Kissinger on Iraq and Kurdistan

In this article in the Kurdistan Observer, which it took me all morning to find, one sentence hit me:

"A sovereign Iraq on whose soil coalition forces will remain by agreement rather than occupation presupposes government that is representative, secure, accepted internationally, and compatible with a peaceful world."

Yeah, like a government which does our bidding, and not the Iraqi peoples'.

I turned this up while searching for the original appearance of a statement by Kissinger that Iraq might be better off split into three countries.

Here's where it came up:

While this is far from the preferred outcome, if the democracies are unable to produce democratic central institutions and unwilling to support a benevolent autocrat like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of the Turkish Republic), then a breakup into three states is preferable to refereeing an open-ended civil war.