[kabar]

Ankara's differences with Washington over Iraq in 2002-03 are widely known, but differed little from stances adopted by Germany or other European allies. Nevertheless, Turkish policies on a whole range of issues since then illustrate how dramatically the country has changed.

What crap. They stopped us from transiting the country to invade Iraq from the north, probably prolonging the war and costing us casualties.

[Steve Van Doorn]

yeap that was unforgivable.

[Camel Joe]

In addition to that they denied us use of their airspace.

[Squidpup]

Probably the single largest tactical challenge in the war was overcoming this. agreed.

[tarheelswamprat]

What crap. They stopped us from transiting the country to invade Iraq from the north, probably prolonging the war and costing us casualties.

Their intent was to do even more than that. Remember that maddeningly interminable political kabuki dance with the Turkish parliament with the back and forth votes and the embarrassing and shameful efforts of Colin Powell's State Department to buy themselves an approval vote by continually upping the number of billions we offered in aid and loan guarantees?

All of that was a sham, nothing but carefully political theater where the fix was already in. The Turks really thought that if they could stall and string us along long enough (remember the arguments that the invasion had to happen before the summer heat got too bad?) that we'd be forced to call the whole thing off. THAT would have really boosted Erdogan's "cred" with the Islamists, wouldn't it?