It’s simply breathtaking how suddenly how interesting Iraq has become for Old Europe nations like France and Germany. No sooner does President Obama take office than “stablisation” starts stabilizing the hell out of everything down there.
Nicolas Sarkozy zipped by for a visit to Baghdad last week. Now Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself, Germany’s Foreign Minister and losing chancellor candidate in Germany’s upcoming election, pulled on his obligatory bullet-proof vest and did his unannounced visit thing to check out the stabilization process first hand.
And to kickstart that big business networking made-in-Germany thing all over again, of course. The last visit by a German foreign minister here was back in 1987. The Germans made tons of money with Sadam back in those days, you must understand.
“My visit shows that we want to support the new Iraq as it moves towards consolidating democracy,” Steinmeier said. “Germany wants to assist Iraq in reconstruction,” he added. “And in handing out lucrative contracts from a country with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves,” he didn’t say, but thought.
The Germans will now open up an economic office in Baghdad with a branch in Kurdish Irbil, both places indescribable hell holes of civil war sectarian violience, chaos and death, just a few weeks ago.
“We have seen in the last months important successes in stabilizing the country.”
Observing Hermann 
I found this article randomly (or better: by mistake).
You do not seem to be very intelligent first off. I don’t know what your aim is with that article, but when a country, not directly involved in the illegal Iraq war which was started from the USA, uses its oppurtunity to rebuild Babylon.
Beside that the “Old Europe” doesn’t even exist – it was a phrase which Rumsfeld used while trying to convince the wise countries, the result was that he convinced predominant insignificant countries – Germany is way more intelligent than the USA.
While the USA attacked the harmless WMD-free Iraq and thought it would have been an easy way for direct access to its oil ressources (btw it is not about petroleum ressources, but you probably don’t know the difference), the plan collapsed and they spent billions in the Iraq war while Germany made plans at the early beginning to use this situation to make economic deals while reconstructing the country.
So the ones who benefit from it are the “old”, wise and superior countries above the youthful, naive and unsophisticated country. I strongly support when all other countries except the USA profit by this situation.
Thank you, Pretor. You may not realize it, or certainly wouldn’t want it, but I believe that you just helped me prove the point I’m trying to make here with this post/blog. You are simply incapable of seeing just how hypocritical you are.
Sadly, when it suited US foreign policy (early 1980’s), we were happy to prop up Saddam and send him weapons. Maybe Germany did too.