By The Prowler on 3.8.05 @ 12:06AM
Please inform William Safire.
Washington conservatives, foreign policy academics, and some
Jewish groups are surprised that American Enterprise Institute
scholar Norman Ornstein apparently plans to share
the podium in Washington on March 11 at a U.S./German policy
conference with former German Defense Minister Rudolf
Scharping. Scharping stepped down from his post in July
2002 amid ethics questions about his personal life as well as
charges that he abused his office. But Scharping returned to the
media spotlight that fall, when New York Times op-ed
columnist William Safire detailed a meeting
Scharping had with a group of American and German leaders in
Hamburg on August 27, 2002.
According to Safire's column of September 19, 2002, Scharping
was asked a why President Bush was looking to invade Iraq.
Scharping noted in reply that he was often asked this question by
his SPD colleagues. His answer? The Iraq war was all about "the
Jews." Scharping went on to explain to the group, Safire reported,
that President Bush was motivated to overthrow Saddam by his and
other key Republicans' need to curry favor with what Scharping
called "a powerful -- perhaps overly powerful -- Jewish lobby" in
the November 2002 U.S. elections.
The report on Scharping's comments set off a firestorm on both
sides of the Atlantic, because it came a day after another senior
figure in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's
government, justice minister Herta
Daeubler-Gmelin, had compared President Bush to Hitler.
Scharping denied that he ever made the comments. He remained a
vocal critic of America's Iraq policy.
The Ornstein/Scharping discussion is sponsored by the
nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and a German
friendship and foreign policy organization with ties to Scharping,
as well as to another disgraced German political figure,
Walther Kiep, the party fundraiser to former
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl who was caught up in
the 1990s Christian Democratic Union fundraising scandal.
Scharping's political career has been reduced to pursuing the
presidency of the German bicycling federation, the election for
which will be held later in March. He also is listed as a visiting
scholar at Tufts University's Fletcher School, where he teaches a
single course, worth half a credit, on international relations.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Iraq
