Quoth Brian Holtz: > And thanks for not defending the claim that in the > context of the Iraq civil war there is significant crossfire between > Kurds > and Turks.
Why should I defend it when I don't have to? The Center for Strategic and International Studies already has, in "Iraq's Insurgency and Civil Violence: Developments Through Late August 2007," noting cross-border shelling of villages in Iraqi Kurdistan by Turkish forces, the massing of Turkish forces on the Turkey/Iraq border, and the trend of insurgent operations (i.e. civil war battles) away from Anbar/Baghdad and toward Mosul, Kirkuk and other Kurdish areas. It's likely that the Turks are at least as involved in aiding Iraqi insurgent groups as Iran is, likely that that has resulted in US casualties, and unlikely that we'll get a very clear picture or accounting of the "crossfire" impact any time soon -- Turkey is a NATO member and putatively a US ally and the US wants to keep it that way; Iran is neither, and the Bush administration seems to be seeking a reason to expand the war in Iran's direction. Tom Knapp
