Report: US Soldiers Surrounded Iranian Passenger Plane and Held Passengers At Gunpoint

[Jcrowley]

Anyone else hear about this?

US is destabilizing Iraq's Kurdish north
Ilnur Cevik

[e-mail]
13 January 2007

<snip>


Of course now the Kurds are being asked to take some risks and be a part of the campaign to bring peace and stability to the rest of Iraq. This is fair and justified. In return the Kurds are to be financially rewarded for their contributions.

<snip>

Until now there were claims that the Americans and the Iranians are fighting an undeclared war in Iraq. The Kurdish region was spared of war until now but we fear that latest American actions in Erbil will spread the violence into the Kurdish region.

The Kurds have always been extremely careful in their relations with Iran because they know well that the Iranians have the potential to destabilize their region like other parts of Iraq
The Americans have been antagonizing Iran directly in the Kurdish areas. First they raided an Iranian mission in Erbil and took away Iranian officials and documents.

On Thursday night The New Anatolian learnt that American soldiers had surrounded an Iranian passenger plane arriving at Erbil Airport from Tehran and held the passengers at gunpoint for three hours. They searched all passengers and harassed the airline crew. There were unconfirmed reports that the Americans may have apprehended some Iranians.

http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-21118.html

[Botany]

1. Pure rumor

But we are now getting the one peaceful area all stirred up ... Kurdistan/

[Spazito]

9. U.S. Troops Stage Second Secret Raid at Iraq Airport (ABC)

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11, 2007 — U.S. troops staged two secret raids in northern Iraq today, ABC News has learned, capturing as many as six Iranians and only narrowly avoiding a gun battle with local security forces, according to the Iraqi foreign ministry and local officials in northern Iraq's Kurdish region.

snip

In the second raid, staged later in the day, U.S. troops attempted to abduct more people from inside the perimeter of Irbil airport, but were surrounded by Kurdish peshmerga troops.

"This group has come from nowhere," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told ABC News. "They were unwilling to reveal their identity and entered the airport, which is a very sensitive area, and there was a response by the local forces."

Both sides were heavily armed, and shooting very nearly broke out. "There weren't any casualties, but it was a split second really for a disaster to happen. This has created a great deal of anxiety," said Zebari.

more

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2788262&page=1

[notadmblnd]

10. so the Kurds foiled the BFEE's plan?

from most interpretations of people analyzing the pretzledents speech Wednesday night, his intent is to attack Iran. Was their plan to use these raids as a pretext and the Kurds foiled it?

[Botany]

14. Oh for the love of God

We have to get that fool out of power now.

[High Plains]

2. Something happened at that airport.

Earlier reports were that the Americans were attempting to arrest someone, but Kurdish peshmerga fighters drove them off after a stand-off.

It looks like the Americans are begging for an incident to provoke the Iranians. That's about as smart as everything else we've done in this misbegotten war.

[bobbolink]

3. Goddess, I'm so ashamed of this country!

:cry:

[Jcrowley]

6. If you could

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3113994

[bobbolink]

8. Honored to....

Thanks for asking.

And, shamed, also..... :cry:

[Strelnikov_]

4. "On Friday Iran hit back by closing its border into the Kurdish region . . "

Remember Ted Koppel's piece on Iran that aired on the Discovery Channel a few months ago. Near the end of the piece he commented on the hundreds of trucks daily passing freely over the border in the Basra region.

Why would Iran attempt any moves from Kurdistan, when it is surrounded by the Turks to the North and Sunnistan to the south.

Whole incident smells to me.

[Jcrowley]

5. We can say one thing with certainty

and that is that the US Media Wurlitzer tells no truths. All manipulation and obfuscation all the time.

[Strelnikov_]

7. Government Stenographers

Take US government briefings and press releases, and pass them along with no critical analysis.

I am sure you have seen how it now appears the 'big score' in Somalia turned out. Remember the breathless reporting by the Pentagon correspondents when first aired. Wonder how much play the actual story is getting. Any fancy 'Breaking News' "This Just In' banners . . .

[nam78_two]

11. K&R.nt

[spanone]

12. Operation Provocation.

[williesgirl]

13. We are becoming the new Germany in our actions. recommended

[Eugene]

15. The US has apparently declared open season on Iranians on Iraqi soil.

The generals say that they won't enter Iran or Syria to pursue "insurgents,"
but foreign nationals inside Iraq are fair game, even if they are there
with the permission of the Iraqi government.

If declared foreign nationals are "up to no good," it falls to the Iraqi
government to expel them, not for the U.S. to go in with guns drawn.

[Dead_Parrot]

16. Christ, how dumb is that?

I'll lay good money most of the people on that plane were Kurds. Sure, they might have had Iranian passports rather than Iraqi ones but that's a minor distinction - The Kurdish people are a distinct ethnic group, regardless of geopolitics.

Carry on down that route and Northern Iraq will get decidedly unfriendly.

[Jcrowley]

17. Yep they're diabolical and reckless with other people's lives

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA13Ak05.html

Thus the gist of Bush's "new strategy" is to make transparent the veiled purpose of long-term US power in Iraq, which is to deter Iranian power, protect America's vital interests and act as a bulwark against Islamist radicals and terrorists, without even an indirect allusion to an exit strategy. In historical retrospective, all this will likely remind us of is yet another US tragedy as previously seen in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, tragedies inherited from the legacy of Western colonialism.

Avoiding Iraq as the flashpoint
One net result of the White House's new strategy may indeed turn out to be the transformation of Iraq into a flashpoint between Iran and the US, in light of Thursday's news of a US raid on the Iranian Consulate in the city of Irbil, decried by Tehran as an act of provocation.

This will further fracture the US-Shi'ite alliance in Iraq and increase the prospect of a wider war that will not be in the interests of either Iran, the US or any of its allies save Israel. Prudent crisis management is needed whereby US and Iranian diplomats in Iraq meet face to face for constructive dialogue on issues of mutual concern. Sadly, despite strong recommendations for this course of action from the United States' European allies and even from within the US Department of State, there is now little or no prospect of anything but escalating crisis in the region.

[bullwinkle428]

18. Could this psycho be any less subtle in his attempted provocation

of Iran? The earlier poster was accurate - this is the kind of crap that Germany used to pull in the '30s.

[goforit]

19. And we are not at war with Iran?

[Flabbergasted]

20. Kick