rifles.

--Iran on April 20 bombed PKK bases, killing two PKK fighters and wounding ten.

What's going on?

Has Sadr decided to take the fight north to unite Arab Sunnis and Shiites? Did Badr follow Mahdi to stop it or to compete with it?

It seems that Iran is going after the PKK as a means of cementing its relationship with Turkey.

I will try to give this subject my attention. For now, I'm posting this very rough account to give you heads up on what promises possibly to be a major conflagration in northern Iraq, involving a Kurdish-Shia civil war, and intra-Shia civil war, a Turkish-Kurdish war, an Iranian-Kurdish war...

No worry. Rice and Rumsfeld have everyting under control. Not. Really not.


2. U.S. POWs IN IRAN?

An Iranian daily recently referred to a news source that is associated with Iran's Communist Party as saying that a number of U.S. troops have been caught inside Iran.


The Editor.