This could screw the pooch. If the Turks have their eye on Kirkuk, this thing could escalate fast. DD
I remember when Jordan ousted Arafat in the 70's, Syria sent a large armored formation directly down the border. The Jordanian king asked for Isreali help. The IDF flew couple of attack planes at extremely low altitude over the formation, ending the incident rather quickly. Maybe a very visible overflight of American B-2's this time?
Isn't it "queer the pitch"?? If the Turks are doing more than their usual mucking around in the northern border areas of Iraq, and moved to seize Kirkuk, it would be a very big deal indeed. We went to war 12 years ago for much the same reason.
What would be even more interesting would be to see how we would justify telling them that they con't do it while we are...We have made it clear that world opion isn't 'relevent'...So how would we calim that they have no right to invade...In fact, couldn't they make an even greater claim to 'defending' themselves than we can, given geography? We have set the new rules: Global opinion, the United Nations...none of it matters if you've got the guns and can say you have reasons. We would have to make the foundation of our current thinking even more clear :USA Opinion > World Opinion > any other individual nation's opinion.
Mac, I'm voting for you and Oski as President and VP of the Hangout board. I don't care which of you is which. Put B-Bob in your cabinet please.
Turkey Says Its Troops Will Enter Northern Iraq March 21 — ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey said Friday its troops would enter northern Iraq to prevent an influx of refugees across its borders, but gave no date for an incursion the United States says it opposes. Turkey's armed forces would also enter the Iraqi Kurdish enclave to prevent "terrorist activity," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters at a news conference. "A vacuum was formed in northern Iraq and that vacuum became practically a camp for terrorist activity. This time we do not want such a vacuum," Gul said. "Turkey's relationship with northern Iraq is to hold migrant movements in their own country without allowing them into Turkey. ... Turkey has no designs on Iraqi soil," he added. A U.S. official in Washington said the United States had not agreed to Turkey sending troops into northern Iraq. Turkey's defense minister said earlier Turkey had opened its airspace to U.S. military aircraft. Turkey already stations several thousand soldiers a short distance inside northern Iraq, but Iraqi Kurds oppose their presence saying they threaten Iraq's territorial integrity. Iraqi Kurds have vowed to fight Turkish troops if they come into their self-governing area, especially if they do so without U.S. allies. Kurds have ruled Iraq's three northernmost provinces since 1991, when U.S. and British warplanes enforced a "no-fly" zone there to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces away after he put down a Kurdish uprising at the end of the Gulf War. Kurds have been generally positive toward the arrival of U.S. forces, but they oppose any Turkish plan to send its own troops, saying Ankara is only interested in repressing Kurds. Turkey has a large Kurdish minority living near its Iraqi border and fears for its own territorial integrity if a Kurdish homeland enters the agenda for a post-Saddam settlement in Iraq. Turkey has frequently cited the need to protect Iraq's Turkoman minority, ethnically, linguistically and culturally close to Turks, as another reason for sending in troops. But senior Iraqi Turkoman officials have dismissed the need for such a move.
Kurdish Rebels Ready to Strike Militia leaders: fighters in place to oust Iraqis By Mohamad Bazzi STAFF CORRESPONDENT March 21, 2003 Takya, Iraq - Despite repeated pledges that they would keep clear of a U.S. attack on the strategic northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, some Kurdish militia leaders say they have an underground network of fighters in place that will start an uprising against Iraqi forces in the city. Leaders of the two main parties that control the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq insist that their fighters will not launch an attack on Kirkuk, a city of 1 million people that is surrounded by Iraq's oldest and richest oil fields. Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, have promised Washington that they will keep the 50,000 fighters under their command from entering Kirkuk to avoid antagonizing neighboring Turkey, which fears similar unrest among the millions of Kurds there. But officials of smaller Kurdish militia groups say there is an armed Kurdish underground of fighters and civilians already inside Kirkuk that will be activated to rise up once the United States launches an air and ground assault on the city. These officials say the two main parties have been involved in coordinating plans for a Kurdish uprising, and up to 1,000 fighters from several groups will cross into Kirkuk from the Kurdish-controlled area to support the rebels. "We will enter Kirkuk. We are the sons of Kirkuk, and we want to be responsible for its liberation," said Sadiq Muheedin Sadiq, regional commander of the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party. "We have been waiting for this moment for a very long time." Sadiq has a base in Takya, a village near the front line that separates the autonomous Kurdish region - protected since 1991 by a "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes - from the rest of Iraq. Sadiq said his group has been in touch with dozens of Kurds inside Kirkuk and even some Iraqi military commanders who plan to surrender once U.S. forces attack. "There are people in place who will take control of some neighborhoods and attack the Baath Party offices," Sadiq said. "We want to take control of those offices before they can destroy the records of their crimes against the Kurds." A senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan confirmed that his group has been involved in planning for the uprising, and that it will quickly send several hundred fighters into Kirkuk to secure the group's place among competing Kurdish factions. The official said some of the civilians who would be involved in the uprising are part of a network of Kurdish tribes that formed an underground opposition inside Iraqi-controlled territory. "These are some tribal groups who have received weapons and money from Baghdad for their allegiance," said the official, who asked not to be named. "They're now ready to switch to the winning side." Kirkuk is an ethnic tinderbox waiting to blow. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, about 100,000 Kurds have been forced out of the city and surrounding villages in a campaign of "Arabization," intended to populate the area with Arabs loyal to the Baghdad regime. Kurdish leaders say Kurds who sought refuge in the northern enclave will likely head back to their homes in the Kirkuk region and reclaim the land they lost to Arabs. Many of the returning refugees will be armed, and confrontations over land could become bloody. The Kurdish parties view Kirkuk as the ancient seat of Kurdistan and believe it should be the capital of their region in a newly formed government after Hussein's regime is toppled. Turkey has threatened to send thousands of troops into northern Iraq if the Kurdish militias move into Kirkuk. Turkey fears that if the Kurds expand their autonomous zone to Kirkuk, they would be a step closer to declaring independence, and that would trigger similar aspirations among the 12 million Kurds in Turkey. U.S. military planners have said they will move into Kirkuk swiftly to secure the oil fields and keep the vying parties from igniting a conflict within the wider war. If U.S. officials succeed, Kirkuk could become a model for a transitional government seeking to bring together Iraq's different ethnic groups, including Kurds, Turkomans and Arabs. If the effort fails, Kirkuk could unravel into a free-for-all of competing interests and deep ethnic and religious hatreds. The Kurdish plan for an uprising could complicate the situation and precipitate a Turkish military incursion. Turkey's parliament yesterday granted the United States overflight rights for warplanes to launch attacks on Iraq. In return, the United States has agreed to allow Turkish troops to enter the autonomous Kurdish area, so they can set up a "buffer zone" to prevent an exodus of Iraqi refugees. That move has angered the Kurds, who fear that Turkey would establish a permanent military presence in northern Iraq and that it would try to dismantle some of the institutions they have built since gaining self-rule at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. At that time, the Kurds led an uprising in northern Iraq and captured Kirkuk. But they did not receive backing from the United States, and the rebels were quickly crushed by Iraqi forces. "It's to be expected that there would be another uprising in Kirkuk, like there have been so many times before," said Rizgan Ali, who serves as governor of Kirkuk province in the Kurdish self-government. "But this time, we're expecting full support from the United States." The Iraqi army appears to be laying the groundwork to lure U.S. forces into urban warfare in Kirkuk, according to Kurdish militia leaders who have received reports from supporters inside the city. The reports say the Iraqi military has set up a protective grid of trenches throughout the city, about 50 yards by 20 yards, filled with black crude oil. Members of Iraq's elite Republican Guard intend to set the pits ablaze, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the air. The Iraqis hope the smoke will inhibit the U.S. helicopter attacks and disorient airborne divisions that might drop into the city. The 10,000-member Republican Guard unit based in Kirkuk has hidden tanks and machine guns in residential neighborhoods, marketplaces and near hospitals, according to Kurdish officials. Iraqi forces have also mined the Perde Bridge across the Lesser Zab River on the northern side of the city. Sadiq said members of the ruling Baath Party have been cruising the streets of Kirkuk over the past week and rounding up young men for forced conscription in the popular army known as the Jerusalem Brigade. He said those who resisted were arrested, and some were shot. Others were loaded onto buses and taken to southern Iraq. "The city is under martial law," Sadiq said. "And all Kurdish families are under surveillance because the Iraqis think they will instigate an uprising." Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
Let's look back at how and why the UN was founded in the first place...The world in general and Europe in particular had just been through the second incredibly destructive war in as many generations, the most recent failures of international policy to resolve matters without massive bloodshed, and new means of accomplishing same were needed. The Amwerican and French Revolutions had destroyed the notion that this was a matter best left in the hands of those appointed by God ( monarchies ), and they usually came back to an international version of might is right anyways. Metternech and co. had tried the Congress system, essentially an embodyment of conservative power unification in any threat to the status quo, but the hypocrasy of that system was exposed with the revolution in Greece, and the residue of the impropriety of the newcomer may have in part lead to the first World War...Which brings us to the next effort at international peace: Treaties of Balance...the idea being that superpowers divide the world by treaties, and mainatin a sense of balance...this was proven ineffective by WWI, although the addition of the threat of nuclear holocaust revived it in the form we now call the Cold War..any ways, didn't work. The WWII...an excercise in might is right as clear as any we have seen since Genghis Khan or Louis XIV...the greatest military power in a region decides that that might gives it the right to do what it wants, and to hell with world opinion. Tens of millions of lives later we decided that their had to be a better way than unifying against the guy with the biggest guns after he got underway, and we came up with a system of establishing a means of regulating international military action: the League of Nations became the United Nations with a mandate ( agreed to by all, including us) wherein the adherents all came under the protection of the group as a whole as long as they abided by group decisions in matters of international conflict. Specific means definitions were established to account for every forseeable scenario and appropriate levels of military response to said scenarios were agreed to. A forum for airing grievences was established, and a voting regulatory body was created with the power to conjunctively weild the power of world opion backed by the combined military powers of the participants... It has it's shortcomings, like any other system, but by and large it has worked, certainly better than the might is right system that was prevelent before it and that we are suddenly advocating now that the USSR no longer challenges our position as mightiest. We are in grave danger of making the same mistake that every other Most Powerful Nation has made in the past...the same one we fought WWII to stop, and established the UN to prevent in the future..the same one we demanded that the USSR, France, Britain and others adhere to whether they thought it in their best interest at the time or not...That having the most power doesn't mean being the most correct, and that weilding that power as you see fit only creates a world where justice is a synonym for military might: those who have it are those who define it, and those who define it are those who have the power to shape it in their interest...everyone else is, as has been said, with that power or against it. We are the ones abandoning the value of world opinion on the basis that we feel differently and have the power to ignore it...the precedent is frightening, as well as familiar.
I suspect that, given the combination of my hunt-and-peck while staring at the keys method and the lack of an edit function right now, my State of the Forum 'speeches' would be sadly on a par with our current Presidential addresses...and that's a bad thing. But thanks for the compliment...
Ummm...not much, except we are doing away with the entire principle of the United Nations in favour of the might is right approach....other than that, and answering the question asked, not much....
We would've let them invade N. Iraq if their Parliament had passed that measure to allow us to use their bases and move troops to N. Iraq. Now that we need the Kurds even more to secure the north, we had to switch our position to the current one. This is going to be an interesting development.
MacBeth, The US is not out for world domination. We aren't looking at weaker nations and trying to conquer them to expand our glorious empire. We didn't ask the UN if we can go conquer Iraq and make it US property. I agree, might shouldn't make right, but in this case, right will make might. What country can we associate al-Qaeda with? None, they are just a network of extremist Muslims out of touch with reality and the facts. The US believes that protecting the US citizens is now a prime objective. Who would've thought we could've been that devastated? Well, the administration has reason to believe that the Saddam regime is a threat to our people and our nation. They also have reason to beleive there is a link between Saddam and Osama. So now what? We want to rid that threat. We try and try diplomacy, but the blatant ass fingering in the UN was dealt a timeline. We decided to move forward and use force to rid this threat. We'll never know if we had given more time, Saddam would've disarmed. But we use trending. We've given him 17 chances, over 12 years. He publicly supported the WTC bombings. So we are going to let the UN fart around, while risking the lives of Americans? I'm proud of our decision. So once again, what the hell does the forming of the UN have anything to do with our current situation today?
Imagine for a second that it was another nation doing exactly that: Deciding to invade a lesser nation for reasons it deemed enough, but which the world in general and the UN in particular didn't...Imagine that country wasn't the Always right US...what would your reaction be? Now ask yourself another question: do you imagine that that or any nation would declare that they were invading for the purposes of conquest? The principle of world opinion is either universal or it's nothing...everyone has tiomes and reasons why they feel that the law shouldn't apply to them,and sometimes they are right...but we still need toi apply it equally or it has no meaning, and we are reduced to might is right. Now that we have done this, how do we tell any other nation that they can't invade another lesser nation, as long as they say they have reasons and also promise it's not going to be for conquest, honest...how can we say they can't with any moral authoruty? Before this war we could cite the UN and world opinion as the greater good, but we have forever given up the right to do that with any semblance of meaning...that's why this is here.
MacBeth, If today's date was pre-9/11/01, I'd say what your reasoning applies to our current situation. If al-Qaeda had flown planes into office buildings in Germany, killing thousands, and Germany then felt that Iraq was a threat to their national security, yea, I'd support a coalition for them to force Saddam to disarm. Even if it was another country, it'd be far from being the same situation. America is seen as the biggest enemy. We are the free empire in today's world. No other nation is as hated as ours. We have more chances of being attacked then any other nation. World views paint us at arrogant powerful lawless bastards. The truth is, we are now humbled after 9/11. We realize that we can be attacked. We see we are vulnerable. 9/11 changed all the rules.
If one reads the position papers of the senior members of the Bush I and II regime, one would know we are out for world domination. They put it in plain English. Lookup American Enterprise Institute and Iraq with google.
So you would allow Germany to determine that 9-11 and Iraq were connected...even if you saw no evidence? What if they were hit with a terrorist equivalent of 9-11 and blamed Mexico? You would trust their judgment on the matter, even if it was based on 'proof' you were not allowed to see? What will you do if Russia decides that Canada is a threat, and wants to invade?
Woofer, I'm writing a paper right now that states that the US in not out for world domination and that Steve Francis is really a white guy with a bad tan. I'll put it on a website when I can afford one. I'll make sure I send you the link so you can use it a matter of fact in another conversation.
