No more blackmail

AU, could you copy/paste that story, I quit nytimes.com at the same as I quit afuss... and I just can't remember which password goes with what site!

bigdice
Much too long a story to cut and paste. However, all you would need do is Bring up New York times on the web. It is on the front page. No subscription or password needed. In essence Turkey will bleed the US for all the money it can before it helps us with the effort in Iraq. The rest of the world thinks we are an open cash register for them. It is high time we put a padlock on it.

Tell me about it! Poland will get EUR4 billion in subsidies, just for becoming an EU-member... And Turkey always wants money... or weapons, or both!

Errrr......ummm.... do we seriously think that countries like US loan money to countries like Poland/Turkey *just* out of the goodness of their hearts, without expecting something in return ???

And Poland buys 48 F16s(a 3,5 billion euro deal). And all the new NATO-members will have to modernise their army. And guess where they buy their army equipement?

How the US forced Poland to buy F16s

Poland could have bought Eu-manufactured fighters! There is enuff warindustry here in Europe too! Only have they been selling to rogue states for too long... They should've stopped doing that at the time that U.S. said that these guys are a no-no.

Gautam
Indeed we want the money to buy something. Friends and allies. It is time that we learned that friendship and allies cannot be bought. How many times have we been "left at the altar"

No more oil and dollar imperialism.


No more handy terrorists roaming around the country and taking flying lessons while being followed by FBI.


If that includes the administration of the drug AZT to black Africa, I'm for it.


Or legalize them, incorporate them into everyday communities, give them jobs, let them participate. Educate them into the American way of life.


Read: divert ten percent of the defense budget to education and social funding. Get the oil barons out of the White House=avoid fake terrorism. Much nicer. Also, see Clinton-Gore's golden surplus. Seems like prehistory now. Why?


YES! And implement these technologies immediately in the car industry, to avoid a desastrous global warming. Problem: the oil and weapons lobbies will have nothing left to conquer, oil industry will shrink. They've seized power over the US exactly to avoid that. Get the picture? They're using your money to fulfill their private agenda. They don't give a rat's behind about democracy or the constitution. That's where it's at. Compassionate conservatism is a total lie. It exists, but not in the Bush lexicon.


Already in place. CIA.


Very good idea. Get those thousands of US troops out of Europe now! Communism and nazism are dead - well, in Europe anyway.

Plus ça change,
Plus c'est la meme chose

The more things change
the more they stay the same

Wolf - well said <applause>

Dollar Diplomacy
After taking a hard look at the poker game being played by President Bush and Saddam Hussein, Turkey, in effect, told Mr. Bush this week to ante up $32 billion if he wants Ankara to take a seat at the table. That's serious money and the demand, which Washington is pondering, says a great deal about the tradeoffs taking place beneath all the lofty arguments about going to war with Iraq. The business of lining up reluctant governments to provide bases and support for possible military action is not exactly an exercise in Wilsonian idealism.

Should the confrontation with Iraq come to war, American military operations would be greatly aided by an invading force from Turkey. But that doesn't make the bargaining any prettier. It undercuts Washington's repeated assertions that the showdown with Iraq is about the defense of great principles and the advancement of democracy in the Middle East. With no agreement reached yesterday, Ankara has put off parliamentary action and Washington is threatening to divert troops and supplies headed for Turkey to the Persian Gulf.

Turkey's role is important, and not just because it shares a border with Iraq. Turkey is also a model of the kind of secular Muslim democracy Washington says it favors for Iraq and the wider Middle East. In the administration's efforts to line up Turkish support, it risks trampling on the very values America claims to be fighting for.

Turkey's elected leaders know that most Turks strongly oppose war with Iraq. They also know that they need Washington's help to revive their economy, press for European Union membership and stave off challenges from Turkey's coup-prone generals. They hope that a big enough economic package could make support for the war more palatable at home. The 1991 Persian Gulf war cost Turkey billions of dollars in lost trade, shut down a lucrative oil pipeline and left Ankara temporarily sheltering a million Iraqi Kurdish refugees.

Washington's bargaining with Ankara also has a Kurdish dimension, and it's a rather cynical one. Turkish leaders fear that war in Iraq could fuel demands for an independent Kurdish state, among Turkish as well as Iraqi Kurds. Iraq's Kurds now enjoy de facto autonomy, while Turkey's much larger Kurdish population still faces harsh restrictions. The Bush administration is unwisely considering a plan to allow thousands of Turkish soldiers to move into areas of Kurdish-ruled northern Iraq behind advancing American troops. Washington has a long and shameful history of encouraging Iraqi Kurds to fight Baghdad and then abandoning them to their foes. Doing so again would be a poor start on constructing a more just and democratic Iraq.

Turkey is entitled to seek economic compensation. But pledging $32 billion to a single country could make this the most expensive alliance ever bought. Turkey would want financial guarantees even in a war against Iraq endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Without such endorsement, and the change in Turkish public opinion it would likely bring, the price of Ankara's participation could prove exorbitant.