After the recent rejection of a measure to allow US ground troops to attack Iraq from the north via Turkey, a Turkish politician said something like, "Today Turkey voted for peace." (Sorry, didn't keep the link)

Well, no, that's not what your vote meant, sir.

There will still be a war. You just voted for a different one.

Here's what it does mean, unless you guys change your minds in a skinny instant:

A) You will not get the six billion dollars we were going to give you, and another twenty billion or so in loans. (At least one pundit has suggested we spend the money on a new aircraft carrier. I like that idea, and suggest we name it the CVN Todd Beamer) You needed that money, and here's why:

After GWI, the Turkish economy tanked, going from a growth rate of 9.5% before the war to a mere .5%. Tourism plummeted. (Contrary to most right-wing op-ed pages, in this case Turkey was not being a "checkbook ally" but in fact looking for help with the real economic damage that GWII would cause.)

You now make money by charging duties on the oil Iraq ship though the pipelines under the food-for-oil program. You're about to lose that, at least for a while.

B) The last war caused a flood of Kurdish refugees into Turkey. With the US army coming down from the north, much of this flood would have stopped. Now, if we attack only from the south, there's a chance the Iraqi army will retreat to the north, pushing a wave of civilians ahead of them. Better hope that they decide to surrender in place.

C) You just lost most of the juice you had to control what goes on in northern Iraq after the war, and greatly increased the odds of an independent Kurdish state coming into being. This will mean all manner of troubles for you with your ethnic Kurds. And guess what? The US will be far more sympathetic to allow those minorities to join in the new Kurdistan.

D) The US will now be forced to begin this war with our second or third choice operational plan. If there are additional casualties because of this, on either side we will be a long time forgetting this. If for example, the Iraqis are able to launch chemical rocket attacks on the Kurds because our guys couldn't get in there fast enough to stop them, some fingers are going to be pointing in your direction. Some of those fingers will be attached to people who will be saying that you might have even wanted it that way. The Kurds are a thorny problem for you, aren't they?

E) Allowing the US forces to sweep in from the north would greatly increase the odds that we'll get to the oil fields there before the Iraqis have a chance to torch or destroy them. If they do, your pipeline revenues will be forestalled for that much longer.

F) Forget about the US using it's influence with either the IMF or the EU on your behalf.

I understand that you are a democracy, and that a majority of the people are against the war. I suspect that most of them are against the war due to their memories of the adverse effects of GWI on your nation. How ironic that in voting as you did, you made it all but certain that those same effects will revist the Turks, and rejected the aid and political support that could have prevented it.

UPDATE: Seems the Turkish people, at least the ones that run the financial markets, get it. The know what a economic toll this will take on the economy. The Turkish stock exchange plummeted 11% in one day.

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As advertised, I attended the "Pro-America" rally in downtown Houston today. As I predicted, the turnout was much larger than the peace march of a few weeks ago. The organizers, two local talk radio stations, claim eight to ten thousand folks attended. That frankly, seems a bit high. I asked a mounted cop what he thought, and he guesstimated five or six thousand. The peace march folks claimed three thousand, real world observers put it at 1500, tops.

The rally today might have been even bigger, but they quit letting folks into Jones Plaza, as it was just too crowded. I got there right at noon, and almost didn't get in. They were, as we used to say in the Corps, packed asshole to bellybutton.

The crowd was predominantly middle to upper middle class, well-behaved, and unabashedly patriotic. I saw several folks literally wearing the flag. Lots of Viet vets in their old uniforms. Uniformly well-behaved, and lot of families with young kids.

You can see pics here, here, here, and here.

I had to choose between carrying a camera, or my signs, so opted for the signs. I had three, the most popular of which was this one...

I must have seen dozens of folks bust out laughing when they saw it, and had many requests to hold it up so people could take a pic of it.

Another one that people also liked was this one...

But I think you had to be old enough to remember the Viet Nam War protests to really get that one.

Finally, I had this one, though as it turns out I barely used it...

All I can draw is a line in the sand and hasty conclusions, so I had Cookoff Girl make them for me. She gets all the props. :-)

The signs look much better than these pics, which are actually vidcaps, as my digital is on the blink - for some unknown reason, when you press the shutter button, nothing happens.

Anyway, back to the rally...

I have two major observations. First, the speakers sucked. It seem that the art of addressing a live audience is a dying art. Some lady from the DAR started off by saying she wouldn't be speaking long. In case you've never heard, speakers that begin by saying they'll be brief never are. Brief speakers just get on with it without that announcement - that's part of the reason they're brief.

Chris Baker and Pat Gray were the best speakers of a bad lot. They are the morning and evening talk radio hosts for the station KPRC that organized the event.

Infamously conservative Congressman Tom Delay spoke, and while the crowd seemed to like it, I thought his speech was rather bland. Given the size and ideological enthusiasm of the crowd, he coulda/shoulda had them going like holy rollers listening to Billy Sunday. I don't know what got him to where he is, but it sure wasn't rhetoric.

And then there was Sheila...

Sheila Jackson Lee, a member of the house from the Houston area, has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush and GWII. She voted against the resolution to use force last fall, and introduced a measure to repeal that resolution a few monsth ago. She was a staunch defender of Clinton during his impeachment.

The radio station, billing this as a "Rally For America" had invited both ends of the spectrum to attend. Lee, well-known as publicity hound, (Bush pointedly ignored her oustretched hand as he made his way down the aisle at the last SOTU) chose to attend, arriving late, with a escort of HPD officers to trundle her through the crowd and up onto the stage. As one of the other speakers was running late, the organizers offered her a chance to speak.

Heh.

In it's official account of the rally, the Houston Chronicle said she was "was greeted with some boos."

Yeah. And King Kong was a monkey.

Why'd she get booed so harshly? Well, it's one thing to be a liberal, it's another to be one like this, and her reputation does precede her.

I have to give her credit for moxie, though. She stood up there for maybe five minutes, spitting out her speech into the storm of defiance that rose up from the crowd, drowning out her words despite the best efforts of the PA system. Between the boos, hisses, and chants of "USA!" and "BUSH!BUSH!BUSH!" I couldn't hear anything she had to say. I read later it was some standard palaver about how she loved the country, and respected our opinions even though we disagree, blah-blah-blah.

Despite that, though, I did not hear a single obscenity or insult directed at her, or any threats of violence. A few of the local media made hay by mentioning that she was escorted out by Houston police, the implication being she was in danger.

Well, of course she was escorted out, as she was in. So was Tom Delay - it's SOP for politicos at big functions like that.

I've no doubt that had anyone even looked like they were about to harm her, any bystanders would have taken the idiot down.

That didn't keep her from getting an earful, though. :-)

Not that it seems to have changed her mind. The very next day, while speechifying in a local church, she was quoted as saying:

"We have lost if we go to war."

Heh. Wanna bet?

For another blogger's version of the rally, go read Laurence Simon's account over at Amish Tech Support.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention this yesterday - after her speech, SJL headed off to the side to get some camera time with the local news crews. As soon as the cameras snapped off, she bustled off into her chauffeur-driven vehicle, a, you guessed it, big black SUV.

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This Saturday there will be a "Pro-America" rally in downtown Houston, courtesy of a few local talk-radio stations. There will be speakers, live bands, a fly-over, etc.

I wager that it will draw far more folks than the peace demonstration that we had here a few weeks back. The organizers of that rally claimed 3,000 marchers, other sources said it was more like 1,500-2,000, max. Pretty thin turnout for a city with a SMSA of over four million.

In related news, the Houston City Council today rejected two different resolutions condemning the war, saying that they had more appropriate business to attend to - that is, running the city.

I've been contemplating the signs I'll be making. So far, I've come up with:

"Bomb Saddam!"

"Freedom - It's For Brown People, Too!"

"Genocide is Bad For Children & Other Living Things"

However...

Events may overtake the demonstration.

Consider:

A) Gen. Tommy Franks has left Tampa, his peacetime HQ, for the HQ we built in Qatar to manage this war. Franks, for those of you that don't keep up with this stuff, is the man in charge of fighting the war. He won't be fighting it from Tampa, even though he easily could. It's Just Not Done.

B) This weekend will be moonless - considered the best time for our forces, as it allows us to use our superior night-fighting capability. There won't be another like it before the weather gets hotter than we would like it to be.

C) The Iraqi Republican Guard units have left their normal bases and are taking up their previously prepared defensive positions in and around Baghdad and Tikrit.

D) US troops of the 3rd Division are assembling in Turkey even as I write this, as we've cut the deal with the Turks.

E) Turkey and Russia are rapidly evacuating their diplomats and dependents from Baghdad. Turkey and Iran have closed their borders with Iraq, and Iran is mobilizing troops along it. They join many other nations (Spain, Japan, Malaysia, et. al.) that have already closed their missions or severely cut back their staffs

F) US warplanes are now hitting Iraqi missile units, in addition to the normal command and control and anti-air radars. Iraq has been attempting to move these surface-to-surface missiles and rocket launchers to within range of the troop buildups in Kuwait - the US aircraft are playing Whack-A-Mole with them. The attacks today were the most extensive since last November.

So, will it be this weekend? Conventional wisdom has been pointing to mid-March, and they could very well be right. But it looks like it could go in the next few days.

I'd sure like for this to be the last post I ever have to write about it. Further debate is useless, as by now, everybody's mind is already made up about whether or not this war is a just one, and all we're doing at this point is aggravating each other, reciting the same old stuff for the zillionth time.

The Iraqi people are sure hoping so.

You know, I didn't see any Iraqis at the peace marches. You'd think that since it was their freinds and relatives that are supposedly going to die in droves when we invade, they'd be right up there in front. So, where were all the media reports about Iraqi ex-pats against this war?

(crickets chirping)

Wonder what they know that A.N.S.W.E.R., MoveOn, Win Without War, and assorted Hollywood actors don't?

Freedom Is For Brown People, Too.

UPDATE: Monday, 3 March, 2003, 09:00 CST

The Turks have failed to pass the parlimentary resolution that would allow US ground troops to attack from their soil. This must have really turned the war plans into a compleat clusterfuck, since a good bit of the troops and light equipment had already landed. Now what do they do? Get back on the ships? Drive to Jordan? Some logistics officers gotta be tearing their hair out about now. This has to have pushed the date back at least a few days, probably as much as a week.

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