Turkish Parliament OKs Troops for Iraq

AP ^ | 10/7/2003 | SUZAN FRASER

[Diddle E. Squat]

Oops, maybe not so good news, Iraq council apparently rejects this.

[a_Turk]

I'm trying to understand whom this council represents.. It's a real tickler of a riddle :^ /

[Angelus Errare]

Whoever had the largest militias/potential to stir up trouble? That would explain the inclusion of SCIRI, at any rate ...

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

BUMP

[marron]

This is good news. Our biggest need is not military so much, we are handling that fine, our need is to rob the Baath and the nutballs of legitimacy. And among the people who hate us, the Turks can go a long way in that direction.

We can catch bullets all day long, we do that fine. Our need is to pull the philosophical rug out from under these guys. The Turkish presence, I believe, will help us do that in the Baath triangle.

Secondly, there is a bigger game than Iraq alone, and I believe that Turkey has a role to play if they will do it. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and many hands, the right hands, make the work light, as they say.

[Beck_isright]

Why is this so hard? Do we still have idiots like Joe Wilson negotiating with Turkey? We need a strong Turkish force on the Syrian border asap. I can not believe there would be any issues on this subject but as usual our State Department socialists are looking for a way to screw this up I'm sure.

[river rat]

"The vote does not mean that soldiers will immediately be dispatched.
The government is still negotiating the terms of deployment with the United States, which could take weeks or even longer.

I'll reserve comment, until something of consequence happens..

Many of us have come to regard agreements, positions, statements or allies in the middle east as "flexible"..

If one wanted to be cynical -- one could surmise that one party in this "agreement" has been determined to be a whore, and now is simply haggling over the price...

Semper Fi

[geedee]

Good soldiers (ask any Korean war vet)

One of my uncle's most poignant stories about the Korean War is this . . .

He and two from his squad were injured and awaiting transportation to off-shore hospital ships. All three were too badly injured to fight. This was only days after the Chinese entered the war and started over-running our guys in North Korea.

Things weren't going well . . . an order had been given to retreat but there just wasn't enough litter-carriers or means available to evacuate my uncle and his two buddies. Two Turks who were "embedded" with the unit to get some experience and four others from my uncle's unit refused to leave them. My uncle didn't know either one of the Turks, nor did they know any of the three who were wounded.

Two of the four Americans were quickly killed, but the remaining two and the two Turks held out for nineteen hours with nothing but two machine guns, three M-1's, and nine hand grenades. At the end of the siege, before the cavalry came . . . my uncle always said, "after eighteen hours and fifty-nine minutes of pure hell" . . . the ammunition was spent and it was hand-to-hand fighting. The two Turks and the two Americans formed a circle around the three wounded men to keep the Chinese from bayoneting them to death.

And they succeeded. One of the Americans was killed in the hand-to-hand fights but both the Turks survived and my uncle said they were the meanest, baddest, most vicious, and loyal soldiers he's ever seen. And he was in World War II as well so he was exposed to many, many heroes.

He watched the entire battle but, missing one arm and half a leg, he couldn't help much. He said the Turks would never leave their sides and they had many, many opportunities to bug out. He had nightmares about this for twelve years. Until my grandmother arranged for one of the Turks to visit him in Texas in the mid-60's. Then . . . he never had another nightmare.

There were no medals for valor handed out for this battle . . . wrong war, wrong nationalities, and we were getting our asses kicked . . . but my uncle said he would take two Turks on his side over an entire battalion of any of the other UN troops involved in the Korean War. He said, "You never had to look for the Turks. They were the sumbitches kicking ass to your right and left."

[a_Turk]

>> Many of us have come to regard agreements, positions, statements or allies in the middle east as "flexible"..

Funny.. That's how we have come to re-know our precious allies as of late..

Buh-bye..

[Robert_Paulson2]

Thanks for posting this...a_Turk
Better late than never...

[optimistically_conservative]

What would Condi do?

LOL, your sense of humor is but one of the reasons you remain one of my favorite FReepers...