Iraq: July 26, 2002

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Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been sent to Turkey to convince Ankara to support a US invasion of Iraq. While the White House continues to search frantically for some kind of invasion strategy that will work (and has apparently figured out that using bases in the Persian Gulf is going to be difficult), the Pentagon continues to insist that the US lacks the forces in place for an outright invasion (or the means to put them in place quickly). Iraq, the brass continue to insist, is not Afghanistan. There is no organized army of opposition, and the loyalty of each district is not (as it was in Afghanistan) balanced on a knife edge and likely to switch sides if the enemy appears to be winning.--Stephen V Cole