WAR GAMES

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes."
~ Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The news is just breaking on an incident which happened last Thursday. Apparently, two American F-16 fighter aircraft based in Iraq broached Turkish airspace over Turkish-occupied Kurdistan for a period of four minutes. News of the incident was first released on the Turkish general staff website late yesterday. From Bloomberg:

U.S. jet fighters from Iraq crossed into Turkey in an area where the Turkish military is building up forces in preparation for a possible attack on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Two U.S. F-16 combat aircraft flew over the southeastern province of Hakkari for four minutes on May 24 in a violation of Turkish airspace, Turkey's army said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday.

[ . . . ]

Turkey, with the second-biggest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has threatened to enter northern Iraq without the approval of the U.S., saying the U.S. has failed to stop militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, from using Iraq as a base from which to attack Turkey. The deaths of six people in a May 22 suicide bombing in the Turkish capital, Ankara, blamed on the PKK, has increased pressure on the government to order an attack.

Turkey has sent tens of thousands of troops to the region bordering Iraq in the last month, saying the operation is to prevent PKK rebels from entering Turkey. Hundreds of tanks are being deployed to reinforce the troops, the Sabah newspaper reported today without saying where it got the information.

I have long wanted to see NATO's two largest militaries go head-to-head. Figuring that they both have about the same military hardware, it would be interesting to see how well US hardware stands up to US hardware. It would all boil down to which of the two forces are better trained, I imagine but, still, the results of a hot war game between the US and Turkey would be something that the engineers in the US military-industrial complex would like to know. Imagine all the new bells and whistles that they could come up with to jazz up their products.

How can the war industry properly design a product when the product is always used against unarmed civilian populations? What if there actually existed a real threat to US interests and, most importantly, US credibility? Such as, oh, I don't know . . . a Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan which would lead to Turkish control of Northern Iraqi oilfields?

Imagine the blow to American "credibility" if such a thing were to happen?

Why is it that Turkey has amassed more Mehmetçiks along the border that divides Kurdistan into north and south than the US has in all of Iraq? Really think about that, now, and ask yourself if it makes any sense at all that it takes hundreds of thousands of Mehmetçiks to fight several thousand lightly armed Kurdish gerîlas.

It only makes sense if Mehmet is a truly, incredibly, astoundingly crappy soldier, which is the message that the fabulously noble Paşas (and ultra-nationalistic Turkish population) are sending the world by their military buildup along the border with South Kurdistan, not to mention the excruciatingly intense and paranoiac pontifications that the Paşas continually disseminate through Turkish media.

Obviously, the entire Turkish general staff, as well as most of the Turkish population should be investigated, prosecuted, and convicted of "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301 of the TCK. But no, as it stands, the Turkish general staff, supported by the lapdog Turkish government and the lapdog Turkish media, is allowed impunity to insult Turkishness in this manner. It simply boggles the mind.

While the US is claiming that the broach of airspace was "inadvertent", and the US claims that the matter is being looked into, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the broach was a deliberate reply to the Paşas' threats of invasion, including the Turkish breach of Iraqi (specifically, South Kurdistani) airspace. Coincidentally that event also took place last Thursday, along with Turkish artillery bombardment of Kurdish villages.

So,the complaint of US violation of Turkish airspace by the Turkish general staff is nothing more than a case of "Kick Me". Turkey violated Iraqi airspace as a provocation, but then cries like an overgrown baby when the US retaliates.

Crybabies.

It appears that Lockheed Martin is deploying its forces to bring Turkey into the war industry's latest scam--the missile defense shield. To that end, a pack of Lockheed Martin vermin were in Ankara last week at the war industy show (Inernational Defense Industry Fair) to push their wares. More from Zaman.

Unfortunately, no Lockheed vermin were blasted to bits at the conference by the Turkish state's black operative and suicide bomber, Güven Akkuş.

Recently, Frieda Berrigan, a senior researcher for the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center penned a nice little collection of facts on the world's Number 1 exporter of arms--the US. Ms. Berrigan lists a number of first place winners for the US war industry, including first place in surface-to-air missiles, warships, war training, and mercenaries. Then Ms. Berrigan goes on to criticize Lockheed Martin's sales of tactical fighter aircraft to Turkey (and we all know that Lockheed Martin's PKK "coordinator" Joseph Ralston was the middleman for that):

In order to remain number one in the competitive jet field, Lockheed Martin, for example, does far more than just sell airplanes. TAI -- Turkey's aerospace corporation -- will receive a boost with this sale, because Lockheed Martin is handing over responsibility for parts of production, assembly, and testing to Turkish workers. The Turkish Air Force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes and plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well, in a deal estimated at $10.7 billion over the next 15 years.

$10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United Nations' Human Development Index, below Lebanon, Colombia, and Grenada, and far below all the European nations that Ankara is courting as it seeks to join the European Union -- now that's a real American sales job for you!

You're absolutely correct, Ms. Berrigan, and let's all give a big round of applause to Joseph Ralston, The Cohen Group's lobbyist for Lockheed Martin tactical fighter aircraft, for a job well done.

Ms. Berrigan concludes:

Why does Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? It doesn't… but Lockheed Martin, working the Pentagon, made them think they did.

We don't need stronger arms control laws, we need a global sobriety coach -- and some kind of 12-step program for the dealer-nation as well.

Of course, as Ms. Berrigan knows well, arms control laws are a huge joke. There are millions of ways around them and those ways are exploited to the benefit of the ruling elites.

Speaking of elites, word is going around that the infamous Bilderberg Conference will be held in Istanbul this year. If you're unaware of the Bilderberg Group, you can check out some information from Wikipedia's entry on them. The Bilderberg Group is the target of criticism and conspiracy theories because, as Wiki notes, they undermine the game of democracy by planning global policy in secrecy. If democracy were a reality, then the fact that the elites plan everything in secret would certainly be a worry. For those of us who know that democracy is a fantasy, the Bilderbergers are a manifestation of the normal order of things.

Everything that you could want to know about this year's Istanbul conference can be read here, including an article by Turkish journalist and Bilderberg 2007 attendee, Cengiz Çandar.

Spooky is as spooky does.


By the way, besides being Memorial Day in the States, you might also say that it's Independence Day for Armenia. For more on that, check out Heval Vahe's post on Hyelog. Bijî Ermenistan û Serkeftin!