The AP has an excellent overview of the latest mess in the German elections: the German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin has been cited comparing Bush to Hitler, for attacking Iraq to distract from domestic problems. “That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that,” quotes Schwaebisches Tagblatt, a German newspaper.
Denouncements and denials abound. Daeubler-Gmelin for her part claims the whole episode is a fabrication, and the editor of Schwaebisches Tagblatt claims that she confirmed the quote before they went to press. The German opposition party is calling for the resignation of the “unbearable woman.”
This comes very poorly timed, as the German elections for Prime Minister are in the final hours. Daeubler-Gmelin’s boss and the incumbent Social Democrat Prime Minister Gerhardt Schroder has strongly opposed Bush’s saber-rattling against Iraq.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer described the comments as “outrageous and inexplicable,” after some platitudes about the value of American-German relations. The German Prime Minister has formally apologized, without admitting any wrongdoing.
William Safire, in the New York Times, reminds everyone of former German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping’s assertion last month that the Iraq issue was Bush appeasing “a powerful — perhaps overly powerful — Jewish lobby.”
Jesse Helms, who is not up for re-election, went off the hook, suggesting that America move its military presence out of Germany “and stationing them on the territory of other NATO allies who do support the United States…”
a technology job is no excuse 