NATO's Turkey a powderkeg of contradictions

On the one hand, they're busy as can be doing NATO's bidding with their unquestioning support of the Syrian uprising. As serious people who follow these matters well know, the "support" is much more than that.

Without the connivance of the Erdogan regime the Syrian uprising would have been over 18 months ago. Thirty thousand dead Syrians would still be living their lives.

And as the serious people who follow these matters also know, this idea does not originate in Turkey.

Turkey gets its swagger from having the backing of the NATO gang.

Today thousands of protesters demonstrated in the streets of Turkey against Erdogan and against NATO.

They fancy themselves the heirs of Ataturk, the father of modern secular Turkey.

In some oblique sense they very well may be, but the true heirs of Ataturk are those 300 officers who Erdogan recently locked up.

Elsewhere Erdogan will continue to get away with killing his own (Kurdish) people until his NATO friends no longer find him useful.

The reason those 300 heirs of Ataturk are locked up is because they would never connive with the NATO gang to make war on their neighbor.

The longer that war drags on, the more Erdogan becomes expendable.

NATO "advisers" captured in Syria

In the tsunami of rumor and propaganda that's washed over the mainstream media about Syria recently it's remarkable that this story has remained hidden.

Turkish news sources reported on Feb. 9 that 49 Turkish intelligence operatives were being held by the Syrian government.

A story on the Haaretz site today puts the number at 40 and claims that  Syria and Turkey are negotiating a swap that would involve Syrian Army officers being held at a NATO base in Turkey.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his entourage flew into Ankara this week to take over the negotiations.

Turkey has been a NATO member for 60 years.

Obama and al-Zawahiri; brothers in arms?

Al Qaeda boss Ayman al Zawahiri has joined President Obama and other Western leaders in calling for the ouster of Syrian President al-Assad.

Could this be a turning point in relations between the world's number one terror threat and it's number one target? Will we see a prominent Washington PR firm get the Al Qaeda account and start polishing up the somewhat tarnished brand?

Will we see an Al Qaeda diplomatic mission as the first step in fully normalized relations?

Well, maybe not. First of all, there's the little matter of the $25 million bounty the US has on al-Zawahiri. That could be a deal-breaker right there.

Then there are the particulars of al-Zawarhiri's endorsement of the Syrian opposition. He makes it clear that while he backs them he doesn't approve of their reliance on support from the US and our puppet states in the Gulf.

He also acknowledges that Al Qaeda is already active in the country. That's got to be a conundrum for the Free Syria cheerleaders. How do we cheer on the "peaceful protesters" without also cheering on our Public Enemy Number One?

In fact, it throws the entire logic of American anti-terror strategy into disarray. We've spent billions hunting down Al Qaeda around the world, eliminating as much of the leadership as we can by whatever means possible.

Yet we're going to support them in Syria?