SDAI-Tech1 made the following comments:

>The communists and agitators have done an
>expert job at attempting to cost the US more
>lives. All encouraged by France and Germany
>whom we can never forgive.

There has been a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey mainly because their economy is so fouled up. The current party running the Turkish parliament has used religious demagoguery in the past. Unfortunately the Turks have a legitimate beef against the US in that their economic troubles started shortly after the last war against Saddam and never really recovered. However the Turks have to be reasonable. The US is spending heaps of money in this process of getting rid of Saddam. I doubt what ever oil concessions we get from the next Iraqi regime will recover our costs for this war and the last one against Saddam.

Concerning the French and Germans: The French have been behaving badly for decades. Their extreme misbehavior with the Osirak nuclear reactor never received an adequate response. After the dust has settled, we need to carefully reexamine our relationship with the French. The Germans are more complicated. Germany's legacy of World War II, de-Nazification, years of being on the receiving end of Soviet Cold War Agit-Prop followed by reunification with a failed ex-Soviet client state has left Germany partially brain damaged. The Green Party is bogus to its very core while the politics of the SPD were out-of-date in the 1980s. The Germans need time to get this poison worked out of their system. Once the Germans get their act together, I'd like to see them replace the French as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council (I think ultimately the Germans would do a much better job there than the French). For the time being, treat the Germans like they just got wacked in the head with a baseball bat. They'll snap out of it eventually.

>I would hate to see an airborne paratroop
>scenario alone into the north and I doubt we
>can utilize Jordan or Syria.

Syria is not an option. Jordan is an option. However our equipment would have to pass over Israel to get to Jordan. By the time we sorted out a deal with Jordan, we would have timed out for a Spring offensive against Saddam. If Turkey flakes out, our only option is to haul all the equipment from the Turkish coast to Kuwait and invade Iraq from a single front (a very bad idea).

Gary