TURKEY: The Turkish parliament's vote against offering basing rights to US troops along the Iraqi border threatens to derail the Pentagon's war plans. Even if it is reversed this week, it has set an invasion date back by more than a week, defence officials and military analysts said yesterday.
Military trucks and jeeps due to head east towards the Iraqi border were prevented from leaving the port of Iskenderun after Saturday's vote, and are stuck on the dockside. Meanwhile, up to 40 US transport ships, most carrying tanks and other equipment for an infantry division, are sitting in the eastern Mediterranean waiting for orders, a Pentagon official said.
"A decision has to be made and orders have to be given more or less now," he said, adding that there was hope in the Pentagon that there would be another vote by Thursday.
However, White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer has insisted the US has several other military options.
The US could fly light airborne troops into Kurdish airfields from Cyprus, central Asia, Bulgaria or Kuwait, but they would have no armour to take on the Iraqi divisions in the north, and would have to rely on air support.
The elite 101st airborne and 82nd airborne divisions have other tasks under the original plan, such as securing airfields, dams and oilfields, as well as finding scud missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
"The only other option is to blow through extra heavy from the south and race up to the north," said Mr Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia.
The Kuwaiti defence minister, Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah, said the country would consider accepting US troops that Washington deployed from Turkey.
But the vast naval convoy would face two severe bottlenecks, the first at the Suez canal.
Mr Loren Thompson, a Pentagon consultant, said the delay would mean a complete change of plan for the US commander, General Tommy Franks. "This is not a little tweak," he said.
"The concept of a northern front was integral to the campaign in dividing Iraqi forces and isolating Baghdad. Without Turkey, there would be no large northern front."
Staging an armoured assault from Jordan would represent a better alternative but Jordan has refused to allow the use of its territory as a launch pad for large numbers of troops.
Whether Turkey relents or not, it appears the US military will not reach peak readiness until the second half of March, raising the prospect of having to fight in Iraq's hot and turbulent spring.