  We study experimentally and theoretically the polarization alternation during
the switch-on transient of a quasi-isotropic CO$_2$ laser emitting on the
fundamental mode. The observed transient dynamics is well reproduced by means
of a model which provides a quantitative discrimination between the intrinsic
asymmetry due to the kinetic coupling of molecules with different angular
momenta, and the extrinsic anisotropies, due to a tilted intracavity window.
Furthermore, the experiment provides a numerical assignment for the decay rate
of the coherence term for a CO$_2$ laser.
