Word: iraqi
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Strip away the varnish that President Bush will apply when he addresses the nation Thursday night, and the truth about Iraq is grim. Four and a half years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a war that has cost America thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars is nowhere near a satisfactory conclusion...
...groups with which the U.S. is cooperating in Anbar are not only outside of the Iraqi government; they are actively opposed to it, seeing it as a Shi'ite entity beholden to Iran. Such cooperation helps deal with the problem of al-Qaeda in Iraq - a brutal presence, to be sure, but still a minority element in the overall Sunni insurgency - but it doesn't necessarily reinforce national reconciliation...
...hired the Republican lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith and Rogers to get American backing (though he subsequently tried to create some illusion of distance by having his political party technically hire the firm). The subtext of Allawi's message is, who cares about democracy and the will of the Iraqi people? I'm Washington's man, not Tehran's. Never mind that Allawi has little support among Iraqis...
Weapons issued to Iraqi security forces are starting to show up in Turkey, finding their way into the hands of Turkish Kurdish separatists and criminals. Most recently, a van with 660 pounds was found in Ankara on September 11, possibly meant to be detonated on September 12, the twenty-seventh anniversary of a Turkish military coup. The Turkish generals are counting on things getting worse in Iraq, with more chaos spilling across the border into Turkey. Erdogan told them he can work with the Iraqi Regional Kurdish Government to staunch the smuggling, as well as close down Kurdish separatist bases...
...generals have heard it all before; they know Erdogan cannot deliver. No one can do anything about Iraq. The generals also know that whether Maliki stays or goes, the Iraqi government cannot exert control over its armed forces and police, enough at least to secure Turkey's border. But this is not the point - a failing Iraq is mounting justification to unseat Erdogan...