Free Republic

link only

February 2003 War as A Machine to Print Money Turkey’s Billion Dollar Poker over Stationing U.S. Troops. Can the USA forgo an offensive from the north, and, therefore Turkey, in a war against Iraq? While the answer to the question is "yes and no" in opinion of experts, in the background Ankara is stubbornly playing poker with Washington over a hefty one billion dollar aid package - money which Turkey would like to have to balance its economic losses in a war in neighboring Iraq . Indeed, Washington is prepared to ease Turkish losses financially as a return service for...

ATTACKERS opened fire on a group of senior Kurdish figures, killing a political leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and two others, a party military commander said. The commander blamed Islamic extremists from the Ansar al-Islam organisation for the attack last night on General Shawkat Haji Mushir, a member of the political leadership of the party, which controls the eastern section of the Kurdish autonomous region of northeast Iraq. Sheik Jaffar Mustafa, PUK military commander of the nearby town of Halabja said the three attackers also killed Hekmat Osman, PUK security chief of the Sirwan district, and Sardar Qafoor,...