[lugsoul]

No, that would not be the no fly zone. The lack of precision on this issues is frustrating. The no fly zone included all of northern Iraq. The Kurdish autonomous area was a part of northern Iraq. Ansar was HQ'd in the Kurdish autonomous area. Saddam did not occupy the Kurdish autonomous area.

[An.American.Expatriate]

The lack of precision on this issues is frustrating.

Agreed!!

I will accept you statement about the autonomous area as fact - no time to research myself.

Question though, how autonomous were the Kurds? I would wager it was limited and that they had little power to do much of anything (but I could be wrong).

To your original question - why not bomb the kurds - if the kurdich autonomous government was supporting terrorists, they should have been just as much a target as any other country / group supporting terrorists. The US though, has chosen (wisely or not remains to be seen), to "support" some of these countries (Pakistan comes to mind) is as much as they support the US effort. Maybe the Kurds changed, I don't know - but if you have some info on this, I'd be very interested.