Iraqi Civil War - Kurds preparing to seize Kirkuk (KR)

Looks like the starting deployments for the Iraqi civil war are being filled. The Kurds, it appears, have been using the constant conflicts between the Sunni and Shia to position their forces to retake oil rich Kirkuk. It was the likely action, given the Kurds expulsion from the oil rich region, but this Knight-Ridder article seems to place the likely first major battle of the Iraqi civil war there in the very near future.

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan......

Their strategy(the Kurds) mirrors that of Shiite Muslim parties in southern Iraq, which have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their own militias and have maintained a separate militia presence throughout Iraq's central and southern provinces. The militias now are illegal under Iraqi law but operate openly in many areas. Peshmerga leaders said in interviews that they expected the Shiites to create a semi-autonomous and then independent state in the south as they would do in the north.

The Bush administration - and Iraq's neighbors - oppose the nation's fragmentation, fearing that it could lead to regional collapse.

Also, we've heard alot from the Bush admin about the "beacon of freedom in a part of the world that is desperate for freedom and liberty" which "will serve as such an optimistic and hopeful example for reformers from Tehran to Damascus."

We haven't heard so much about the fears that an Iraqi fragmentation coud lead to a regional collapse.

Clap harder, Bush administration, Tinkerbell is dying.