Washington — How is the German government going to explain one
of the revelations that our military will be making just days after
we take Iraq? That revelation will be that a plenitude of German
companies supplied some of the ingredients of the Iraqi’s weapons
of mass destruction and in some instances assisted in making these
grisly instruments of war. Among the German concerns now suspected
of supplying Saddam Hussein with the necessary technical know-how
and ingredients for weapons of mass destruction are Daimler-Benz,
Siemens, and Carl Zeiss. German intelligence has monitored scores
of other German firms supplying dual-purpose materials to Iraq.
This intelligence gathering is known both in Germany and at the
United Nations. Surely once our forces have laid hands on the
corpus delicti in conquered Iraq, German complicity in
creating Saddam’s arsenal will be made known. What will Herr
Schroeder’s response be?
Perhaps he will lead a massive anti-American “peace
demonstration.” He has been very adroit at playing the
anti-American card back home and at the United Nations. His use of
it got him reelected chancellor. Moreover his anti-Americanism is
one of his few deeply held beliefs. It goes back to his youth when
he was a 1970s leftist, bubbling over with anti-Americanism. His
present foreign minister, Herr Fischer, was an even more fervent
anti-American leftist in his youth.
In the early 1970s Herr Fischer lived with the infamous Daniel
Cohn-Bendit in a Frankfurt apartment that was a revolutionary lair.
Their roommate was one Hans Joachim Klein, whom Carlos the Jackal
(Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, one of international terrorism’s prodigies
in those times) identified during interrogation by the French 1997
as assisting him in his historic 1975 attack on the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters in Vienna. It was an
operation that involved taking sixty OPEC officials and bureaucrats
hostage. Carlos claimed that weapons for the OPEC attack were kept
in the apartment inhabited by Cohn-Bendit, Fischer, and Klein. Some
years later, when Klein was prosecuted for killing two security men
during the attack, Fischer appeared at the trial as a “character
witness” for Klein, though he denied that the weapons used in the
OPEC attack had been kept in their apartment.
Subsequent evidence has been published that Fischer was indeed
the “red revolutionary” whom Carlos had spoken of during his trial.
Among the evidence are pictures of the present foreign minister of
Germany beating a German police officer during a 1973 leftist
demonstration in Frankfurt. This bit of idealism Herr Fischer has
not denied. In fact, he has publicly apologized to the police
officer. Pictured with Herr Fischer is Klein, who is now serving
nine years for his involvement in the OPEC attack. The German woman
who supplied the damning pictures also claims that the present
foreign minister of Germany back in his revolutionary days
advocated the use of Molotov cocktails during a 1975 demonstration
that left a German policeman badly burned. Herr Fischer has yet to
apologize for this barbarism.
Thus I would not expect an apology once our forces uncover the
evidence of German involvement in the creation of Saddam’s weapons
of mass destruction. Actually we do not have to wait for Iraq’s
collapse to know of the Germans’ reckless pursuit of profit in the
arms trade. According to Marc Erikson, writing in Asia
Times, “Expurgated portions of Iraq’s December 7 report to the
UN Security Council show that German firms made up the bulk of
suppliers for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.” And
“German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his minions have long
known the facts,” thanks to German intelligence.
The Germans and the French have been caterwauling for months
about how irresponsible Prime Minister Tony Blair and President
George W. Bush have been in taking us towards war with Iraq. Soon
the world will know of how irresponsible these governments have
been in trading with Iraq. As the New York Times has
reported, in 2001 “France ranked No. 1 among European countries
doing business with Iraq, with $1.5 billion in trade.” The Germans
and the French have led the left in its chant “No War for Oil.” A
suitable response from our side might be, “No Cover-Up for German
Arms Dealers and French Entrepreneurs.”
