KURDISTAN SHORT CUT NEWS ( KLICK HEADLINES FOR FULL TEXTS)

America’s Inexcusable Inaction – New York Daily News – Twenty-five years ago last month, the small, northern Iraqi town of Halabja became irrevocably associated with places like Auschwitz, Srebrenica and other sites of human depravity. Located in Kurdistan, Halabja was the target of a devastating poison gas attack by the regime of Saddam Hussein in March of 1988…

Iraqi Kurd ministers, MPs to end boycotts – Al Arabiya – Iraqi Kurdish ministers and MPs will end boycotts of parliament and the cabinet begun last month, the prime minister of the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Wednesday. A meeting that included Kurdish political parties “decided to return the Kurdish ministers and representatives to Baghdad… and participate in sessions of the Iraqi cabinet and parliament,” Nechirvan Barzani told a news conference in Arbil….

U.S. policy on Syria still lacks coherence – The Washington Post – THE MUDDLE that is President Obama’s policy on Syria has grown still muddier. On Tuesday the president backed away from a “red line” he had drawn on the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, setting the threshold for proof of a violation in such a way as to virtually exclude the possibility that one could ever be confirmed. Yet that same day his aides leaked to The Post and other news organizations the news that the president might soon reverse his long-standing opposition to providing Syrian rebels with arms. And the administration readied yet another effort to persuade Russia to abandon its support of the Assad regime in favor of a negotiated political transition.…