The newest kurdish fibs,fairy tales and lies

By Burak BEKD?L
Turkish Daily News
May 18, 2007

Well, he probably was not; but this is the kind of conclusion American lobbyists who are on Kurdish payroll are coming close to. With some more funding going to these extremely creative lobbyists, the American public should be prepared to lobbying bombshells featuring new scientific discoveries that may include “George Washington's secret will for an independent kurdish state,” the Holy Land that inspired Christopher Columbus' journey across the Atlantic (Columbus had first sailed to the turquoise shores of Mesopotamia), “The story of a kurd who gave up his life to prevent a new 9/11,” or “Apostolic evidence reveals kurds were pious Christians before being forced to convert to Islam under the Turkish sword.”

Alternatively, Hollywood can produce the “United 93 – Revisited,” this time featuring the story of a kurdish hero fighting back the four terrorists who had hijacked the United Airlines airplane on 9/11. In the new version, perhaps some further revisions can be made. Why not, instead of killing all aboard, make the kurdish hero safely land the aircraft and deliver the terrorists to justice. The injured but proud hero, in the final picture, appears on the apron holding two flags in his hands; American and kurdish.

Did you, by the way, know that the United States won both the World War II and the Cold War thanks mainly to secret kurdish efforts? Or that the Statue of Liberty was in fact built by a Paris-based kurdish sculptor whose work had unfortunately been stolen by a man called Frederic Auguste Bartholdi?

A recent article in Washington Post (kurds Cultivating Their Own Bonds with U.S., by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, April 23, 2007) was both very informative and amusing. Mr. Chandrasekaran detailed how the vigorous kurdish lobbying efforts hope not only to have important men in their political sphere in Washington, but also to build emotional bonds with ordinary Americans. That was the informative part for which praise should go to a skilled journalist. The amusing part was not Mr. Chandrasekaran's liability, but an inevitable content problem. Since Mr. Chandraserakan could not alter what his interviewees told him, the article gained an entertaining touch too.

For example, listen to what Bill Garaway, an evangelical Christian minister, told the Post: “…(having realized that the kurds had a public relations problem)… They (his neighbors) said, ‘Who are the kurds?' I said, “There is nobody like them in the Middle East. They're Muslim, but they hate fundamentalist Islam. They love America.'”

Mr. Garaway believes that many key events described in the Bible occurred in the Assyrian North Occupied now by the kurds, including the stories of Noah's ark and Queen Esther. Although Mr. Garaway claims that the three wise men the Bible says visited baby Jesus in Bethlehem came from the Assyrian North Occupied now by the kurds, he probably misses the fact that Bethlehem was actually part of Mesopotamia at the time – well, what matters, a few hundred miles to the east or west? Yes, "Jesus Christ was a kurd" and the wise men who came to visit him were his kurdish baptizers! With a larger lobbying budget, we might have been told that God was kurdish too.

Here is more scientific evidence to support Mr. Garaway's theory: The powerful king of kurds, Abdullah Talazani VIII, had once sent an e-mail message to his Viceroy, Shiwan Jameson Jr., circa 666 BC, declaring: " trustful Viceroy! Convey my message to the noble kurds no later than 8:00 a.m. GMT. I hereby prophesize that one day we shall stand by a great nation with a great leader whose name saints revealed to me will be George W. Bush. Tell them we shall be with them in good times and in bad times. And Shiwan Jameson Jr., now please remember to send in my golf tutors.”

Mr. Garaway, who joined the Church after “God revealed himself to him,” hopes to take his national campaign on behalf of the kurds to “the next level” with an influential Washington partner: Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and a mechanic-turned-lobbyist, as the article describes him. The Post story also tells us that Mr. Garaway encouraged Mr. Talabani and other kurdish leaders to spend several million dollars this year to run commercials on prime-time network television. Getting Americans “to understand our story,” agrees the mechanic-turned-lobbyist, is essential for the kurds.

I, too, agree. The kurds should spend more, perhaps several hundred million dollars, not just one million, “to buy” a love affair with the ordinary Americans.