(German Foreign Minister) Steinmeier defends action in Guantánamo case (IHT)

[struggle4progress]

By Judy Dempsey
Published: January 28, 2007

... As Schröder's chief of staff, Steinmeier would have had access to the intelligence traffic between Germany and the United States, according to government officials.

Steinmeier said last week that he had known nothing about the U.S. offer to release Kurnaz, adding that he saw no reason why he should resign.

But in an interview published Sunday in the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, Steinmeier appeared to change his position.

"One just has to imagine what would happen if there had been a terrorist attack and if it had become clear in retrospect that we could have prevented it from happening," he said. "I made the right decision." ...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/28/news/german.php

[Kelvin Mace]

1. Let me see if I have this new form of logic down

"I acted to prevent a terrorist attack, and even though there was no real danger of a terrorist attack, if there had been, I would have been right."

Based on this "logic", he could order that every pregnant Muslim woman in the country be seized, and forced to abort their child. After all, each and every Muslim fetus has a chance of growing up to be a terrorist who could launch a terrorist attack. One just has to imagine what would happen if there was a terrorist attack in the future and it had become clear in retrospect that he could have prevented it from happening with this simple preventive measure.

[struggle4progress]

2. German foreign minister departs for U.S. following arrest warrants in CIA kidnapping case

The Associated Press
Published: February 1, 2007

BERLIN: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier left for the United States on Thursday for talks on the Middle East, one day after German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA agents.

Steinmeier said he did not think U.S.-German anti-terrorism efforts would be complicated by the warrants, issued Wednesday by prosecutors investigating the alleged kidnapping of Lebanese-born German citizen Khaled al-Masri.

"No, I don't believe so," Steinmeier said in Berlin before his departure. "The fact of the arrest warrants itself is a matter for the justice system that we can't comment further on politically at the moment." ...

Munich prosecutors are seeking 13 people they believe to be CIA agents involved in seizing al-Masri. It is not clear whether they will ever be identified, since the names are believed to be CIA aliases, or how they could be returned to Germany for trial ...

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/01/europe/EU-GEN-Germany-US-Steinmeier.php

Starts soundin like Blair, Howard, and the rest of the Chimp's gang, then off to the US ... I'd guess he's being given a playbook ...