''Today, Germany under Merkel will take a more sound and realistic approach to security matters. Unlike Schroeder, she will not play games to score cheap political capital at an allies expense. Iraq is not the only example of where Schroeder did this. Missile defense was another example where the Schroeder administration more or less took a position that ran contrary even to Germany's OWN security interests and they knew the US would follow through with it, yet they bad mouthed it and pandered to the political left within Germany. As the elections were nearing Schroeder even tried to play games with the Iran crisis! This man did not even serve Germany's OWN interests. He served himself, and should be happy with his job at Gazprom today''
Well, I did neither vote for entertainer Schroeder nor for diva Fisher. I agree that their government has done a lot of damage to the Atlantic relations together with Chirac. Thankfully, both are gone now and the acceptance rates of Schroeder plummeted after this Gazprom deal, so I guess he is politically dead by now. Merkel has more room to manoeuvre in foreign affairs than in domestics. She is
definitely USA friendly and I think she has already proven this and will do it further. She has obviously managed to establish a good working relationship with your president, so sunnier relationship times seem to lay ahead!.
Ouch.
champagne = campaign