Quote Originally Posted by cobot View Post
What if Turkey had allowed us to enter Iraq through Turkey in 2003. Given all that has happened since then would this have made much of a difference?
What-ifs are highly enjoyable - my own favorite is "what if we had actually destroyed the Republican Guard divisions in the Persian Gulf War instead of stopping the ground war at 100 hours?" Throw in enough tenuous logic, and the destruction of the RG means the fall of Saddam at the hands of the Shi'a rebellion, the complete disengagement of US forces from the ME, and no September 11th.

Now, if you think that "what-if" is a stretch, I think your what-if is even harder to imagine having a major impact on the course of post-May 2003 Iraq. The screwups went far beyond the late deployment of Odierno's 4th ID, which was in-country soon after the shooting stopped anyways. The problems, as I know have been discussed ad nauseam around here, were the result of basically a lack of Phase IV planning, which resulted in no attempts to stop the looting and restore order and services, the disbanding of the Army, and all the other problems that followed.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't possibly see how attacking from Turkey with the 4th ID instead of with just some Special Forces units would have made all the difference.

Matt