In the Washington Post, this morning:
ISTANBUL, Oct. 14 — The commander of Turkey’s armed forces warned that U.S.-Turkish military relations will be irreparably damaged if the U.S. House of Representatives approves a resolution accusing his country of genocide in the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago, according to an interview published Sunday. “If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again,” Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told the daily newspaper Milliyet in the interview… The United States is clearly an important ally,” Buyukanit said. “But an allied country does not behave in this way.”
Bush administration officials and U.S. military leaders who oppose the resolution say they fear Turkey could limit crucial air and land supply lines into Iraq as punishment if the measure is accepted by the full House of Representatives.
…
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reaffirmed that the resolution would be called to the floor this week…
Ralph Peters explained the impact of the resolution and what is behind it, yesterday, in the New York Post:
Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it’s always been defeated — in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.
That’s what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn’t about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It’s a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals. The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won’t be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.
The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we’d be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.
It’s a brilliant ploy — the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they’re responding to their Armenian-American constituents — while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yesterday (as quoted by the Washington Post):
“There’s never been a good time” for the measure, Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that when she entered Congress 20 years ago, “it wasn’t the right time because of the Soviet Union. Then that fell, and then it wasn’t the right time because of the Gulf War I. And then it wasn’t the right time because of overflights of Iraq. And now it’s not the right time because of Gulf War II. And, again, the survivors of the Armenian genocide are not going to be with us.”
When Bill Clinton was President, Speaker Hastert supported a Democrat in the Oval Office because, “it wasn’t the right time because of overflights of Iraq,” while Saddam Hussein continued the genocide against his own people. Yet Democrat Pelosi apparently says today’s atrocities be damned — there is an election here next year and a Republican currently occupies the White House. Evidently, she wants to undermine the diplomatic efforts of this and future Presidents (regardless of their political party) and will attempt to pass a resolution in the House that promotes the ethnic slaughters in Iraq.
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