400 Turks fighting U.S. in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL (Moonie Times Comglomerate)

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050302-105707-1828r

ANKARA, Turkey -- Some 400 Turkish fighters from a group linked to al-Qaida are helping Iraqi insurgents battle U.S. forces, a report said Wednesday.

Turkish weekly Tambo quoted a spokesman from the Islamic group Yorosh as saying: "We do not carry out any activity in Turkey, but focus on American targets in Iraq."

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If America were ever invaded and occupied I would hope to hell we would be able to count on at least 400 Canadian fighters to drop down here to give us a hand.

[cliss]

1. Now THIS is news.

Interesting that we have not heard anything about this. Normally, the Pentagon and Don RumsFinished are very eager to point out the "foreign factions" of the "insurgency". RumsFailed has pointed out many times that the insurgents are for the most part "Saddam-era dead-enders", or foreign elements. Heaven forbid the IRAQIS themselves want the US out.

Curious that they're not mentioning these guys. Why not?

Do I detect a little sensitivity here? Is the US a little sensitive to Turkey's entangled involvement in this?

Answer = walking on thin ice.

After second-guessing and following this administration for 4+ years, I know how they operate. They're not so hard to figure out.

[Supersedeas]

2. but no hue and cry from Prof. Condi??

[Igel]

3. You won't hear of it because these would be foreign fighters,

connected with al-Qa'ida, that have crossed into Iraq to fight.

And they simply don't exist. Nope. Can't be. Not possible.

Or it could simply be Turkish nationalists trying to regain territory that was Turkish since before the Sumerians and which is still 129% Turkish, wrongly stripped from Turkey by the oppressive Westerners.

[Chicago Democrat]

6. WWI changed alot of things.

And Turkey was dismembered.

[Igel]

7. Yes. The Empire was dismembered.

And like all dismembered colonial empires, there were people caught on the wrong side of the borders when it collapsed. It's actually a bit worse with the Turks in N. Iraq because they didn't all emigrate from Turkey, many are just part of a larger migration stream that didn't make it to where the Turks succeeded in consolidating their rule, assimilating or expelling the previous inhabitants.

So it's not quite the same as with the Russians in Kazakhstan or the old Latino families in Colorado. Or even the Turks in Bulgaria.

But it was a colonial empire. A rotting and weak one, at the end.

[Chicago Democrat]

8. Some good things about the Ottomans....

The Caliphate system merged Islam and the state in a very non-threatening way for centuries it was a model of tolerance for Jewish and Christian minorities. Meanwhile in Spain, the inquisition killed and tortured Moors and Jews ruthlessly.

[Igel]

10. Never believe just what the victors say--

and most of our narrative on this point still comes from when the Ottomans were still around. The Balkan Slav's traditional hatred of the Turks has little to do with the benevolent, kind rule frequently attributed to the area. Also remember that many Turkish scholars are highly motivated to continue to have contact with Turkish scholars in country and access to Ottoman-era archives, which would be impeded were they to say things that those controlling access disapprove of. Russian scholars in the 1980s and before were similarly muted.

All was not well in Spain under the Moors--the Reconquista certainly entailed a "Conquista"--and not all was not peace and harmony in the Ottoman Empire. It was frequently better than in many places in Europe and in Arab lands, and while Jews were treated better in the Ottoman Empire than in Spain on the whole, let's not whitewash one to make the other appear the more black. There's a reason Spanish Jewish scholars wrote in Hebrew script even though the language used was Arabic, and it wasn't because the Moors were open minded. Many of the "human rights" improvements occurred late, after the Empire had suffered many defeats and outside pressure couldn't be dismissed with the wave of a hand, and were not uniformly applied.

[chaz4jazz]

4. I've wondered if we could 400 Americans to act here...

With our Ipod/cell phone culture of "me-ism" I wonder if we could get brave young people to attack occupiers orwhether they would only worry if their "Juicy" sweat pants were still available.

[RuleofLaw]

5. Exactly what does it mean to

be "connected to Al-Qaida"?

These are some of the phrases I hate:

"Linked to..."

"Connected to..."

"Part of..."

"Associated with..."

"Has ties to..."

These are meaningless phrases that only serve one purpose, which is to insert the big bad Al-Qaida, when talking about an organization.

Hell, even the CIA has been "linked" to Al-Qaida, but I don't hear that in the news: "Peter Goss was named director of the CIA, an organization which ones had ties to Al-Qaida..."

[lovuian]

9. There is no doubt of it Turkey wants those Kirkuk Oil fields!!!

they are so close and want US to fail so we are not only fighting Iraq but Turkey Syria and Iran!!!