Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Now, now, Carl. You never said that the Turks would continue to delay. Your exact words were, and I quote, "There's not a snowball's chance in hell the Turks sign up for this"."
I did say that there's not a snowball's chance in HELL that Turkey will sign up for a US attack on Iraq. I still say it. And the way that Turkey does this is not by saying "no" to the US, but instead by constantly putting off saying yes. For example:
Bilow, January 27, 2003
What has gone on in Turkey is consistent with my prediction that we would get no real assistance from them, but instead just delay, delay, delay. That is, there is no reason for Turkey to fully piss off the US by saying "NO" directly. Instead, they will use the usual expedient of saying "sure, but later". #reply-18497343
I'll update the reserves figures later. That I was wrong that the Bush administration would back down before running up the reserves figure is due only to my overestimating their intelligence. The events of this past weekend have convinced more people that Bush will be forced to back down, making the call up of the reserves a political, economic and diplomatic disaster.
What Bush should have done was to simply declare a victory back in November and have done with it. Instead, the path he's chosen has been disastrous for the US.
The fact is that now it's February 15th, and still (1) no sign of an ultimatum from Bush, and (2) very little sign of allies willing to fight on our side.
-- Carl
P.S. And by the way, did you notice that those Palestinians that Sharon was going to bring to heel 2 years ago just blew up another Merkava? Some victory. |
