No don't blame Powell. The Turks would have waffled on Rice too......
blame the turks.
Turkey is still a muslim nations and thus is a terrorist nation that is an enemy of America. Some people want to believe otherwise but reality will sink in. Hopefully Turkey will be a member of the EU and finish off its existence soon.
Blame the rules of Turkey's parliament, which invalidated the vote to allow 4ID through Turkey, even though it passed with a bare majority.
The problem wasn't fighting the war, that went incredibly smoothly by anybodies definition of war. The problem has been controlling it ever since. We are already there, we DO NOT NEED to go through Turkey. This is just a blatant blame shift.
OK, I reread it.
I still say its Rumsfeld trying to shift blame.
1 - So Turkey didn't go along, for good or bad, that was their call. When you are planning a war, you have to expect that everyone is not always going to fall in line.
2 - If Turkey had gotten "directly" involved we might have lost Kurd support, still losing us the North.
3 - This article presupposes that the resistance is a "Baathist resistance". I've seen a lot more reference in their rhetoric to religion than Sadam. Baathists or no Baathists, there is no shortage of people in the middle east who want to stick it to an American troop. I said it before the war and I'll say it now, anyone who thinks the U.S. is going to walk into ANY country in the middle east, topple a government AND NOT meet resistance is an idiot.
4 - Check your record player guys, it seems to be skipping..... France, click France, click France, click France, click.....
Or maybe I'm still missing the point.
Actually, blame Tony Blair.
While the man has certainly stood by us, he also requested, and received, going back to the UN to get another resolution which wasted quite a bit of time...