Do you recall how we were trying to get Turkey in the coalition? Mega-billions in "aid".

The reason why we wanted Turkey in the coalition was that they border Iraq in the north. We wanted to launch an invasion from that area in conjunction with the attack from Kuwait. The offer of aid was an inducement to try to get the government to work with us. They didn't.

Do you recall how Egypt, Turkey and several other countries were on our side in GW1? same answer.

They also saw Saddam as a threat to destabilize the region, seeing as how he'd invaded Iran in the 1980s and Kuwait in 1990. Most of the price for GW1 was paid by Saudi Arabia, who was being threatened by Saddam and who was on the receiving end of a lot of Scud attacks.

One of your arguments against France and Russia's oppostion to the war was the loss of their oil contracts (never mind that they would never have collected). Is it so far fetched, especially with that mind-set, that throwing a couple of oil-development carrots that way would not work?

In many ways, the government of France is a bunch of whores willing to sell anything to anyone. They were the ones that built Saddam's nuclear program in the late 1970s/early 1980s. They, along with the Soviet Union, sold Iraq almost all of their weapons, reportedly up to a few months before the invasion last year in violation of the international arms embargo. Actually, comparing France to whores is an unjustified insult to the whores.

Bush hasn't got a hope of getting more countries to sign up. Kerry may have.

On the other hand, given how Kerry has insulted the nations that actually are supporting us, we may well see some of them leave if Kerry is elected. A week or so ago, 3 Polish troops were killed in Iraq. Were they part of the coherced or bribed, or were they just fraudulent?