Talking Turkey

I’m not sure what to be more pissed about: Turkey wanting 30 Billion Dollars, or our offering 26 Billion Dollars.

According to CNN, the Turkish Government wants $30 BN, with $10 BN in cold hard cash, and the US is offering $26 BN, with $6 BN in cash, and it isn’t enough. Are you kidding me? For the dirty job of crushing a tyrant on their border (armed with chem, bio, and maybe even nuclear weapons), and incidentally preventing an independent Kurdistan when the war starts, protecting them from military retaliation, keeping the Iraqi Republican Guard from ‘escaping’ into Syria, $26 BN isn’t enough. Aarrrghh.

The taxpayer in me says ?WHAT? This is on top of the no doubt substantial cash we pay to keep US fighters patrolling the no-fly zones of the Iraqi North out of our bases in Turkey, to an ally we have wrangled NATO into at least planning to defend, and they want HOW MUCH?

I need someone to explain to me how an ally, one we have stood with for decades, thinks they need Billions of Dollars to ‘host’ (give, temporarily, useless land in terrible geography, which we will develop into useful troop quarters, which we will leave in better condition than we found it, with all the facilities intact) our troops, which will be fighting to rid them of the crack house next door and generally clean up the neighborhood. And they want the SWAT team to pay them to cross the lawn.

Why aren’t they offering us money for the same service? I haven’t any idea. Perhaps you do?

Update: that’s $750,000 per American. Wow.