By green-lighting Turkey's invasion of Iraq, the U.S. is alienating the Kurds, one of the few groups in Iraq who still view(ed) us as allies. Ken Silverstein has an e-mail from a former U.S. official who works in northern Iraq:
The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.
And the beat goes on.