It's all Turkey's fault:

A new theme appears to be emerging to excuse the problems in Iraq. It's Turkey's fault. Consider:

From PBS's News Hour (6 May 2004) (emphasis added)

LAWRENCE KORB: .... When Gen. Shinseki under pressure from Sen. Levin were testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee said you need several hundred thousand troops to guarantee security after Saddam fell, he was disparaged publicly by Rumsfeld ...

JIM LEHRER: What about that, Rumsfeld has more on his negative plate than just what happened in the prison?

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Keep in mind not only would the state and CIA not cooperate in training the Iraqis, as I said, but also the Turks didn't cooperate in letting the 4th Division through. They would have had 25 percent more forces right there and an anvil on which the hammer of the 3rd Division and others could have broken a lot of the Sunni Baathists who were resisting still in Fallujah. It wasn't Rumsfeld's fault that the Turks decided not to go that way.

From a Weekly Standard essay by Tom Donnelly (emphasis added)

To make progress ... we need to have really conquered the so-called Sunni Triangle. But this goal was beyond the imagination of the war plan and beyond the abilities of the invasion force. We can only speculate what effect the 4th Infantry Division might have had if the Turks had permitted an attack through northern Iraq.

posted by Quiddity at 5/08/2004 08:17:00 AM