Turkey signals it may invade Iraq

This is one of the nightmare scenarios that Bush was warned about, and that he ignored, when he decided to trick the American people into supporting the Iraq war.

Turkey invades from the northwest to quell the Kurds, and Turkey just so happens to stay and annex northern Iraq so that Turkey never has to worry about the Kurds declaring an independent homeland. Then just watch what the Shias do in the south, or even possibly the Sunnis in the middle, once they see northern Iraq basically secede. And oh yeah, I can't wait to see what Iran does with regards to southern Iraq and the Shias - will Iran help foment a move for independent there too?

We are now moving beyond civil war, and into total disintegration of the country. And Bush knew all of this was coming - hell, I'd studied this "Iraq disintegrates into 3 states" scenario in grad school twenty years ago, it wasn't a big secret - and Bush simply didn't care. He invaded anyway, he screwed up the entire war, and now we're in danger of splintering the Middle East and getting a key NATO ally into a major war.

And by the way, remember that little tiff Bush had with Turkey leading up to the Iraq war? Bush finally decided we didn't need Turkey's help invading northern Iraq at the time. Well, three years later Turkey may be teaching Bush a much-deserved lesson in what happens when you screw your friends and tell them you don't need them. They screw you back at a time and place of their choosing.

And finally, if Turkey forces us to revise our entire Iraq strategy and redeploy forces to the north to quell whatever Kurdish uprising is taking place, that will de facto hurt whatever efforts we are currently making in the rest of Iraq to quell the situation there. It's not like we have men to spare in the rest of the country. So, we either need EVEN MORE troops in Iraq now, or Bush's screw-up with Turkey is going to put our forces, and security, at risk everywhere else in Iraq.

How many different ways can we pay a price for George Bush's incompetence? And the Republicans want the fall congressional elections to be a referendum on the Iraq war? Make my day.