Gen: Turkish Pullout Had Been Planned

Associated Press

Mar 1st, 2008 | ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Turkey's top general said the country's troop withdrawal from Iraq had nothing to do with U.S. calls to keep the cross-border campaign against Kurdish rebels as short as possible, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said withdrawal had already begun when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked on Thursday for a quick end to Turkey's military operation in northern Iraq against separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, Milliyet newspaper reported. Announcing the pullout then would have been a security risk, the general was quoted as saying.

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So which one is trying to save face?

Buyukanit who was saying "The US can't boss us around?"

Or Gates, who was saying: "We're the US and we can tell people what to do -- especially in our own private war?"

Or both?

The Kurds are finding out what the American Cherokee and others learned happens when the bullies in the playground find out there's oil under your land.

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