Are Kurds attempting to influence American opinion?

We reported earlier on a story about a pro-war advocacy group running ads in the US claiming that we found WMD in Iraq (we didn't) and that there is proof Saddam is linked to Al Qaeda (he isn't).

In the middle of the story, there's this about the man running the pro-war advocacy effort:

In addition to his Iraq political work in the U.S., Mr. Russo has an open-ended political-advertising contract with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq for whom he produces advertisements that run in the U.S. seeking investment in Kurdistan. Some critics accuse him of having a vested financial interest in prolonging the U.S. presence there.... And they say there is no conflict between the organization's advocacy work and Mr. Russo's financial ties to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq.

Hmmm... a guy who runs ads in the US for, and favorable to, the Kurdish government is suddenly running ads favorable to continuing the US war in Iraq, a war that benefits - who? - the Kurdish government (see below). A natural question to ask is whether the Kurds themselves are somehow involved in this pro-war ad campaign.

But why would the Kurds benefit from a continuance of Bush's war in Iraq war? We need only look at the other article I linked to below, coincidentally.

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan....

The interviews with Kurdish troops, however, suggested that as the American military transfers more bases and areas of control to Iraqi units, it may be handing the nation to militias that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity.

Gee, so the longer the war goes on, the longer the training of Iraqi troops goes on, the more the Kurds are able to infiltrate those troops, and the greater the chance the Americans will willingly and unknowingly hand northern Iraq to the Kurds.

Now, I don't know if the Kurds have a role in this pro-war propaganda campaign going on in the US right now, but I'd bet the Turks won't be any too happy to find out that the possibility exists, since the Turks are deathly afraid that an independent Turkistan will split Turkey in two.

I'm also not sure the American people would be very happy were foreign agents involved in trying to trick us into continuing the war.

(MyDD has more, and another angle, on this fake WMD propaganda here.)