Crooked Timber-Broadening the Coalition

Crooked Timber-Broadening the Coalition post riffing on this Newsday article about Muslim countries offering troops. Obviously it didn't happen. The sticking point was that the U.S. wanted to have command of the troops and the Muslim countries wanted either to be under UN command or Iraqi government command. Allawi was ok with having the troops under his command so the argument that the Iraqis didn't want neighbors meddling isn't effective. I don't have any illusions that these additional troops would have been going on any dangerous raid missions or anything like that, but they could have freed up some of our troops from the patrolling, sitting duck missions. Command over the additional troops seems unessential.