clipped from: www.thefirstpost.co.uk As American and British generals draw up plans to extract their demoralised troops from Iraq, another army sits impatiently at its northern border awaiting orders to launch an invasion of its own.
Faced with a resurgent PKK terror campaign, Turkey's hawkish generals have long argued the case for a strike against Kurdish militant bases inside northern Iraq.
With some 140,000 troops poised, and Turkish commandos rumoured to be deep in Iraqi territory, all that has been lacking has been the political will.
Ibrahim Kalin, an Ankara-based analyst, tells me it is only a matter of time before Turkey's generals get their way: "Now the elections are over, the army will say, 'You have a responsibility to give us the orders to protect the country.' The government cannot withstand that pressure for long. They will have to say yes." 