Although the UN recently passed a new resolution on Iraq; most countries have said that they will not provide military assistance, And it doesn't look like anyone else is very willing to help. Yep we have made our bed... ---------------------- Turkey to give up Iraq deployment plan if troops not welcome: PM ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan conceded for the first time that Ankara would abandon plans to send troops to Iraq if they are not wanted in the war-ravaged country, following harsh objections from Iraq's interim readership. His remarks -- on the sidelines of a gathering of Mediterranean leaders in Mallorca, Spain -- also followed media reports that Washington was hesitating on whether to insist on a Turkish military involvement after the vocal opposition in Baghdad. "If we are wanted we will go, if we are not wanted we will not. We have not made a 'must' decision," Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying. "Iraq is our neighbor and will continue to be so in the future. We will not undertake anything that may lead to problems. The demands of the Iraqi people are very important for us," Erdogan said. Before making its final decision Ankara will wait to see developments following the adoption Thursday of a UN Security Council resolution which authorizes the establishment of an international security force in Iraq, he said. "Let me say that we are not that enthusiastic on sending soldiers to Iraq. There has been a request from the United States and we have considered it. "But if the Iraqi people say 'we do not want anybody,' then there is nothing left that we can do," Erdogan said. Overriding equally harsh opposition from its own public opinion, Erdogan's government passed through parliament on October 7 a bill authorizing the dispatch of troops to Iraq in response to a US request for military assistance. But Ankara and Washington have so far failed to start expected talks on the details of the Turkish force, which many here see as a sign that Washington is having difficult time in deciding whether to stick to the Turkish deployment option. Asked why the talks had not yet begun, Erdogan said: "I do not know, but they (the United States) might have waited for the UN Security Council resolution." Iraqi leaders say military involvement from neighboring countries may interfere with domestic politics and impede the already fragile reconstruction efforts. Iraqi Kurds are particularly hostile, suspicious that Turkey, which has long been in conflict with its own restive Kurdish minority, wants to thwart their own political gains in the post-Saddam Hussein era. Turkey, for its part, is keen to make up for its failure to back its US ally in the Iraq war and to obtain some leverage of influence over the Iraqi Kurds, whom its suspects of plotting to break away from Baghdad -- a prospect that could refuel separatist violence among their Turkish cousins. Ankara also believes that helping Washington will encourage a US crackdown on thousands of armed Turkish Kurd rebels hiding in mountainous northern Iraq. Turkish army chief Hilmi Ozkok renewed a call on Washington to purge northern Iraq of the rebels, who belong to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody 15-year separatist war on Ankara. "The PKK is a terrorist organisation, and recognized as such by the United States which claims to be in a global war against terror, which means a war against the PKK," Ozkok told the Greek Eleftherotypia daily in an interview published Saturday. Fellow Muslim nations have also criticized Turkey's plans to send troops to Iraq. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad Tuesday in what many here saw as yet another warning to Ankara to stay out of Iraq. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...l_mideast_afp/iraq_turkey_us_troops&printer=1
As an aside ... It sounds funny, I know, But it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. It sounds funny, I know, But it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa. Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three, I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be. This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red. My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed. This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life, My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife. To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy, I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy. My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad, And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad. For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother. Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run, And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son. My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue, Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too. Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild, And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild, For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. It sounds funny, I know, But it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
