‘POISONED’: Germany’s ‘red-green’ coalition wins thin mandate in bitter anti-US campaign

Germany’s socialist chancellor squeaked out the thinnest of mandates after mounting a campaign laced with anti-American invective that severely damaged Berlin’s relationship with Washington.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder “poisoned” his country’s ties to the US, say National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Now, Schroeder is busy trying to repair relations. He sacked his justice minister, who reportedly compared President Bush’s tactics to those of Adolf Hitler.

A leader of an allied party also quit after a Jew-baiting rampage on television. As if that wasn’t enough, Schroeder’s disgraced former defense minister, Rudolf Scharping, recently derided the US-British effort against Saddam Hussein as Jewish-led warmongering.

The only Schroeder official emerging from the campaign unscathed, it seems, is his Green foreign minister, Joschka Fischer – who’s been trying to compensate for his past as a Baader-Meinhof Gang wannabe and PLO fellow-traveler by being less anti-American than the rest of Schroeder’s circle.

Schroeder’s win was “costly” for the German-US alliance and for Germany’s relations with other NATO countries, says Newsweek – French President Jacques Chirac and Spanish Prime Minister Josemaria Aznar openly hoped that Schroeder would lose.

Observes Newsweek, “Not since World War II has Germany’s government been this isolated on a major international issue, and seldom has its chancellor been so thoroughly disliked abroad.”