What a bunch of ingrates. Germans are scandalized that their undercover agents help the US remove Saddam. As if they owed nothing to the American troops who insured their safety for 50 years.

They are not outraged by the real German Scandal posted bellow, the fact that their companies are doing business with Sudan while it's persecuting the people of Darfur or helping Iran develop nuclear weapons.

A German Scandal, March 8, 2006
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Here are some recent headlines from Germany: "Berlin sponsors Sudan trade show" and "German firms involved in Iran's nuclear program."

Naturally these stories about Germany doing business with an African regime busy carrying out a genocide in Darfur or helping the mullahs get the bomb should illicit attention or outrage even? Please.

The only "scandal" these days is the story that German spies allegedly helped the U.S. in the run-up to the Iraq war. The New York Times reported last week that a German liaison officer based at U.S. Central Command in Qatar passed on Saddam Hussein's defense plans to the U.S. The information was gathered by two other German agents in Iraq. Germany's foreign intelligence service confirmed that one of its agents worked -- with government approval -- with the U.S. military but said the information that he provided "had no relevant military value."

No matter. The media is "shocked" and so is the opposition, ranging from some Liberals to the far left and the Greens. The Green rage isn't even tempered by the likelihood that Übergreenie Joschka Fischer, foreign minister at the time, would have approved the German-American cooperation. If true, that's the real news.

German commentators who today accuse the previous anti-war government of hypocrisy would seem to deserve even stronger censure. Their argument, in essence, is that Germany should have sat on information that may have shortened the war and saved allied soldiers as well as Iraqi troops and civilians. The real scandal would be if the inquiry that the German parliament is bound to open soon were to reveal that Germans withheld intelligence from their most important NATO ally.

Sensible Germans should hope that Berlin had a slightly more active role than previously thought. That will look far better on the historical record than the previous supposition that Germany played a role in shielding the butcher of Baghdad from the fate he so clearly deserved. And it might help ameliorate revulsion at those headlines proclaiming that Germans today are still conducting business as usual with other odious regimes.