The ever-shrinking reach of U.S. Iraqi policy

First, the Iraqi presidential council rejects setting up provincial elections. Next, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tries to browbeat Turkey into leaving Kurdistan before it is good and ready. Here’s Gates:

“It’s very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave,” Gates said before departing India. “They have to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty. I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months.”

And here’s Ankara:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation would only end “once its goal has been reached.”

Well, that’s pretty clear.

More signs of a larger impotence of U.S. foreign policy? Gates was in India to try to persuade its parliament to sign off on the nuclear power and fuel deal with the U.S. Regardless of the merits of the pact, I believe this would normally be the Secretary of State’s territory. The brilliant Condoleezza Rice is just not up to this one, I guess.