From The Washington Post:Military Conflict a Possibility, One Says.
IRBIL, Iraq, July 16 -- Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and the Iraqi government are closer to war than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Kurdish prime minister said Thursday, in a bleak measure of the tension that has risen along what U.S. officials consider the country's most combustible fault line.
In separate interviews, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the region's president, Massoud Barzani, described a stalemate in attempts to resolve long-standing disputes with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's emboldened government. Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions.
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My Comment: The Kurds have always wanted their own country ..... with the stabilizing influence of the Americans now absent (or soon to be absent), and political reconciliation now becoming difficult between the two Iraqi sides, old animosities and prejudices are coming back.
Iraqi unity was always difficult in the best of times .... this has the possibility of turning into a bloody confrontation.