Iraq War: The possibilities for spillover

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

And what happens if the Kurds break with the rest of Iraq?  One potentially very serious spillover effect could be conflict with Turkey.

I also found this an intriguing report dealing with the PKK, a guerrilla group based in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, one which is on the US list of terrorist organizations:

These days, most PKK militants are based at semi-clandestine camps inside northern Iraq. The Kurdish regime there says it deplores their presence, but is doing nothing to force them out. This outrages the Turks. During the 1990s they regularly sent army units to attack the PKK inside Iraq. Now that Iraq is under American military occupation, they can no longer conduct these operations. Nor are the Americans, tied down as they are in Iraq, willing to attack PKK strongholds themselves. Turks are watching American and Iraqi Kurd tolerance of the PKK in Iraq with rising frustration. (Kurds in Turkey: The Big Change by Stephen Kinzer New York Review of Books 12/14/05; 01/12/06 issue; my emphasis)

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05