If we had a king,
He would be worthy of his crown;
He should have a capital
And we would share his fortune.
Turk and Persian and Arab
Would all be our slaves.
-- Kurdish verse popular in the 1920s
The slaves are out of the question, but the capital and the fortune are looking more attainable than ever to Iraq's Kurdish minority. After struggling for most of this century for control of their homeland, which happens to sit atop some of Iraq's richest oil fields, the Kurds have wrested large portions of it from Saddam Hussein's disheveled forces. Though their...