Don't mention the K word

After settling in at the US army base, all three of us, Taylor, Nitoslawski and I, then took part in a 3ACR patrol, an armoured convoy, into Tal Afar.

As Taylor explains: "the purpose of our trip into this volatile northern Iraqi city was to retrace the route taken by my captors when I had been abducted and held hostage the previous September [2004]."

We reached our destination and began walking through the town, which had a majestic citadel, fortress, built in Ottoman times. I began filming Taylor as he talked with US officers pointing to a map. Alongside were Iraq Army soldiers, in reality, Kurds who were regarded as 100% loyal to the US.

We reached a wall and I quickly panned the camera from the wall onto Taylor without paying too much attention as to what was daubed on the wall. It was virtually a Nano-second, faster than a blink of an eye.

It was only when a US Army officer, a media handler, began to hyperventilate that it was brought to my attention of the US's hypersensitivity in using the Kurds as 'Iraqi Army" soldiers.

On the wall was painted a large Kurdish emblem. The US Army officer had assumed I deliberately filmed the Kurdish emblem here in the heart of Tal Afar, a Turkoman city and with an ever-watchful Turkey in the background. The US was trying to maintain a precarious balancing act of using Kurds as Iraqi soldiers but at the same time keeping its NATO ally Turkey happy. The US Army officer then calmed down, probably realising he had overreacted. We all then acted as nothing had happened and resumed with the walkthrough town and the filming.

Playing the Kurdish card by the US has been strategically useful in taking down the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003 and in combating ISIS in Syria. That the US has abandoned the Kurds is no real surprise. The US has a history of doing such to other loyal allies. South Vietnam and the 1975 fall of Saigon come to mind.