Current events

Another useful resource this week: the BBC’s reporter diaries. The Agonist is also good — Sean-Paul is doing a good job of keeping up with the news. His head will explode within days, no doubt.

Turkey has OKed US overflight, finally. There was a lot of back and forth about this, mostly related to whether or not the US was going to let Turkish troops into Northern Iraq. Turkey wants to make sure the Kurds don’t form their own state, and will do so by force as necessary. No word as to what the final deal was, but Turkey reasserted that it would send troops in after they announced they’d open airspace. That’s not good.

Coalition troops… a side note. I’m going to say coalition, because there is a coalition, which consists for practical purposes of the US, the UK, and Australia. I don’t want to use the word “Allies” for this purpose, because I think it has the wrong connotations. So if you want to mentally add “small” every time I say “coalition,” go right ahead.

Anyhow, coalition troops are more or less moving freely through Southern and Western Iraq. This isn’t a surprise. The serious resistance, if there is any, will come nearer Baghdad. The advance did get bogged down at Nassiriya, where there was strong enough resistance to, well, bog down the advance. Unsurprisingly, Iraqi soldiers turn out to be more interested in fighting back on their home soil — this has not been the kind of wholescale rout we saw in Gulf War I.

We’re not seeing mass surrenders yet; this doesn’t mean we won’t see them in the future. Time will tell. Which, really, says it all for the entire mess. Nothing really unexpected has happened either way, and it’s too soon to tell whether or not anything will.