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Regarding the Turkish troops massing at the border: the U.S. needs to show a little more backbone here. Iraqi Kurds don't seem to hold much sway with the central government and even if they did, any deployment of the Iraqi army would be indistinguishable from U.S. forces (same uniforms, equipment, officers etc.). The U.S. should make clear that any incursion into Northern Iraq will not be tolerated and will result in Turkey being immediately expelled from NATO. Having two NATO countries in open conflict would undermine the premise of that treaty and make it meaningless. Turkey sees the Iraqi Kurds as being in a weak position and they think the U.S. forces are stretched too thin to retaliate. They're in a position to make an opportunistic land grab in Northern Iraq. On the other hand the Kurdish separatist PKK is almost certainly using Kurd-controlled Northern Iraq as a launching pad for terrorist attacks. It's a conundrum.
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