Randy Stearns[]
The CIAs Secret War in Iraq, "ABCNews", feb. 1998
article about the 1990s and the CIA/iraq. apparently they didnt want the kurds/INC to succeed too much, because the country might split up, which would upset the 'balance of power' in the region.
"When Shiites in southern Iraq appeared ready to finish the job with a grass-roots revolt against Saddam in the spring of 1991, the Bush administration chose to step aside and permit Iraqi troops to regroup and crush the rebels with helicopter gunships. The alternative, as the White House saw it, might have been the collapse of Iraq and the rise of a new Islamic state bordering Iran. In March 1995 and again in the late summer of 1996, the Clinton administration faced similar dilemmas in northern Iraq. Rather than throw its weight behind a coalition of rebels with divergent allegiances to Iran and Iraq, and aspirations for an independent Kurdistan, Clinton chose to do nothing while Saddam's troops invaded the "safe haven" and destroyed the CIA-backed opposition. Washington had grown impatient with supporting the political opposition and demanded that the CIA find a way to get rid of Saddam before the 1996 presidential elections. The upshot was that neither popular political resistance nor quick-fix coups were successful and Saddam remained in power. Four days after Saddam's attack on the northern city of Arbil in August 1996, the president decided to launch a cruise-missile attack-not on the invading armies in the North, but on Iraqi radar installations 500 miles to the south. To Saddam and other Gulf state leaders, the message seemed clear: United States policy toward Iraq remains mired in indecision and a fundamental unwillingness to back its ertswhile allies inside Iraq."