Word: germans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Jung conceal the truth?" Germany's mass-circulation tabloid Bild demanded to know Thursday in a story focused on the country's employment minister Franz Josef Jung and what details he knew and when, in his former job as defense minister, about the controversial air strike, called in by German forces, on two hijacked tanker trucks in northern Afghanistan on Sept...
...strikes, by two U.S. fighter jets, killed some 142 Afghans near the northern city of Kunduz and continue to reverberate in Berlin. Called in by Colonel Georg Klein, then ISAF commander of the German-run Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base in Kunduz, the operation was a rare moment of combat for Germany's armed forces, which mostly concentrate on rebuilding projects rather than chasing down Taliban fighters. Jung, who switched office last month following Germany's elections, initially claimed that only "Taliban terrorists" had been killed. But on Sept. 7 he conceded that there may have been some civilian casualties...
...Bild's story quoted from reports by German military personnel on the ground, reports which reached the command center in Potsdam, near Berlin, and the ministry within hours of the attack. On its website the paper also posted a video of the strike. Even to the untrained eye, the many ant-like dots swarming around the trucks, which had become stuck in sand, suggested that those present at the scene were unlikely to all be insurgent fighters. A suggestion by the U.S. pilots to send a warning to those who had commandeered the trucks by flying low across the scene...
...deaf ears for now. The draft bill to extend Germany's deployment includes a provision to keep troops at their present level of no more than 4500 - the third largest contingent after the United States and Britain - but does not allow for increased numbers. (Read: "Much Work Ahead for German Chancellor Merkel...
...With headlines crying "lies" and the defense ministry badly damaged, many expect the affair to reinforce German opposition to the Afghanistan deployment, which is the most substantial deployment since the end of World War II, and is taking on the character of a fighting mission. Some see the affair as a chance for Germany's government, and the Western alliance more broadly, to have a real debate about strategic goals in the Hindu Kush. "Zu Guttenberg is likely to emerge strengthened from this", Volker Perthes, the head of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told TIME...