posted March 23, 2003 at 11:22 a.m. MDTThe US master-plan may have been shot in the heel ... how long does it take to 1) get forward stationned assets to back out of Turkey and returned to ship-board, 2) all ships across the Med, through the Canal, up and around to Southern Iraq, where they would be 3) joined by troops still waiting state-side, and then .... holy geezus, the hard cutting head is at the butt of the spear, and (what?) two weeks behind schedule.
The disposition of Turkish troops in Northern Iraq is .... unspectacular? The tangle of denials and assertions and statement and retraction seems to me explainable by a pressured collaboration of disinformation along the lines of "Well, we don't like it and we don't want to solidify the situation by stating it, but it's more or less what we've been putting up with to date so at least for the moment, stet." This tangle can trip those who walk with their nose in the air.
