Bundeswehr gets spanked

[Pete]

Bundeswehr gets spanked.

Moaning soldiers too soft.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ay-chiefs.html

[JJ_BPK]

There are Soldiers...

And there are Grunts...

You train Grunts to be Soldiers..

But in the end, Ya go to war with what you got..

Nuff said..

[Slantwire]

How can they be soft? The picture shows them wearing black berets - doesn't that give them higher morale and professional standards?

[mojaveman]

I don't think that the soldiers are too soft, rather, I think that the philosophy of their society has a lot to do with it. Germany has struggled with an image problem ever since the end of WWII. There are many people of influence in their government who don't want their country to be viewed as an aggressive military power by the rest of the World. That is probably one of the reasons why they haven't participated in the "sharp end" of operations in Afghanistan.

Go to a soccer match in Germany sometime and watch the fans, it would leave an impression on you. The Teutons are still plenty belligerent and in my opinion capable of kicking some serious butt anywhere they choose to. It's in their blood.

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

There are Soldiers...

And there are Grunts...

You train Grunts to be Soldiers..

But in the end, Ya go to war with what you got..

Nuff said..

JJ,

In 1956-57, when I first was sent to the 11th Abn, they were assigned the task of training the NEW German army... The Bundeswehr as they were appropriately called, originally was started in newspaper ads requesting that all former WW2 soldiers willing to be the nucleus training cadre for the new German army can apply.........Quite a few germans applied,but quite a few weren't accepted because of wounds incurred in battles. The ones that survived were trained as the drill sgts. I was not involved in that program,however I talked to guys who were and they said it was difficult to break down their goose step marching and their exiting from an airplane .......But,they claimed they never worked with such motivated men in their lives..... Privates saluted corporals,corporals saluting sgts,etc. This was not required of them they just did it. I think the 10th SF Grp got involved,but to what degree I'm not sure................

GB TFS

[Richard]

FWIW - from an old European FAO:

• General Schneiderhahn is not the IG as we know it - the term GeneralInspecteur dem Bundeswehrs more accurately translates to Chairman of the Staff of the Federal Armed Forces - or- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as we call it.
• The troops in the pic are typical Mech Infantry - What, me walk?
• Bild is a daily - the largest in Germany - with a tendency towards reporting sensationalistic stories about on a par with the National Enquirer - and Bild one-ups The Sun by putting their bare breasted girls on the front page instead of inside on page three.
• The German military - and population, in general - has been of a self-defense force mindset for over two-generations now - and that's a difficult one to change.
• The Bundeswehr still has over 50,000 conscripts - which both the reservissts and volunteer forces treat like red-haired step-children. I know Schneiderhahn sought to change that mind-set a couple of years ago by promoting their availability for missions like base security and BSB functions, as well as supporting disaster relief within Germany - but I'm not sure how much any of the BW has really bought into his vision.

Taking the comments in Bild with a proverbial grain of salt and considering the historical development of the BW since 1954 - it seems as if there is progress to be made and editorials to be written.

Richard's $.02

[Richard]

Die große Frage...

Richard's $.02

Pic is Schneiderhahn with SACEUR CDR, GEN James Jones (2003-2006).

Will Germany's Army Ever Be Ready for Battle?
Tristana Moore, Time, 27 Jun 2009

On June 15, the German army's General Wolfgang Schneiderhan found himself in front of an audience of politicians and senior officers defending military policy — on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers "are whining to high heaven," Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the "unsuitable" sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining of his own, noting the tendency for his officers to delegate blame, with no one taking responsibility for their actions. "We can't guarantee an all-round, feel-good experience for our soldiers," he said.

Schneiderhan's blunt comments do a good job of portraying the German army, or Bundeswehr, as a bunch of whining softies. But there's a serious side to his exasperation. The German army as it stands today is a relatively young creation, born after a period of demilitarization following the end of World War II. A defensive army, the Bundeswehr has become increasingly engaged in international missions and is coming under pressure to step up its involvement in out-and-out warfare. After what Schneiderhan said last week, however, many are wondering whether it's up to the task.

That question is especially urgent in Afghanistan. Germany is the third biggest troop contributor to the NATO-led international peacekeeping force there, with 3,700 German troops serving in Kabul and in northern Afghanistan, around Mazar-e-Sharif, where Germany heads the northern regional command. More German soldiers are now being sent to Afghanistan in the run-up to the elections in August, bringing the total number to 4,200 by late summer. There are also plans to send 300 more German troops to the country to help support NATO's deployment of surveillance aircraft.

Germany's Afghan mission is governed by a parliamentary mandate that limits most troops to peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan. Even so, at least 35 German soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since early 2002, most recently on Tuesday, when three died near the northern town of Kunduz after their patrol came under fire. The mission is very unpopular back home, but Germany has been feeling pressure from its NATO allies to pull more of its weight and send troops to the south, the scene of fierce battles with Taliban insurgents.

"The German public is still reluctant to accept a combat role for the Bundeswehr," Henning Riecke, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, tells TIME. "But Germany should become more active in Afghanistan and allow troops to go into combat, if needed even in the south of the country. It's time for Germany to be more flexible in Afghanistan."

That's easier said than done. The legacy of Germany's Nazi past has led to military limits being written into the country's constitution. Germany was demilitarized after World War II ended in 1945, and the process of remilitarization has only developed over time. The Bundeswehr was formed in 1955, when West Germany joined NATO, but the constitution held that the role of Germany's armed forces would be strictly defensive. Initially, the German army's main job was to work with its NATO allies to prevent any attack that might come from Warsaw Pact members.

According to Dieter Krüger, a military historian at the Institute for Military History in Potsdam, it was only after France left NATO in 1966 that Germany's military role became stronger. "In the past, there was no idea of deploying German troops abroad, except in specific cases, like helping in natural disasters," he says. "Up until the end of the Cold War, Germany had a well-trained army, but it was more used to bureaucratic procedures."

Since the 1990s, after reunification, German forces have become more involved in military missions abroad, but there are caveats. The German parliament has to give the green light for any foreign deployment, which it usually does only after long debate. There are currently 247,000 soldiers enrolled in the Bundeswehr and German troops are now serving all over the world, in places such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon.

But some say the Bundeswehr, which is a conscript army, is too bureaucratic and ill-equipped to deal with the modern-day challenges of combat. "Germany's armed forces are often overstretched. There are too many bases in Germany, too many personnel and the equipment is often old-fashioned," says Riecke of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "There is long-overdue reform under way to make the Bundeswehr leaner. It should be easier to deploy forces quickly abroad," he adds, referring to far-reaching plans to modernize the army's equipment and scale back troop numbers.

In the meantime, General Schneiderhan may have to steel himself for more complaints. U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to beef up the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, but will he be able to persuade NATO allies, including Germany, to increase their own efforts there? The German parliamentary troop mandate that limits the army mostly to peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts runs out in December, after the federal elections. When that happens, German soldiers could find that uncomfortable sleeping bags are the least of their problems.

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...906570,00.html

[Richard]

Notice any disconnects here?

Richard's $.02

Do Poor Weapons Hinder Germany in Afghanistan?
Ulrike Demmer, Der Spiegel, 29 Jun 2009

The soldier is afraid for his life. He can only see about 15 Taliban in front of his armored vehicle, but judging by the Kalashnikov fire and anti-tank weapons coming from all sides, there must be more. He fires back, but he has no idea whether his bullets are hitting the intended Taliban targets. His comrades in the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have thrown in smoke grenades as an evasive tactic and they have covered the area with a thick cloud. But he knows he must be killing something.

Not too far behind, other German troops are cowering -- but he's oblivious to them. About 400 meters away (1,312 feet) an armored "Fuchs" (Fox) personnel carrier flips into a ditch filled with water during an evasive maneuver. Three of his comrades drown.

"The worst thing is that it didn't have to come to that," he later writes to fellow soldiers back home. The soldiers wanted to circumvent the Taliban but were ordered not to. "We requested permission to drive around them because our reconnaissance had already detected the enemy an hour earlier," he says.

This account comes from a German soldier fighting for his nation's security in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan last Tuesday, six kilometers (four miles) southwest of Kunduz to be more exact.

Once thought to be far safer than the southern insurgent strongholds, the situation in northern Afghanistan -- where the Bundeswehr is in command of the security force -- has grown far more dangerous recently. Over the past few months insurgent attacks on International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have increased. Since the beginning of the year, insurgents in the region perpetrated 31 armed attacks, 15 rocket strikes and 27 incidents involving explosives. "Kunduz is lost," says a sergeant who just returned to Germany because, as he puts it, his "luck ran out." The sergeant was in his "Dingo" armored vehicle when it was struck by explosives several times.

The Taliban is no longer limiting its activities to hit-and-run attacks. Instead, the insurgents have taken to ambushing German soldiers in Kunduz and the surrounding area and engaging them in sustained combat.

However, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) still doesn't want to talk about " a war." According to Jung, the focus is on civil reconstruction and "networked security." The word "war," he says, sets "completely the wrong tone." But since last Tuesday those who disagree with him have become more vocal. Reinhold Robbe, with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the German parliament's military commissioner, says that the situation is "essentially war." And according to former Defense Minister Peter Struck (SPD), the Taliban is "forcing war upon us."

For soldiers who are fighting for their lives in battles that can last several hours, this debate must seem pointless. They are shooting, killing and dying. Describing it as anything other than "war" just doesn't seem right.

"Anyone Who Attacks Us Can Expect a Response"

The German army, or Bundeswehr, has changed its tactics in recent weeks. In the past, a patrol that was ambushed was simply advised to "push forward." Today those soldiers are fighting back. "Anyone who attacks us can expect a response," says Defense Minister Jung.

Describing last Tuesday's events, soldiers claim that about 170 men in German and Afghan units combed through the Chahar Darreh district, a Taliban stronghold southwest of Kunduz, looking for booby traps. When a Luna unmanned drone spotted a group of insurgents, the soldiers took their positions. They requested permission to drive around the enemy, but they received no orders at all over the next hour -- neither to withdraw nor to attack.

One soldier writing to his comrades afterwards would say they felt like rabbits in a trap. Under the rules of engagement in its current mandate dictated by parliament, the German soldiers are only permitted to attack when their lives are in danger. So did this mean that they had to wait for the Taliban to attack? Or should they have drawn attention to themselves so that the enemy made the first move and the battle could begin?

Is Political Expediency Making German Soldiers Targets?

Do German soldiers have to make themselves targets simply because of their commanding officers' reservations about legal definitions? According to the rules of engagement, which every Bundeswehr soldier deployed abroad keeps with him in the form of a printed pocket card, the German ISAF forces have the right to defend themselves against attack anywhere and at all times, as well as to repel attacks and to provide emergency assistance. But they are not permitted to hunt down and kill terrorists.

International law offers a broader mandate. In its resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has empowered the ISAF troops to take all measures necessary to fulfill their mandate. The Germans, however, have subjected themselves to more stringent rules.

The Soldier's Fortune website (Soldatenglück.de) offers a graphic depiction of how American forces interpret this mandate. A video on the site shows the crew of an AH-64 Apache helicopter hunting down and killing a group of 14 armed Taliban fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan -- without having been attacked first. For American and British troops, killing and dying are accepted elements of the mission in Afghanistan.

But the German politicians responsible for sending soldiers to Afghanistan prefer to portray their mission as one that involves policing and developmental aid; they know that anything else would be unpopular with the general public. And with the exception of the far-left Left Party, all of the parties in the German parliament have agreed to keep Afghanistan out of the campaigns for the September parliamentary elections. And while there are many doubts about the mission, majority support for a withdrawal does not exist.

Additionally, a debate has erupted among supporters of the mission over the outfitting of the Bundeswehr troops. It is irresponsible "to send the soldiers on their dangerous missions without giving them the protection that superior Western technology can provide," says Rainer Arnold, the defense policy spokesman for the SPD's parliamentary group. Arnold wants to see combat helicopters sent to Afghanistan. Bernd Siebert, his counterpart with the CDU, advocates giving German soldiers the Panzerhaubitze, a German self-propelled howitzer, also known as the PzH 2000. And Elke Hoff, a defense policy expert with the business-friendly, liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) is publicly voicing her support for the Eurofighter jet, arguing that the equipment and material supplied must be adapted to suit the situation.

The Right Weapons Are Much Too Powerful.

The Bundeswehr does in fact have a combat helicopter at its disposal -- the "Tiger" -- which, with its three-hour combat potential and a range of 725 kilometers, is comparable to the American "Apache" helicopter. But the Tiger will remain in the hangar for the next few months. Firstly because the few helicopters stationed at the Fritzlar military airbase in central Germany are not yet ready for use, due to technical problems. And secondly because there are not enough pilots fully trained in the use of these machines in battle.

The military leadership has rejected calls for the PzH 2000 and for additional "Marder" armored personnel carriers. Four "Marder" APCs are already in Mazar-e-Sharif, they have recently undergone significant maintenance work and are currently on the way to Kunduz. As for the PzH 2000, German Chief of Army Staff Hans-Otto Budde believes that heavy artillery like this would constitute an unnecessary "show of muscle in the current situation."

In fact, the requested weapons systems would increase the risk of collateral damage. They are so powerful that it would be next to impossible to avoid civilian casualties. And many innocent Afghans have already lost their lives in American "rapid response" air strikes deployed in connection with sudden skirmishes. The ultimate argument is that providing better protection for German soldiers could have the opposite of the intended effect as it leads to a loss of support among the local population. This is one of the reasons that Americans are beefing up their ground forces, the argument being that the additional "boots on the ground" will eliminate the need for air strikes.

US General Stanley McChrystal, the new ISAF commander, has ordered his soldiers to pursue a new strategy. Whenever you do anything that harms people, he recently told troops, you are probably forfeiting the sympathy of the local population. McChrystal has said that foreign troops would be better off not requesting aerial bombardment and should withdraw when there is a threat of collateral damage.

This is a strategy that has served the Germans well until now. "If we lose the support of the Afghan people," says Winfried Nachtwei, the German Green Party's parliamentary expert on defense issues, "we won't have to spend much time thinking about an exit strategy. We'll be implementing it instead."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...633274,00.html

[The Reaper]

Predators, or prey?

Are these the sons of the once mighty Wehrmacht?

TR

[mike-munich]

Are these the sons of the once mighty Wehrmacht?

TS. they sure are. As Richard posted, there is too much politics involved. The German truly is a warrior, if you let him fight. It's just not popular anymore, not after what happend in WW2. Until the German parliament granted it, Germany couldn't send any troops outside Germany.

You can tell by Richards posts (Danke for your .02$ Richard !)

We have politicans here calling the Bundeswehr soldiers "Aufbauhelfer in Uniform" (development aid worker in uniform). If I was a BW NCO I would turn in my uniform and G36 rifle...

After the Fuchs incident the BW in Asscrackistan gets heavier equipment now, more troops, AND is allowed to return fire. Finally...

[skylinedrive]

From yesterday's "Spiegel-Online"

Snafu in Afghanistan
German Troops Bemoan 'Critical' Deficits in Training and Equipment
By Alexander Szandar

Damning reports are emerging from Germany's military forces in Afghanistan, claiming that cooperation with civilian agencies is abysmal, equipment is lacking and training is insufficient. With the US preparing to pressure Berlin to send more troops, there are now increasing calls for "urgent improvements."

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung is not a big fan of change. When he speaks about the Bundeswehr, Germany's military forces, and their missions abroad, he has a tendency to always use the same expressions. They seem to somehow keep him grounded.

For example, one of his favorite ways to describe the German soldiers operating in Afghanistan is to say that they are "well-trained and well-equipped." He also likes to say that the Bundeswehr's collaboration with elements of the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) stationed in Afghanistan has been so successful that Germany's "networked approach" has even been "adopted in its entirety by NATO."

The problem with these standardized expressions is not that they have been learned by heart. The problem is that they have so little to do with reality.

For once, Jung should be forced to read his military's confidential reports. Some of the internal documents written by troops serving in Afghanistan, which were viewed by SPIEGEL, describe the situation as "critical." They complain about the severe lack of vehicles, weapons and aircraft as well as about the paucity of supplies and replacement parts. They lament the "deficiencies" in the training of the soldiers and bemoan the fact that the much-praised collaboration between the military and civilian agencies in reconstruction efforts is actually functioning pretty terribly.

A Serious Lack of Coordination

Jung and other German politicians may be currently waging a theoretical debate over how long Germany's mission to Afghanistan should last. But for the soldiers on the ground, the problems are much more concrete. They would already be a lot happier if they could fight under adequate conditions.

The fact is that even some of Germany's pet projects in Afghanistan are failing. Whether it's civil reconstruction, developmental aid or training police officers, none of it is working. And for proof, all you need to do is look at the reports coming out of Kunduz, Kabul, Faizabad and Mazar-e-Sharif.

The reports find, for example, that collaboration with the BMZ, the German ministry responsible for development, is proceeding "not so successfully." It says that, even seven years into its mission in Afghanistan, the "implementation (of aid) … continues to be inflexible" and that BMZ projects "are still invisible to the local population." Officers quoted in the report say that these failings tend to undermine "the credibility of Germany's involvement." They add that "starving people are much more impressed by food than they are by pamphlets."

When it comes to training Afghan police officers, even Jung will admit that things "could be improved." But he doesn't like to say things like this in public because he doesn't want to be seen as criticizing Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäulbe, his party colleague in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But German officers, on the other hand, are not shy about criticizing the numerous other players on the ground -- including US soldiers, shady private security firms, the EU-launched police-training mission EUPOL, as well as German police officers and military police -- for allegedly working alongside, rather than with, each other. "When it comes to this matter," says one officer, "we need some sort of coordinating element."

Supply Problems, or Not Making Do with Less

On top of all this, the Bundeswehr also has to deal with some serious problems of its own, particularly its non-functioning logistical supply system. According to internal reports on the lack of supplies, German troops often have to wait months for urgently needed materiel, which creates a "permanent administration of scarcity."

The reports also conclude that, at times, more than half of the roughly 700 armored vehicles Germany has shipped to Afghanistan are not in suitable condition to be deployed. Owing to "missing replacement parts and insufficient repair resources," the military is forced to leave many of its "Dingo" and "Wolf" armored vehicles sitting around unused "sometimes for several weeks." Likewise, the vehicle fleet has been judged to be "inadequate" on the whole, and the vehicles often have drivers without the proper training for handling them off-road.

When it comes to aircraft, things aren't any better. Reports say that some of the maintenance resources for the German Transall military transport planes based in Mazar-e-Sharif are "in bad shape." The fleet of transport planes is already 40 years old. As the soldiers describe it, they come here to be "cannibalized." The reports are often written in a type of officialese that makes things seem rather harmless. For example, one says that "Replacement parts had to be secured using a process of 'controlled disassembly,'" adding that there were not enough "qualified" mechanics.

Likewise, it's already been a few years since a German general complained that putting your hopes in the CH-53 military helicopter "is like rolling the dice." In fact, the military has been calling for more helicopters for as long as it has been deployed in Afghanistan. But even with two more helicopters, to add to the fleet of six, nothing much has changed. The only improvement was to the statistics, since the helicopters arrived without any pilots to fly them. As one person commented rather dryly: "The staffing level was not adjusted to the number of aircraft."

A Budget Making Bad Things Worse

The fact is that the Bundeswehr is caught in a vicious cycle. While expenditures for missions abroad, pensions and personnel continue to constantly rise, there is always less and less money for replacement parts, repairs and training back in Germany. NATO calls on its members to allow flight crews to train for 180 hours each year. But, given its budgetary constraints, Germany only lets its crews fly for at most 70 hours, which is far too little to get them into a "combat ready" state.

The results are shocking. At the moment, Germany has hardly any CH-53 pilots who have the necessary certification to make "dust landings" in Afghanistan's semi-arid landscape, to fly in high mountains, at night or in adverse weather conditions. It's a state of emergency centered around personnel that will soon be affected the "Transall" as well: Many of the transport plane's pilots have retired and migrated to civilian airlines, perhaps because they rarely even got a change to take off in the Luftwaffe, Germany's air force.

[skylinedrive]

Part II.

Furthermore, the Bundeswehr often also has a problem in terms of operational awareness. In the run-up to the presidential election on Aug. 20, reports emerged about a "key deficiency" in Afghanistan. Military commanders were complaining that they had no "comprehensive view of the situation…particularly when it came to the identities, locations and intentions of opposing forces operating in a concealed manner," -- i.e. the Taliban.

Likewise, commanders did not have enough armored Fennek reconnaissance vehicles to send out on patrol. After a number of these vehicles were lost to enemy fire, the budget committee of the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's federal parliament, recently agreed to order some new ones: 10 units, €39 million, to be delivered in 2011.

Interpreters who can speak local dialects are in short supply here, as are secure telecommunications devices. It's often the case that soldiers are forced to communicate using mobile telephones, which are far from secure. And since the German computer network doesn't have the correct level of encryption, soldiers aren't allowed to forward information classified as "secret" from ISAF's main headquarters -- even when lives are on the line.

'Not Sufficient for Timely Operational Support'

The Luna reconnaissance drones, which transmit images in real time, won't function in summer temperatures that usually reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). "Attempts to cool down the aircraft using air-conditioning units before flights have not been successful," the soldiers report.

When commanders order photos from the Luftwaffe's Tornado reconnaissance jets, they are delivered "in excellent quality" -- but only after three days. "That is not at all sufficient for timely operational support," reports say.

And the weapons the Germans have at their disposal are not particularly well-suited to their mission. If a soldier is wearing his flak jacket, which he is obliged to do, he can't really aim his standard G36 automatic rifle. "Targeted shooting is either not at all possible or is restricted," according to reports.

The machine guns on top of "Dingo" armored vehicles can only be used to shoot "in the direction in which the vehicle is driving" -- and only long as the soldier operating it is strapped into the seat, which he is obliged to do under the rules governing the peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan. As a result, it's impossible to engage enemies attacking "Dingos" from the side or from behind. "Weaponry that should, in principle, be useful is actually purely for show and can give the soldiers a false sense of security," one report says.

Reducing Risks

In his attempts to deal with these deficiencies, the longest-serving officer in Kabul, who is responsible for the security of all visitors coming from Germany, has come to a bizarre conclusion. As he puts it, the best protection one can have in the Afghan capital is "to not be noticed at all." Instead of chauffeuring high-ranking guests around in camouflaged SUVs, he believes that the army should obtain some "civilian vehicles with analog security systems." As he sees it, this would allow people to remain as inconspicuous as possible and "thereby reduce the risk inherent in the situation."

These measures, however, only apply to VIPs, such as the defence minister. But that doesn't change the risks that soldiers face on a daily basis.

It wasn't that long ago that Defense Minister Jung was heaping praise on the Bundeswehr. But not everyone is so satisfied with the status quo. "The long-known problems with equipment and training have not been remedied but merely put off to one side," says expert Elke Hoff, a defense expert for the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), in criticizing Jung. The German parliament's military commissioner, Reinhold Robbe, has called for "urgent improvements" in the protection available to soldiers.

This urgency could soon become more acute as the US is putting immense pressure on Berlin to extend its military mandate in Afghanistan. US President Barack Obama is sending an additional 20,000 troops to the country. The current parliamentary mandate for Germany's participation in the ISAF mission runs out on Dec. 13. Last year, Jung would have liked to increase the number of troops from 3,500 to 6,000. However, the fact that the Christian Social Union (CSU), his CDU's Bavarian sister party, was facing a state election in Bavaria caused him to reduce this figure to 4,500.

The Americans haven't forgotten this, and US diplomats have already told leading CDU politicians that -- out of consideration for Angela Merkel -- Obama is only holding his breath until after Germany's Sept. 27 election. Once the election is over, the president will be demanding that the Germans send more combat troops to the front.



URL:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...646085,00.html