MARCH 30 2003

COMMITMENTS

Shaterra Davis, IF/OF, RBI Monarchs, to Bethune-Cookman

GIROUARD WINS 900TH

LSU head coach Yvette Girouard won her 900th game Saturday when her Tigers beat Alabama 4-3.  LSU lost the other game 7-2.  Girouard is one of only six active NCAA Division I coaches with 900 wins, and one of only nine coaches in any NCAA division to reach that milestone.  Girouard in a statement praised the “great players, great assistants and great parents” who made the career possible.

CAN SPY PICK ‘EM

Maybe it’s the long association with women/girls sports, but SPY picked the wrong team in every men’s regional final, but, picked the winners in the women’s contests.

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

Having decided to forsake further comment on the war, I 

am gratified, and deeply touched, by the messages from so many readers, urging me to continue my essays, musings, etc., on major issues, including the war.  Ergo, my piece on Turkey .

OUR TURKISH ALLY

I do not know whether President Bush and his Council devised the correct war plan, or whether that plan is on track or failing and in need of change.  But, I do take exception to the front page article in Saturday’s Washington Post, reprising its theme that Bush et al bungled the diplomatic campaign with respect to Turkey .  The Post claims (this article really belonged on the editorial page) that Bush et al misread the Turks.  Nonsense.  The USA offered the Turks $6 billion to use their frontier as a staging point for a northern invasion of Iraq – and obviously the failure to acquire the staging point has forced a recalculation of the plan.  But, no one misread the Turks.  They demanded $26 billion – this from a NATO ally.  It seems that they were worried about unrest among their Kurdish minority, and worried about alienating fellow Muslims.  However, for $26 billion, those concerns could be allayed.  That’s blackmail, and Bush is the first President in my memory who did not knuckle under to Turkish blackmail – which has a long history of success with the USA .  Much like the aid ratio which compels us to give X amount to Egypt for every Y amount we give to Israel , we have to proportion aid to Turkey in ratio to our aid to Greece .  Why?  Because Turkey is a NATO ally, and during the Cold War, our military experts believed we would need Turkey as a front line of defense against the Soviet Union .  This arrangement was not based on a commonality of interest; we paid for this commitment. Moreover, there are Easter Bunny worshipers in the State Department who have believed for half a century they can achieve Turkish and Greek rapprochement on Cyprus .  I used to write an annual intelligence report on financial crime, which I am proud to say was the journal of reference on this issue.  When I named Cyprus as the gateway through which the Balkans bad guys were moving their money, with Turkish assistance, I came under intense pressure to amend the report, and was reviled by the Turks and Cypriots for besmirching their good offices. I refused. Many people remember the French Connection, thanks to the movie of that name.  But, it was really a Turkish-French connection, because the opium poppy was cultivated, harvested and processed into opium tar in Turkey , shipped to Marseilles and refined into heroin for trans-shipment to the United States .  Diplomatic efforts having failed, we bribed them with aid for alternative agriculture and other inducements.  Turkey banned cultivation.  But, it never really stopped.  A compromise was reached:  Turkey ’s illicit opium would now be licit opium and Turkey became one of the very few authorized sellers of raw opium to the US pharmaceutical market. It was like dry Oklahoma going wet; the bootleggers just hung out shingles.  Even though Turkey had not a single plant for converting raw opium, it was given almost half the quota.  Much of the rest of the quota was assigned to India , a very small part reserved for other licit producers.  Without blinking an eye, the State Department, DEA and the White House effectively snuffed long-time licit producers in the Netherlands and elsewhere.  I tried for years to break that quota, during my service as special assistant for international narcotics control.  In particular, I thought the market share for Australia , a proven ally, should be expanded, in part because they have the most sophisticated, technologically advanced system which produces the purest codeine phosphate, morphine etc.  I was shot down by entrenched commercial interests who had led the campaign to give India and Turkey predominant shares.  I accused the head of one US conglomerate of wearing rubber pockets in his pants so he could steal soup from the poor.  The system didn’t make sense then, nor does it today.  India is the world’s largest producer of licit opium, yet it imports millions of dollars of critically needed pharmaceuticals, largely supported by US and British assistance.  I argued in New Delhi with Indian leaders to make drugs for their own people, among the world’s poorest.  But, there was no profit in serving their own people.  Better that such insufficient medication as they received should come from foreign sources.  The Indian system dates back to the Raj.  Ever see the LaBrea tar pits?  Opium tar is stored in swimming pool size pits in India , constantly stirred by men with long poles.  One fell into a vat; no effort was made to recover the body.  Back to my main point.  Turkey is a paid companion.  ‘Nuff said.

An Historical Perspective

All that land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was known as Mesopotamia until the First World War, at which time it was part of the Ottoman Empire, which encompassed not only present-day Turkey, but extended far south to include Baghdad, Basra, Damascus, Jerusalem and Cairo.  Because of the vital economic importance of the Suez Canal , Britain had long hoped to break up the Ottoman Empire and dislodge the Turks in particular from these strategic cities.  Churchill’s ill-begotten plan to capture Constantinople died with thousands of Australians and New Zealanders who were annihilated by the Turks at Gallipoli.  A young British intelligence officer stationed in Cairo convinced the British High Command to ally with the various Arab tribes, which he proposed to meld into a cohesive force, with a guarantee of Arab independence.  Enter Lawrence of Arabia .  The Arabs had suffered grievously under dominance by the Turks, an unusually cruel people renowned historically for barbarism.  Thus, spurred by visions of independence and vengeance, the desert tribes were all too willing to kill Turks, which became a parallel to the war in Europe .  Lawrence did not know that, two years before the decisive battles against the Turks, Britain and France had agreed on how to carve up the Middle East , the French controlling Lebanon and Syria , much of the rest falling under the British mandate.  To appease the Arabs at the 1919 conference in London , Britain installed Prince Faisal as king of what became Iraq and his brother was made king of the Trans-Jordan.  If it can be said that the seeds of World War II were sown at the Versailles conference, it is also true that much of the political unrest in the Middle East was assured by the decisions in London in 1919.  Today of course much of the Arab world despises the United States – a factor which long predates the current war in Iraq – partly but not exclusively because of our ties to Israel .  Arab public opinion ignores the fact that Western powers lifted the yoke of Ottoman rule, eventually leading to their independence.  Of course, it is also useful to remember that a substantial base of the current Iraqi army was provided by the United States when Henry Kissinger decided to tilt toward Iraq in its war with Iran .  Politics has always made strange bedfellows in the Middle East , where allegiances are short-term, and tribal feuds are forever.  (For a better understanding of how the Great Powers and these tribes have been in conflict for many decades, find a copy of Lawrence ’s book, the Seven Pillars.)

From a Reader:

Did you hear that all the KMarts and WalMarts in Iraq are closing for the weekend?  They re-open on Monday as Targets.

End

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