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Schröder hits back, saying Bush lied
Published: 9 Nov 10 18:02 CET | Print version
Updated: 10 Nov 10 07:00 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20101109-31065.html
Gerhard Schröder has hit back at claims by former US President George W. Bush in his newly released memoirs that the German ex-chancellor broke his word over support for an invasion of Iraq.
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Bush said in his memoirs that he told Schröder in an Oval Office meeting in January 2002 he was determined to make diplomacy work but cautioned that while the military option was Washington's last choice, he would use it if necessary.
"What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq," Bush quotes Schröder as saying. "Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you."
Schröder was against the March 2003 invasion, stridently rejecting what he branded a military "adventure", and his opposition is seen as one of the main reasons for his re-election in September 2002.
"I continued to work with Gerhard Schröder on areas of mutual interest. But as someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again," Bush says in his book "Decision Points" released on Tuesday.
Schröder confirmed that he had told Bush that he would "stand reliably on the side of the US" if it was confirmed that Iraq was sheltering those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"But this link, as it became clear during 2002, was false and contrived. This goes for reasons (for the invasion) given by Bush and (vice president Dick) Cheney too.
"As we know today, the Bush administration's reasons for the Iraq war were based on lies."
France's then-president Jacques Chirac also opposed the war, and a deep transatlantic rift ensued until the end of Schröder's tenure and the election of Angela Merkel as chancellor in 2005, when relations began to thaw.
AFP/dw
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Your comments about this article:
No, no matter which way you cut it, the Iraq war was a major mistake, and this was already well known, judging by all the CIA analysis after the first Gulf War that counseled keeping Hussein in power to be a much better decision.
"The former Iraqi president may have been a bit of a rough diamond but . . . ."
HA! "Rough diamond." Please. Like Hitler was a rough diamond. How silly.
19:51 November 9, 2010 by Canadianhaggis
"Saddam was a totally controlled dictator"
Wrong. Again - He repeatedly ignored UN resolutions, including those pertaining to short-range missiles. The cowards and those with economic interests (France, Germany, Russia, China) refused to take action.
"Hans Martin Blix investigated all of Iraq and found no weapons chemical or otherwise in that country so there was no need of another invasion."
Before he was executed, Saddam admitted that, to gain leverage, he wanted the international community to believe that he had such weapons. Oops. That backfired. Regardless, anyone who thinks that this guy, in a few years, wouldn't have developed a chemical and/or nuclear arsenal has his head up his ass. One need only look to North Korea and Iran as proof of that.
"Saddam may have killed thousands of his own people"
Wrong. The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq under Saddam.
"[S]ince the Americans invaded and have now left over a half a million civilian men women and children have been killed and is still going on."
Wrong again. It's around 100,000, and most of that is due to Al Queda knuckleheads. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
"The country is in total ruin. . . ."
It is not. It is now a democratic country trying to get on its feet that no longer is a threat to the world. Further, normalcy is returning. By example, regular flights from Europe have begun.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/first-european-flight-puts-iraq-back-in-business-2121851.html
Getting back to the article, its interesting to see that Schröder has now all but called Dubya a liar, not that we needed any confirmation of that. The fact of the matter is that Schröder had the temerity to stand his ground and say what his nation and others thought, unlike the fawning evangelist in-chief sat in Whitehall.
For that he deserves credit not condemnation.
That leaves aside the trillions we will spend there and the amounts we will spend now on wounded Veteran's health care.
From the IraqBodyCount website: "The IBC site states: "it should be noted that many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media." Other studies have found much higher death rates. And, remember, before the US invaded, there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Bush is on his book tour to whitewash his own complicity in war crimes and to excuse the invasion based on "faulty intelligence". Three separate government agency investigations showed that there were no WMDs in Iraq at least 3 months prior to invasion. And, no, you can't compare a contained Saddam, facing a revolt against him both south and north and no-fly zones, to North Korea.
Bush is either lying or was so drunk/ hungover that Cheney could have led him to believe anything (and did).
Let it go.
This comment must be a joke. Either that or it is the belief of someone with
very little knowledge of the man.
I understand German apprehension where there have been more terrorist acts due to its proximity to the Middle East and its porous borders (EU). Add to that a plethora of refugees (Kosovo and other Islamic countries) and a large Mideastern population plus the problems Germany has witness not just within its own borders but in neighbouring countries and it stands to reason that if one wants to win an election give the squeaky wheel the grease!!
And the most glaring difference was Germany was in the midst of an election, which prior to his change in direction, Fernsehen Schroeder was on the verge of losing. Pretty pragmatic choice if you ask me. That is what Schroeder did.
Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is how the Democrat Party "stood behind" then President Bush only to insert the dagger in the next election over this very situation. How ironic!!
Schröder could have disagreed with American policy without making it his main campaign issue in 2002. I remember hearing Schröder say over and over, "Wir sagen Nein zum Krieg gegen den Irak!" It became a bully pulpit issue and rhetorical punching bag for him during the election. I can see how Bush would be annoyed -- especially if Schröder did promise his support earlier.
Incidentally, I heard Schröder say in 2005, "Wir sagen Nein zu einem Krieg gegen Iran!" and thought, "Who the hell is talking about a war against Iran?" Is he going to play this card again? And we going to fall for it twice?
Schroeder was only partially elected on the pacifist platform. His re-election was really related to his reaction to the floods in Dresden, much in the way Bush's non-reaction to Katrina stands as a metaphor for his entire crappy presidency.
US "war against terror" in Iraq is nothing more than a lie and Bush is the biggest liar and a war criminal. It is so asthonishing to most european and also some US citizen that US people doesn't get that.
Unfortunately the consequences are not important as long as he can show after couple of weeks and say 'The war is over, mission accomplished", what an arrogant!
I really just feel sorry for the innocents ppl died in both side.
Anybody who thinks differently has either spent the last few years living in a hole in the ground or is related to Bliar or Bush or both.
Bush had been looking for a 'legitimate' reason to invade Iraq and he got it with 9/11. OIl is the question (and the answer) but the figures unfortunately don't add up thanks mainly to corruption within the Iraq construction industry but also due to some verx lax accounting by the US army and private contractors like Blackwater
Last available figures for fiscal costs (per month) in Iraq (Feb 2010) were 5.5 billion US incidentally now outstripped by Afganistan (last figures available 6.7 billion US per month). Oil revenue accounts for nearly 95% of Iraqs income.
Note: Nearly 8,7billion US is still missing from the oil revenue accounts set up by the UN security council specifically to rebuild Iraqi infratructure.
Obvioulsly Hussein was a nasty piece of work but I think quite possibly the lesser of two evils. The country is in ruins, the body count continues and services don't work.
Shame I say on Bush AND the UN who folded like a deck of cards when pressured by the US administration.
What a mess!
This is probably the basis of Bush's claim. Schroeder is not in favor of the war because Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, but Bush kept saying it was so often that maybe he believed it. (Except for that one press conference where the reporter asked "Was Iraq involved in the 9/11 attacks?" and Bush answered "No.".)
And we all agree that Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, but that doesn't necessarily justify the war. If it did, there would be a coalition of the willing invading Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, .... The list goes on and even the USA doesn't have enough bombs...
However, it is equally accurate to say that the case Bush presented as justification for his actions in Iraq was based entirely upon falsehoods, lies, and, at best, inaccuracies. Given that, the war was started with, perhaps, the best of intentions but for the worse of reasons.
Setting aside all of that, and I'm not suggesting we can or should, the second fact remains: Bush had no plan for what should be done after the government of Iraq fell. The complete disaster that ensued was not an accident. It was the result of poor planning and a complete lack of insight into the situation.
I did not support going into Iraq, but I never feared for winning the war. Being a Vietnam veteran, I feared for winning the peace, and once again, the US demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of another culture. The lies that provided the foundation for the war only made it worse.
wa
...oh yes they do!
(and whatever is lacking in individual conventional GBUs can be compensated for in sheer megatons per warhead)
Bush reacted properly when he sent the responsible government agency FEMA to the state to work on the disaster of Katrina. Fernsehen Schroeder would have been there for a good photo shoot.
Some facts:
Over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana received more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion versus $1.4 billion for California, even though its population is more than seven times larger.
Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years.
There was actually a plan to upgrade the miles of levees to Cat 5 standards, but that was multiple billions of dollars and more importantly 30 years to complete.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were only designed to protect against a Category 3 storm.
This latest Gerhard Schröder matter shows that war criminal and mass murderer Bush continues to lie.
UK Deputy PM Mick Clegg recently told the House of Commons that the Iraq invasion was illegal. Former head of the top UK intelligence agency MI5, Dame Elizabeth Manningham-Buller, recently told the UK Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War that there were no Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (as asserted by top UN weapons inspectors back in 2003) and that the Iraq invasion had increased the threat of terrorism.
It gets even worse. Scientific, engineering and intelligence experts provide compelling evidence that the US did 9-11 (indeed some say that the Israelis were also involved) (for details Google "US did 9-11").
20 years of US sanctions, war and occupation (1990-2010) have devastated Iraq with 4.4 million violent deaths or non-violent deaths from deprivation, 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to US Coalition war crimes, 5-6 million refugees - an Iraqi Holocaust on a scale similar to that of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (Google Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide)..
Respected NGOs should set up a new Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal of eminent scholars top try Bush Senior , Clinton, Bush Junior and Obama (US), Blair, Brown and Cameron (UK), Howard, Rudd and Gillard (Australia) and their associates for war crimes in Iraq and also in Afghanistan (post-invasion Afghan violent and non-violent avoidable deaths 4.9 million).
Don't make us come over there and pimp slap you bums.. again..
But one thing is clear that rather than invading Iraq which was defenceless, the crisis could have been solved with some other method rather than using the military and killing so many innocent soldiers,civilians and so on.