Americans ignorant? Try the Germans...

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Jerrek, May 2, 2003.

  1. Jerrek Registered Senior Member

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    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/01/MN306600.DTL
    German warnings not borne out by Iraq war
    Dire predictions look like anti-U.S. feeding frenzy in hindsight.

    POLNot so long ago, prominent German politicians were outdoing each other forecasting worst-case scenarios for the Iraq conflict. The predictions ranged from "millions of victims of U.S. rockets" to "millions of Iraqi refugees desperately fleeing the country."

    On March 21, Social Democratic parliamentary President Wolfgang Thierse, one of the country's most influential leaders, told a Cologne newspaper, "Millions of people in Baghdad will be victims of bombs and rockets."

    Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin of the Green Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition, grandly declared on Feb. 26, "The German government possesses various studies expecting up to 200,000 victims of military operations in Iraq. And it is feared that another 200,000 persons will die from indirect results of the war."

    "All the so-called experts were wide of the mark with their forecasts," noted Theo Koll, moderator of the prime time news feature show "Frontel." Among the footage shown to prove his point was Development Minister Heidemarie Wielczorek-Zeul, a Social Democrat, emotionally predicting on a talk show that "3 million Iraqi refugees will be flooding neighboring countries."



    What a bunch of ignorant idiots. Look at this:



    "Thanks to Chancellor Schroeder's policies, German-American relations are in shambles," declared top Christian Democratic Party leader Wolfgang Schaeuble. "We must do everything to quickly repair them."

    "We need the Americans much more than they need us -- economically and militarily," said Willy Hasenstein, a veteran Social Democrat from Munich. "And that's why we should make peace with them."
     
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  3. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    We had similar sorts of predictions here, although less extreme. Fortunately our government had the balls to go against what was loudly proclaimed to be "majority opinion", although in my view this "majority" was simply the most vocal section of the population and not a majority at all. Increasing support for Howard's goverment post-Iraq seems to bear this out.

    It was, overall, quite refreshing to me to see a strong Australian government for once... something we havent really seen for some time.
     
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  5. mouse can't sing, can't dance Registered Senior Member

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    Those predictions are not necessarily meant to feed anti-US feelings. I for one had also severe reservations towards starting a war in a very volatile area with a lot of zealots running around with bombs. For me, and i suppose many like me, the fear was real: it was the kind of a war that could escalate. I still believe that this fear was justified... the fact that the war was contained and rather quickly finished, does not negate the fact that it could have turned out otherwise.

    EDIT: added a few words to make sense of last sentence.
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2003
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