[Cyrus]

It'll soon get to the point where responses to neo-con claptrap will be numbered - and neo-con claptrap shall be dispensed with instructions to go look up the appropriate number.

Here's your number:

Talabani is completely correct in what he says, in the article. FOR HIS PEOPLE!

Talabani is a tribal leader, and a worthy leader too, as far as the tribe's interests are concerned. The interests of the Kurds, at this point in History, happen to coincide completely with the American interests in Iraq.

The Kurds have been persecuted by the Turks for decades. Once upon a time (and for a long time!) the Kurds were targeting Americans in Turkey because the US had allied itself totally with Ankara's fight against Kurdish separatism. Washington had even declared officially that most Kurdish independence military movements were terrorist.

Those days are gone. Ankara refused entry to US troops to invade Iraq from the north. The Kurds, long persecuted also by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and ethnically cleansed from many northern areas, have helped the American troops enormously. There must not be practically a single Kurd among the insurgents in Iraq! And the prospetcs of a federalised, power-sharing Iraq is a God-sent for Kurds -- it will be the first step ever taken towards Kurdish autonomy, even if within another state.

Therefore, Talabani, a Kurd who made president (something unthinkable before the Americans were to invade!), is saying all the right things to the American people. What he says is correct. What he says is entirely to the interests of his people.

Remains to be seen whether or not what Talabani wants ("Americans, please don't leave!") is to the interests of the United States. Don't touch that dial.