Bob Novak spills the beans this morning:

“The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.”

It was always a fantasy that the Americans could contain the Iraq war within the borders of their newly-conquered province, and critics of the invasion raised this issue before the war was launched—alas, to no avail. What is interesting is that the US, according to Seymour Hersh, is funding the Iranian affiliate of the PKK, which is known as Pejak, as part of its covert campaign to destabilize the ruling regime in Tehran. And the Israelis, don’t forget, have been covertly training and funding the Kurdish militants in an effort to establish a base of operations from which they can watch—and harass—the Iranians.

Note to Rudy Giuliani: this is what is meant by “blowback.” Watch, listen, and learn ….

Postscript: I hate to say “I told you so,” but … on second thought, I don’t hate it at all:

“The Shi’a in the south, the Kurds in the north, the Turkmen and the Sunni clans of Tikrit: we will soon be more than well-acquainted with their complaints, which have already begun. Every faction and a few yet to be invented will come to the fore, claiming the mantle of “democracy”: the Iraqi National Congress, the constitutional monarchists, the Islamists, and the various Kurdish groups, ad infinitum. Their demands will wind up on the desk of an American viceroy, who will then be expected to side with this or that group “€“ on what basis and with what sort of advice is impossible to say.”

See also: here, here, and here.