Germany now says it hopes Saddam loses; claims it was a big help to US-led war effort

Now that the Good Guys are poised to take Baghdad, more countries are siding with the US-led Coalition, or at least against the Ba’athist regime in Iraq.

Germany’s socialist government yesterday said for the first time that it hopes the Saddamites lose. Note the nuance: Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer didn’t say he hopes the US and its Coalition partners win – only that “we hope the regime will collapse.”

German officials are now trying to paint their government as having been a big supporter of the military effort all along. The Washington Post reports from Berlin, “Officials say Germany is doing more for the war than any country except Britain, and that they do this because the United States remains an ally.”

The Turkish government finally agreed at least to allow the Coalition to send supplies through its territory, and South Korea belatedly voted to send 600 non-combat forces to Iraq.

As the end of the Iraqi regime draws near, more countries – and more figures in the US, including Secretary of State Colin Powell – are demanding that even though the US led the small coalition to liberate Iraq, it should not be permitted to determine the peace.

They argue that control of a transitional post-Saddam regime be taken from US hands and transferred to the United Nations – which opposed the liberation of Iraq in the first place.

President Bush can’t let that happen. Any UN role in post-Saddam Iraq should be secondary. As for the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, and the others who tried to prevent Iraq from being liberated – and who arguably helped get Americans killed – they should have no role at all. They chose sides, and their side lost.