Kautzman’s AP GO PO Blog

February 23, 2008

By Michael Barone
It’s starting to feel like the general election. Rising to claim victory in the Wisconsin Republican primary before the networks could declare Barack Obama the winner on the Democratic side, John McCain started right in on his general election opponent.

He promised to “make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than the people.”

Scorch. Some 40 minutes later, Hillary Clinton got up before the cameras and set out her platform as if she were the winner, ignoring Obama as she had on primary night the week before. Having not been extended this courtesy, Obama did not extend her the courtesy of waiting for her to finish before he began his victory speech.

 

The networks quickly switched for Clinton to Obama, who went on for 45 minutes, cutting and pasting platform planks into the unspecific ode to hope that has enchanted so many voters.

That camera switch may turn out to be the beginning of the end of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She’s still hoping for victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, but Obama’s margin in Wisconsin makes that seem less likely, and in any case, she will still be behind in delegates. She could win the nomination only with the votes of super-delegates or by counting the results in Florida and Michigan, where the national party commanded candidates not to compete.

Either move will strike many Obama enthusiasts — and others — as profoundly unfair. The way Clinton has run her campaign — like the way she ran health care reform in 1993-94 — undercuts her claim to be ready for the presidency from day one. In both cases, she had no fallback strategy, no Plan B, in case her best-case scenario failed to come to pass. She started campaigning in Wisconsin only last Saturday and had to cancel her events because of a snowstorm. Didn’t anyone check weather.com?

If you look at the numbers, if the general election were held today, Barack Obama would beat John McCain by a solid margin. (McCain would beat Clinton — another reason the super-delegates are unlikely to foist her on the party.) But the performances of the candidates on primary night — and the performances of their wives on Monday and Tuesday — suggests that may not always be the case.

Obama’s cut-and-paste job does respond to the complaint that he is without substance. But it’s hard to mix poetry and prose and come up with an appealing product. Particularly when, as columnist Robert Samuelson points out, there’s not much that’s interesting about the substance.

Then there are the wives. In Milwaukee on Monday, Michelle Obama, who has spoken frequently in the campaign, said: “Hope is making a comeback, and let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

For the first time in her life? Coming from the realm in which Michelle Obama has lived her adult life — Princeton, Harvard Law, a top law firm, a $342,000-a year job doing community relations for the University of Chicago hospital system — this may not sound out of the ordinary. As Samuel Huntington has pointed out, people in this stratum tend to have transnational attitudes — all nations are morally equal, except maybe for ours, which is worse.

This is not, to say the least, the view of most Americans, including very many who regularly vote Democratic. And it undercuts Barack Obama’s most appealing rhetoric, which emphasizes what Americans have in common.

Cindy McCain, who ordinarily doesn’t speak in public, picked up on this immediately. On Tuesday, she made a point of saying, several times, that she has always been proud of America. On election night, John McCain said he was “proud, proud of the privilege” of being an American.

I remember the electric feeling in the hall, at the first Republican National Convention I attended, in 1984, when Lee Greenwood belted out his country hit, “I’m proud to be an American.” I don’t believe that I’ve heard it at any Democratic National Convention, and I’m pretty sure that some nontrivial number of the delegates would find it off-putting, even obnoxious.

Barack Obama has explained that his wife was just saying that she was proud for the first time of her country’s politics. But that’s not what she said, and said with considerable emphasis. Tuesday night seemed to be the beginning of the general election campaign. But what was said on Monday may prove to be just as important.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Will discuss possible White House run Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press

The Associated Press

updated 9:26 a.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 22, 2008

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WASHINGTON – Ralph Nader could be poised for another third party presidential campaign.

The consumer advocate will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Nader launched his 2004 presidential run on the show.

A spokesman for Nader did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Kevin Zeese, who was Nader’s spokesman during the 2004 presidential race, but is no longer working for him, said Friday that Nader has been actively talking to “lots of people on all sorts of levels” about the possibility of making another run.

Zeese said he could only guess what Nader might do, but added: “Obviously, I don’t think (”Meet the Press” host) Tim Russert would have him on for no reason.”

Last month, Nader began an exploratory presidential campaign and launched a Web site that promises to fight “corporate greed, corporate power, corporate control.”

Nader’s appearance on “Meet the Press” was announced Friday in an e-mail message from Nader’s exploratory campaign. The message from “The Nader Team” urges supporters to tell friends and family to watch the show and requests online contributions.

“As you know, we’ve been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks,” the message says.

Nader is still loathed by many Democrats who call him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost Democrats the election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest in Florida.

Nader has vociferously disputed the spoiler claim, saying only Democrats are to blame for losing the race to George W. Bush.

Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party candidate in 2000, Nader won just 0.3 percent as an independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states.

Nader was forced to fight dozens of court battles over ballot access in 2004, as Democrats pressed legal challenges over whether he gained enough legitimate signatures to get his name on the ballot.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinel
February 23, 2008

Much has been made of the religious tenor of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Reports of women weeping and swooning – even of an audience applauding when The One cleared his proboscis (blew his nose for you mortals) – have become frequent events in the heavenly realm of Obi-Wan Obama.

His rhetoric, meanwhile, drips with hints of resurrection, redemption and second comings. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he said on Super Tuesday night. And his people were glad.

Actually, they were hysterical, the word that best describes what surrounds this young savior and that may be more apt than we imagine. The word is derived from the Greek hystera, or womb. The ancient Greeks considered hysteria a psychoneurosis peculiar to women caused by disturbances of the uterus. Well, you don’t see any men fainting in Obi’s presence.

Barack Obama has many appealing qualities, not least his own reluctance to be swaddled in purple. Nothing quite says, “I’m only human” like whipping out a hankie and blowing one’s nose in front of 17,000 admirers. The audience’s applause was reportedly awkward, as if the crowd was both approving of anything their savior did, but a little disappointed at this rather ungodly behavior.

So what is the source of this infatuation with Obama? How to explain the hysteria? The religious fervor? The devotion? The weeping and fainting and utter euphoria surrounding a candidate who had the audacity to run for leader of the free world on a platform of mere hope?

If anthropologists made predictions the way meteorologists do, they might have anticipated Obama’s astronomical rise to supernova status in 2008 of the Common Era. Consider the cultural coordinates, and Obama’s intersection with history becomes almost inevitable.

To play weatherman for a moment, he is a perfect storm of the culture of narcissism, the cult of celebrity, and a secular society in which fathers (both the holy and the secular) have been increasingly marginalized from the lives of a generation of young Americans.

All of these trends have been gaining momentum the past few decades. Social critic Christopher Lasch named the culture of narcissism a generation ago and cited addiction to celebrity as one of the disease’s symptoms – all tied to the decline of the family.

That culture has merely become more exaggerated as spiritual alienation and fatherlessness have collided with technology (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that enables the self-absorption of the narcissistic personality.

Grown-ups may have a variety of reasons for supporting Obama, but the youth who pack convention halls and stadiums as if for a rock concert constitute a tipping point of another order.

One of Obama’s TV ads, set to rock ‘n’ roll, has a Woodstock feel to it. Text alternating with crowd scenes reads: “We Can Change The World” and “We Can Save The Planet.”

Those are some kind of campaign promises. The kind no mortal could possibly keep, but never mind. Obi-Wan Obama is about hope – and hope, he’ll tell you, knows no limits.

It is thus no surprise that the young are enamored of Obama. He’s a rock star. A telegenic, ultra-bright redeemer fluent in the planetary language of a cosmic generation. The force is with him.

But underpinning that popularity is something that transcends mere policy or politics: a spiritual hunger. Humans seem to have a yearning for the transcendent – hence thousands of years of religion – but we have lately shied away from traditional approaches and old gods.

Thus, in post-Judeo-Christian America, the sports club is the new church. Global warming is the new religion. Vegetarianism is the new sacrament. Hooking up, the new prayer. Talk therapy, the new witnessing. Tattooing and piercing, the new sacred symbols and rituals. And apparently, Barack Obama is the new messiah.

Here’s how a 20-year-old woman in Seattle described that Obama feeling: “When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa …”

This New Age glossolalia may be more sonorous than the guttural emanations from the revival tent, but the emotion is the same. It’s all religion by any other name.

Whatever the Church of Obama promises, we should not mistake this movement for a renaissance of reason. It is more like, well, like whoa.

Paxson says senator met with him before sending FCC letters

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., talks with reporters in flight from Indianapolis to Washington on Friday. Associated Press (Associated Press )

James V. Grimaldi and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post
February 23, 2008

WASHINGTON – Broadcaster Lowell “Bud” Paxson on Friday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson’s behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson’s quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain’s office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. “Was Vicki there? Probably,” Paxson said in an interview Friday. “The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.”

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by the McCain campaign about the two letters at the center of a controversy over the senator’s ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. “No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding,” the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said Friday, “I remember going there to meet with him.” He recalled that he told McCain: “You’re head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter.”

McCain attorney Robert Bennett played down the contradiction between the campaign’s written answer and Paxson’s recollection.

“We understood that he (McCain) did not speak directly with him (Paxson). Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?” Bennett said. “McCain has never denied that Paxson asked for assistance from his office. It doesn’t seem relevant whether the request got to him through Paxson or the staff. His letters to the FCC concerning the matter urged the commission to make up its mind. He did not ask the FCC to approve or deny the application. It’s not that big a deal.”

The Paxson deal, coming as McCain made his first run for the presidency, has posed a persistent problem for the senator. The deal raised embarrassing questions about his dealings with lobbyists at a time when he had assumed the role of an ethics champion and opponent of the influence of lobbyists.

The two letters he wrote to the FCC in 1999 while he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee produced a rash of criticism and a written rebuke from the then-FCC chairman, who called McCain’s intervention “highly unusual.” McCain had repeatedly used Paxson’s corporate jet for his campaign and accepted campaign contributions from the broadcaster and his law firm.

McCain himself in a deposition in 2002 acknowledged talking to Paxson about the Pittsburgh sale. Asked what Paxson said in the conversation, McCain said that Paxson “had applied to purchase this station and that he wanted to purchase it. And that there had been a numerous-year delay with the FCC reaching a decision. And he wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business.”

The deposition was taken in litigation over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law filed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The contradiction in the deposition was first reported by Newsweek on Friday afternoon.

“I said I would be glad to write a letter asking them to act,” McCain testified, recounting the conversation with Paxson. “But I cannot write a letter asking them to approve or deny, because then that would be an interference in their activities.”

Iseman’s connections to McCain have come into question this week after a longtime associate of McCain’s said that he had asked Iseman to distance herself from McCain and his 2000 presidential campaign to protect McCain’s reputation for independence from special interests.

McCain acknowledged during a news conference on Thursday that Iseman was a friend, but he denied doing anything improper for her or her telecommunications clients.

Paxson defended Iseman as a complete professional and said she was at her best when she worked on the Pittsburgh deal. He said they turned to McCain often when they ran into interference at the FCC, but Paxson added that McCain did not always agree with him. In three other major issues, Paxson said, McCain took the opposing viewpoint.

Paxson had used Alcalde & Fay as his lobbying firm in the 1980s when he founded and ran the Home Shopping Network, an enterprise that he later sold. In the mid-1990s, when he launched a plan to create a new national network, he stayed with Alcalde & Fay.

In the early 1990s, when Iseman joined the firm, she became Paxson Communications’ chief lobbyist, Paxson said. Paxson, now known as ION Media Networks, has paid Alcalde & Fay more than $1 million since 1998.

Paxson saw no particular significance in the meeting with McCain before his penning the FCC letters. “Vicki Iseman, probably between myself and (Paxson Communications President) Dean Goodman at that time, took us in to see a thousand senators and congressmen,” Paxson said. “She was our lobbyist. She was there and helped.”

Stephen Ohlemacher
Associated Press
February 23, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Democratic superdelegates are starting to follow the voters — straight to Barack Obama.

In just the past two weeks, more than two dozen of them have climbed aboard his presidential campaign, according to a survey by The Associated Press. At the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s are beginning to jump ship, abandoning her for Obama or deciding they now are undecided.

The result: He’s narrowing her once-commanding lead among these “superdelegates,” the Democratic office holders and party officials who automatically attend the national convention and can vote for whomever they choose.

As Obama has reeled off 11 straight primary victories, some of the superdelegates are having second — or third — thoughts about their public commitments.

Take John Perez, a Californian who first endorsed John Edwards and then backed Clinton. Now, he says, he is undecided.

“Given where the race is at right now, I think it’s very important for us to play a role around bringing the party together around the candidate that people have chosen, as opposed to advocating for our own choice,” he said in an interview.

Clinton still leads among superdelegates — 241 to 181, according to the AP survey. But her total is down two in the past two weeks, while Obama’s is up 25. Since the primaries started, at least three Clinton superdelegates have switched to Obama, including Rep. David Scott, of Georgia, who changed his endorsement after Obama won 80 percent of the primary vote in Scott’s district. At least two other Clinton backers have switched to undecided.

None of Obama’s have publicly strayed, according to the AP tally.

There are nearly 800 Democratic superdelegates, making them an important force in a nomination race this close. Both campaigns are furiously lobbying them.

“Holy buckets!” exclaimed Audra Ostergard, of Nebraska. “Michelle Obama and I are playing phone tag.”

Billi Gosh, a Vermont superdelegate who backs Clinton, got a phone call from the candidate herself this week.

“As superdelegates, we have the opportunity to change our mind, so she’s just connecting with me,” Gosh said. “I couldn’t believe she was able to fit in calls like that to her incredibly busy schedule.”

In Utah, two Clinton superdelegates said they continue to support the New York senator — for now.

“We’ll see what happens,” said Karen Hale. Likewise, fellow superdelegate Helen Langan said, “We’ll see.”

Other supporters are more steadfast.

“She’s still in the race, isn’t she? So I’m still supporting her,” said Belinda Biafore, a superdelegate from West Virginia.

Obama has piled up the most victories in primaries and caucuses, giving him the overall lead in delegates, 1,362 to 1,266.5. Clinton’s half delegate came from the global primary sponsored by the Democrats Abroad.

It will take 2,025 delegates to secure the nomination at this summer’s national convention in Denver. If Clinton and Obama continue to split delegates in elections, neither will reach the mark without support from the superdelegates.

That has the campaigns fighting over the proper role for superdelegates, who can support any candidate they want. Obama argues it would be unfair for them to go against the outcome of the primaries and caucuses.

“I think it is important, given how hard Senator Clinton and I have been working, that these primaries and caucuses count for something,” Obama said during Thursday night’s debate in Austin, Texas.

Clinton argues that superdelegates should exercise independent judgment.

“These are the rules that are followed, and you know, I think that it will sort itself out,” she said during the debate. “We will have a nominee, and we will have a unified Democratic Party, and we will go on to victory in November.”

Behind the scenes, things can get sticky.

David Cicilline, the mayor of Providence, R.I., indicated this week that his support for Clinton might be wavering after — he contended — members of her campaign urged him to cave to the demands of a local firefighters union ahead of her weekend appearance there. The firefighters, in a long-running contract dispute with Cicilline, have said they would disrupt any Clinton event the mayor attends. A Clinton spokeswoman said the campaign would never interfere in the mayor’s city decisions.

Obama has been helped by recent endorsements from several labor unions, including the Teamsters on Wednesday.

“He’s our guy,” said Sonny Nardi, an Ohio superdelegate and the president of Teamsters Local 416 in Cleveland.

The Democratic Party has named about 720 of its 795 superdelegates. The remainder will be chosen at state party conventions in the spring. AP reporters have interviewed 95 percent of the named delegates, with the most recent round of interviews taking place this week.

The superdelegates make up about a fifth of the overall delegates. As Democratic senators, both Clinton and Obama are superdelegates.

So is Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, which is one reason his phone rings often.

He is a black mayor, and Obama has been winning about 90 percent of black votes. His state has a March 4 primary with 141 delegates at stake. The Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, is stumping hard for Clinton — and perhaps a spot on the national ticket.

A phone call from former President Clinton interrupted Mallory’s dinner on a recent Saturday.

“I continue to get calls from mayors, congresspeople, governors, urging me one way or another,” said Mallory, who is still mulling his decision. “The celebrities will be next. I guess Oprah will call me.”

‘Supers’ owe party a conscientious vote

John Farmer
Newark Star-Ledger
February 23, 2008

If the media (hateful word) are to be believed, the Democratic Party’s 796 superdelegates are tied up in knots over whom to support for the presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, the fast-fading former front-runner.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Being named a superdelegate was deemed an honor; it got you to the Democratic convention without the indignity of having to risk repudiation by pledging in advance to a candidate who might get shellacked.

It was freebie – a plum piece of party patronage.

Everyone wanted to be a superdelegate in years past. But those seats are reserved for the elected elite (governors, senators, representatives, mayors et al.) and party bigwigs (national and state chairmen and chairwomen). This year, however, some “supers” may feel a bit like Abraham Lincoln’s description of the fellow who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he’d just as soon have walked,” said Honest Abe.

This year this safest, most sought-after of political plums comes with some risk: the real possibility that the “supers” will be forced at the national convention in August to decide who’s to be the nominee – Obama or Clinton.

Whom to anger and alienate, in other words: women, the Emily’s List and Code Pink crowd and the Clinton government in exile by backing Obama, or African-Americans, the thousands of new party shock troops on the college campuses and liberal reformers in general by opting for Clinton?

It could be a critical consideration in how some “supers” vote because many will have to face the voters themselves in their states or congressional districts this fall.

Now about those “supers” and how they came about. The whole notion of superdelegates – with power to override the decision of millions of Democratic votes cast in state primaries and caucuses – seems out of step with a party so politically correct that it insists convention seats be divided close to equally between men and women. The idea of superdelegates seems, well, undemocratic.

And it is, actually. But the “supers” came into being to remedy what party elders perceived as democracy run amok in the nominating process, particularly at the 1972 convention. That year, liberals, in an orgy of excess, expelled the party’s strongest local leader, Mayor Richard J. Daily of Chicago; radically rewrote the party platform; and carried the convention into the wee hours of the morning, losing a national television audience in the process and crippling their already weak nominee, George McGovern.

The nominating process, the party’s Washington-based establishment decided, needed adult supervision – namely a contingent of sage elders with the power to undo any damage a runaway convention like the 1972 gathering might do.

It’s not the first time party elders have taken things into their own hands to save a Democratic convention from its own bad judgment. In 1952, Sen. Estes Kefauver dominated the Democratic primaries, defeating even President Harry Truman. He was the people’s choice. But rather than let the prize go to the erratic Kefauver, a coalition of Democratic big-city bosses used their muscle to give the nomination to Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson {AKA – “I Love The Gov”}.

Stevenson lost. No Democrat had a chance that year. But Stevenson vindicated the bosses by mounting one of the most eloquent and farsighted campaigns ever run, as evident in collections of his speeches that year.

The superdelegates will face a much tougher choice this year if it all comes down to their decision. Obama and Clinton are credible candidates, unlike Kefauver. But the decision will be difficult because of the choice posed by Clinton and Obama – between race and gender and even generations and between one candidate offering a proven past and another offering an uncharted and different future.

What will guide the “supers” in any such decision? In the best of all worlds, they will heed the wisdom of Edmund Burke, the most eloquent Irish voice ever raised in the British Parliament in explaining to his Bristol district why he’d voted in the nation’s interest and not in theirs or even his own. What any elected representative owes his constituents, Burke said, is “his unbiased opinion, his enlightened conscience (and) these he ought not to sacrifice to you.”

What are the odds the “supers” will follow the Burkean model? Not good, is my guess. More likely they’ll do the smart, expedient thing and vote the way the folks back home voted. Why take a risk?

It’s like the wise guys say: The race isn’t always to the swift or the struggle to the strong. But that’s sure the way to bet it.

Turks launch offensive into Iraq

Thousands of troops take on Kurdish rebels

Army tanks move along a road near the Iraqi border in southeastern Turkey on Friday. Associated Press (Associated Press )

Selcan Hacaoglu and Christopher Torchia
Associated Press
February 23, 2008

CIZRE, Turkey – Supported by air power, Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Friday in their first major ground incursion against Kurdish rebel bases in nearly a decade. But Turkey sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-backed Iraq, saying the guerrillas were its only target.

The offensive, which started late Thursday after aircraft and artillery blasted suspected rebel targets, marked a dramatic escalation in Turkey’s fight with the PKK rebel group even though Turkish officials described the operation as limited.

A military officer of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq said on condition of anonymity that several hundred Turkish soldiers had crossed the border. The coalition has satellites as well as drones and other surveillance aircraft at its disposal.

Sky-Turk television said about 2,000 Turkish soldiers were in Iraq, operating against rebel camps about two miles in from the border. NTV television said a total of 10,000 soldiers were inside Iraq in an operation that had extended six miles past the frontier. The activity was reportedly occurring about 60 miles east of Cizre, a major town near the border with Iraq.

It was not possible to independently confirm the size or scope of the attack on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union. CNN-Turk television, citing Turkish security officials, said the operation could last two weeks.

Late in the day, the Turkish military said five of its soldiers and 24 rebels had died in a clash inside Iraq and estimated at least 20 more rebels were killed by artillery and helicopter gunships. It said sporadic fighting was continuing.

Earlier, PKK spokesman Ahmad Danas said two Turkish soldiers were killed and eight wounded in clashes along the 240-mile border, but said nothing about rebel casualties. There was no way to confirm either report independently.

The advance was the first confirmed Turkish military ground operation in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Turkey’s army is believed to have carried out unacknowledged “hot pursuits” in recent years, with small groups of troops staying in Iraq for as little as a few hours or a day.

The PKK militants are fighting for autonomy in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey and have carried out attacks on Turkish targets from bases in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The conflict started in 1984 and has claimed as many as 40,000 lives.

Turkey’s government has complained that Iraqi and U.S. authorities weren’t doing enough to stop guerrilla operations. The Turkish air force has been staging air raids on PKK forces in the north since December with the help of intelligence provided by the U.S., a NATO ally.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he called his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki, on Thursday night to give him advance warning of the operation. Erdogan said he later briefed President Bush in a telephone call.

Confirming the advance notice, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the Bush administration was urging Turkey to show restraint.