Today Condoleezza Rice discouraged Turkey from sending troops into Iraq and told Turks to "find their own country to occupy."

"We were here first," said Rice, explaining that Turkey would have to deal with incursions by Kurdish terrorists in some other way, saying that "Iraq is already taken."

Turkish authorities balked, noting that that their terrorists were coming in from Northern Iraq.

In response, Rice reportedly told the Turks that "there are plenty of great opportunities for a nice, clean invasion elsewhere." She suggested, among other countries, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Gambia, Lichtenstein, Malta and Prague. "Some of these countries have the benefit of being very small and Prague simply has great coffee and pastries," she explained.

"This is outrageous," Turkish Minister Burak Mevlana said. "The U.S. acts like it owns Iraq."

An anonymous official from the State Department said that that was exactly right. "We broke it, we bought it, and we're still making the payments," he noted.