Perhaps whatever orders are being issued result from the hue and cry out in the Islamic street.
The article states: Polls show as much as 94 percent of the Muslim-dominated Turkish public opposes a war with Iraq.
Turkey is simply not the place for staging the northern sector of this war--it's teeming with Islamist factions--and the Kurds in Northen Iraq are even worse.
Here's a Turkish politician's comment as this vote was cast:
"At the end of this business we'll see that America has eaten the toffee apple and left Turkey the stick," Onder Sav of the opposition Republican People's Party told parliament.
He warned that victory would be much easier than running post-war Iraq. "You can do a lot with bayonets but you can't sit on them... Don't let them reach out to seize the integrity and natural riches of a neighbor and a Muslim country."
And here's the kind of Kurdish characters running around up in northern Ira:
The leader of a Kurdish extremist group with suspected ties to al-Qaida is willing to talk to U.S. investigators, his lawyer said in a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Norway.
. . . . Ahmad is the head of Ansar al-Islam, or Supporters of Islam, an anti-American group of several hundred fighters based in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
Washington claims Ahmad has links to Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but says it has no proof. The group's fighters are also believed to have trained with al-Qaida and U.S. officials suspect it of helping hide al-Qaida members fleeing Afghanistan.
To assume this territory would be an appropriate area for staging our troops and equipment would be a lethal mistake.
Our troopers must move into some of the other less murderous areas mentioned in replies upthread.
or is this a ploy to confuse Saddam....?
Beirut!