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This is upsetting, but the fact remains that we still have
Incirlik. If we lost that our situation would be very difficult. This alone is a very important concession and its importance cannot be overstated.

Our State department has been a problem as long as I can remember. They have always had what I interpreted as a leftist bias all during the Cold War, and nothing has really changed. They are Clintonists, but they were Clintonists before there was a Clinton.

Powell's great challenge has been to try and bring them on board, but it would have been an uphill battle no matter who was over there. They have been open in their contempt for Bush, they have not attempted to hide it. I doubt anything can be done about it with the present split in the Congress, but given a second term and a few more senators I would sanction an overhaul from the ground up. A good chunk of that deparment needs to be teaching junior college somewhere.

It will be difficult for us to occupy Kurdistan as quickly as we need to, but the primary objectives can be met another way. The oil fields can be seized with airborne troops. Thats what they are for. Heavier armor can follow from the south whenever they can get there. Likewise the need for a capping force to prevent an Iraqi retreat north can be handled by the air force from Incirlik along with that same airborne unit with perhaps the aid of Kurdish militia. That problem is do-able, Saddam can't retreat north.

We need to secure the north to make sure it doesn't become some kind of lawless enclave, but that is not something that has to happen in the first few days of the war. The Kurds themselves are already policing it, the Turks already have a small force there, and we have apparently already pre-positioned a force to take on the Al Qaedists that have settled along the border.

So this is annoying, but not fatal. The tanks and infantry floating in the Mediterranean could possibly be brought in via Jordan. The same $6 billion that was offered Turkey might be enough to cover the highway toll to bring them into Western Iraq. Its not exactly "northern" Iraq, but its a second front. It possible that we were already planning something like this, but quietly, and this situation will make it explicit, stealing the surprise element. But its still do-able.

And finally, on the issue of Kurdistan, I am fairly sympathetic to Kurdish aspirations. But not to PKK aspirations. You don't respond to a lovers quarrel with body blows, and you don't respond to a close tie vote in the Turkish parliament by seeking the dissollution of their country. Calls for an independent Kurdistan just to spite the Turks make pithy posts, but are not good policy.

The Kurds rightfully should have been given their own territory from the beginning, but this is now. If we do it right, Iraq becomes Kurdistan. Iraq has to be re-built as a free, or quasi-free, country, in which Kurds are free, as well as Arabs and Chaldeans and Turcs. Our challenge is to create, not a tiny Kurdish enclave in the north, but to extend the relative freedom they have created over the last 10 years to the whole country. "Free Kurdistan" should reach from Turkey to Kuwait, along with Free Arabstan etcetera.

I have no objection to Kurds carrying light weapons, I am after all a 2nd ammendment guy. But AntiAircraft weapons need to be in the hands of a formal military command. The reality is that such weapons are probably available on the black market, but we should be in the business of taking them off the market, not adding more merchandise to the market.