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<P>Well, you knew that after the Turkish vote, this was coming:</P>
<P>"It may now be argued that, in order to shorten the period of hostilities
with Saddam Hussein and minimize casualties, the Iraqi border should be secured
from all directions. But the Turks do not propose to help guarantee this border
or to protect those who live within it. Rather, they propose to cross the
frontier for no better reason than to aggrandize themselves and to prolong the
subjection of their own Kurdish population. This doesn't just disgrace the
regime-change strategy. It actually destabilizes it. And it's humiliating to see
the president begging and bribing the Turks to do the wrong thing and to see
them in return reject his offer. He should take their ugly egotism and
selfishness as a compliment to his policy, cut off their aid, leave them to put
their own case to the European Union, and tell them to get out of Cyprus into
the bargain. Then we could be surer that we were really 'remaking' the
region."</P></DIV>
<DIV><<A
href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2079633/">http://slate.msn.com/id/2079633/</A>></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Now, I'm not one to look down upon critiques of the Turkish state,
primarily its military, but Hitch's timing seems, um, non-coincidental. During
the bombing of Serbia, I asked him how he could support Turkish pilots who were
taking a breather from slaughtering Kurds to pound Serbs, given that Turkey's
ethnic cleansing was far worse than Milosevic's. He muttered something about the
European Union having a say, and that the important thing was to "get the job
done." Now, ho ho, out comes the laundry list of Turkish crimes. He might have
mentioned Turkey's growing military alliance with Israel (Israel gets
a cameo in this column), but that could smear our loyal anti-terror ally
Sharon. And unless Israel begs off Bush's war, such won't be coming from our
humble correspondent.</DIV>
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<DIV>DP</DIV></BODY></HTML>