I don’t know what’s more upsetting. That the NYT’s in their blind attempt to dissolve any support for our President would continue to publish classified material (of course when it’s directed at a Republican it’s now just dissent, directed at a Democrat and its a leak worthy of a criminal investigation), or the fact the German’s are now upset they helped us save lives in our push into Baghdad by providing the Iraqi defensive plans:
Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion, according to a classified study by the United States military.
[…]Saddam Hussein’s plan for the defense of Baghdad, obtained by German agents and provided to the United States in February 2003, a month before the war, according to a study by the American military.
[…]The prelude to the Iraq war was a period of intense strain in German-American relations. In his 2002 political campaign, Gerhard Schr?der, then the German chancellor, warned against an invasion and vowed that Germany would not participate. President Bush declined to make the customary congratulatory phone call to Mr. Schr?der when he won re-election that September. Annoyed by the antiwar stances of Germany and France, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offended the two nations by labeling them “old Europe” shortly before the war in March 2003.
Longstanding relations between American and German intelligence agencies, however, persisted. As the American military prepared to invade Iraq, the German intelligence agents operated in Baghdad.
Among their tasks, they sought to obtain Mr. Hussein’s plan to defend Baghdad, the United States study asserts. For years, the Iraqi military had relied on a strategy that called for deploying Iraqi forces along the invasion route to Baghdad in the hope of bloodying and weakening an invading army before it arrived at the capital.
But on Dec. 18, 2002, Mr. Hussein summoned his commanders to a strategy session where a new plan was unveiled, former Iraqi officers and government officials told American interrogators. Among those attending were Qusay Hussein, the Iraqi leader’s son who oversaw the Republican Guard; Lt. Gen. Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hasan Taha al-Rawi, the Republican Guard chief of staff, and other Republican Guard generals. Mr. Hussein’s instructions were to mass troops along several defensive rings near the capital, including a “red line” that Republican Guard troops would hold to the end.
An account of the German role in acquiring a copy of Mr. Hussein’s plan is contained in the American military study, which focuses on Iraq’s military strategy and was prepared in 2005 by the United States Joint Forces Command.
After the German agents obtained the Iraqi plan, they sent it up their chain of command, the study said.
In February 2003, a German intelligence officer in Qatar provided a copy to an official from the United States Defense Intelligence Agency who worked at the wartime headquarters of the overall commander, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, according to the American military study. Officials at the agency shared the plan with the Central Command’s J-2 office, or intelligence division. That division supplied information for the report.
The classified study contains a copy of the sketch supplied by the Germans. “The overlay was provided to the Germans by one of their sources in Baghdad (identity of the German sources unknown),” the study notes. “When the bombs started falling, the agents ceased ops and went to the French Embassy.”
And how are the German’s reacting?
Germany’s government faced renewed pressure to order an inquiry yesterday after fresh evidence emerged that Germany supplied military intelligence to the United States in the run-up to the Iraq war.
A classified US military study states categorically that the Germans provided details about Saddam Hussein’s plans for the defence of Baghdad. Since the spy issue first arose last month, the Berlin government has been repeatedly forced on the defensive. It issued a denial yesterday.
A copy of the US study was obtained by Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent of the New York Times, who has co-written Cobra 11: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, to be published by Pantheon in America and Atlantic Books in Britain next month. A New York Times report yesterday was based on the book.
[…]Parliamentary opposition parties – Communists, Greens and the centre-right Free Democrats – held talks yesterday on whether to launch a joint investigation of the New York Times report.
Joerg Van Essen, the Free Democrats’ chief whip, said: “We have the impression that they helped the Americans and the English more than they told us, and more than their official policy was.”
Elmar Brok, a German Christian Democrat who chairs the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said that if the report turned out to be true, questions would have to be raised about the German secret services’ honesty. He said: “I hope it’s not true because then the credibility of Schr?der and [Joschka] Fischer [the foreign minister at the time of the war] would be totally destroyed.”
Big thanks once more for our New York Times. In the future any country that wishes to help us will hesitate knowing that our press will publish that fact. I have no doubt the writer will win some kind of award since it hurts the US, and that need for an award will cost American’s lives in future conflicts because we did not get the information we normally would have.
Think about it, prior to invading we believed Baghdad would be BIG battle. Block by block with massive casualities. The MSM constantly pounded that fact into our heads. Now news that the Germans helped us do it more safely is bad news to the Germans, and bad news to any future country that will help us.
Captain’s Quarters makes the same argument:
If one recalls, the question of liberating Baghdad weighed heavily on the minds of military planners. America anticipated a block-by-block battle, putting the millions of Baghdadis at risk while potentially costing thousands of American lives. This was one of the points on which critics of the invasion predicted a disaster for the operation. Some publicly predicted that Baghdad would never fall to invading forces and that even if it did, it would resemble Berlin in May 1945 once the battle ended.
If the Germans assisted us in the effort to spare all of that, then their role in the war should be re-evaluated by Americans. However, the Germans apparently would prefer not to have their role re-evaluated at all, as their own people are furious with this alleged breach of their proclaimed neutrality.

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