Why haven't we heard about this in the American media?

I think we do not hear much about this because it is in the strategic interest of the west to ignore longstanding oppression of kurdistan by syria, turkey, iraq and iran, just as the carving up of the Ottomann Empire post first world war served western interests (and led to much of the problems faced by the region today), and how Iraq itself is anartificial state of three historically separate and autonomous cultures, and how the Halabja massacre of Kurds by Iraq in the war against Iran was tacitly a US backed operation since they supported Saddam as peacekeeper against what was then perceived, as now, as the threat of Iran.