The long-standing policy contradiction between U.S. dependence on Kurdish support in Iraq and U.S. ally Turkey's conflict with Kurdish irredentists has come to the fore, as Turkey carried out air and ground attacks on guerrilla elements in Iraq starting on Sunday.

Turkish air forces bombed centers of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, near the Turkish and Iranian border with Iraq, inflicting casualties. It also sent ground forces into that part of Iraq numbering in the hundreds, which have since been withdrawn, the first such incursion since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The Iraqi Kurds have blamed the United States as well as the Turks for the attacks. They state, correctly, that U.S. forces control Kurdish air space and that Turkish aircraft could not have entered without U.S. advance approval. Kurdish complaints for the most part have come from Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish regional authority in northern Iraq, but Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, too, has undoubtedly also weighed in privately.

Apart from the fact that the Iraqi Kurds are holding the United States responsible for the attacks and may show more resistance in the future to cooperation with U.S. forces -- or even attack them in retaliation -- insult has also been added to injury. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the Iraq region at the time these events were taking place, pointing up U.S. complicity and her inability to stop the Turkish attacks.

This was all predictable. U.S. forces turned to the Kurds in Iraq first, because of long-time U.S. protection of them and because of U.S. difficulties in working with Iraq's other major groups, the Sunnis and Shiites. Washington took this action in spite of knowing full well that the Kurds as a people, centered in Iraq, had big ambitions in neighboring Turkey, Iran and Syria, to the rage of the leadership of those three countries.

Now the United States will have to deal with this falling-out with its favorite ethnic ally and partner in Iraq, to avoid an even broader quarrel with Turkey, which has been a NATO ally for decades. This policy, too, did not show any historic, long-term sense on the part of the Bush administration. Once again, American troops in Iraq will have to deal with the results of bad or no planning.