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Monday, November 29th, 2010

Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush

Author:     KLAUS WIEDREFE
Source:     Der Spiegel (Germany)
Publication Date:     11/24/2010
 Link: Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush
Stephan:   It wasn't just that Bush, Cheney, Feith, Rice, Wolfowitz and others were criminally culpable for starting a completely unnecessary war, in spite of all attempts to dissuade them. It was their utter amateurish incompetence. I have just finished reading imperial Life in the Emerald City a book I commend to your attention. If you react as I did it will leave you with jaw dropping astonishment at how utterly mediocre these people were as statesmen, and strategists. With each revelation it becomes clearer and more irrefutable that through their decisions they have stripped America of over a trillion dollars and killed hundreds of thousands, including thousands of Americans, and wounded and maimed hundreds of thousands more. History I think will be merciless, and accountability in this lifetime would be very appropriate. Thanks to James Spottiswoode.

A classified document obtained by SPIEGEL shows notes from a meeting between a top German diplomat and Condoleezza Rice just weeks before the Iraq invasion. It indicates steps by the German government to prevent the war and undermines claims in George W. Bush’s memoir that Gerhard Schröder indicated he would support the president should the US go to war.

Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer made every effort they could. The German chancellor and foreign minister spared no effort with their appeals, whether in public or private, in small groups or with the eyes of the entire world upon them. In the end, though, it was all for naught. Then-United States President George W. Bush wouldn’t allow anyone to change his mind. He was dead set on launching a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and thereby bringing ‘freedom,’ as he put it, to the Middle East. It was a freedom that Bush described as ‘ God’s gift to mankind.’

Over time, however, this would-be gift from God has grown to become the biggest foreign-policy disaster in US history since the Vietnam War. The
war in Iraq

and its subsequent occupation has cost more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,000 American soldiers their […]

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