And the next...

And President Bush and General Petraeus have promised that U.S. soldiers will be coming home for Christmas.

The only troops coming home are going to be troops who were due to rotate out to begin with. Gen. McCaffery did an After-Action report in March 2007 where he foresaw that up to 9 Guard units would be called to action in Iraq in 2008. They are calling up 8 units. He states, very clearly, in the report that these 8 units will have their tours involuntarily extended at the last minute themselves.

Ok... next...

Our options seem to be limited to the following:

(1) Let the Turks attack and promise we'll stand back and not do anything.

This is actually the only real option we have.

(2) Lean on the Kurds to rein in their own PKK forces (at least for a while).

The Kurd's smell blood now that there are those in the American Congress who think partitioning Iraq is a good idea. They aren't going to be "reigned" in.

(3) Lean on the central Iraqi government (Maliki) to move some Iraqi forces up to the border region, both to stomp out the PKK and to prevent Turkey from crossing the border.

We can lean on Maliki, but, to do what? First, he has no Iraq forces - we disbanded them, remember? Second, he has no forces to stomp out the PKK even if we wanted him to do so, which we don't.

(4) Move American troops in to do the same job.

This isn't going to happen because Turkey is a NATO country and we aren't going to stop one NATO country from tracking down terrorists, which the PKK is formerly classified as by our own government, after we invaded Afghanistan AND Iraq under the same premise.

This is going to be another multi-post response as I read, post, then read some more. So, let's start:

- And now Turkey has pushed matters to the brink, passing a law in their parliament giving the Turkish government authority to conduct cross-border raids into Iraqi territory in "hot pursuit" raids of PKK fighters (Kurdish separatists or terrorists, depending on who you ask).

Actually, it isn't Turkey who is pushing it; they are merely pushing BACK.

During the reign of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds wanted to establish a Kurdistan. The problem is that they want to lop off the top part of Iraq AND part of eastern Turkey to do it. This is why the Kurds would be attacked from both sides (Saddam's forces and Turkish) whenever they left their little enclave in northern Iraq.

But, now that we've destabilized Iraq, the Kurd's believe they can now get their Kurdistan, so, they are stepping up their activities in Turkey. The problem is that as they run back into Iraq, they believe they can find an umbrella under our forces.

good post!
...Stan