Convoys of American Army trucks are fired up and heading back to the ships. However, this is not Iraq. This is Turkey, and the U.S. military convoys are heading back to sea, and off to find another way to get into the battle for Baghdad.
The collapse of a military deal between the U.S. and Turkey points to ongoing divisions between the two nations. Turkish soldiers are already on the border with Iraq. Turkey would like to send more of them south. A White House envoy has been pressing hard to make sure that those Turks do not move beyond a border buffer zone. The fear is that generations of conflict, between Turks and Kurds, will become a war within a war and that the U.S., instead of concentrating on the removal of Saddam Hussein, will have to separate the combatants.
Guests:
Stephen Larrabee, International Security Analyst, RAND, co-author, “Turkish Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty”
Dr. Najmaldin Karim, president, Washington Kurdish Institute
Ilene Prusher, Istanbul Bureau Chief, Christian Science Monitor, in Diyarbikar, Turkey
Jeffrey Fleischman, LA Times correspondent in Sulamaniya, Iraq.