A German publication has come out with some big story over Bush II, 9-11, and the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Afghanistan War.
It's a curious piece, tied to one German who is telling the story. So far, it hasn't been picked up and carried internationally much.....because there are questions over the whole episode.
Micheal Steiner was serving as an adviser to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2001. Steiner says that after 11 September, in his discussions with the US (he never cites who said this) that plans were laid out and the option of nuclear weapons was on the table (it was not removed as an option).
Steiner comes back to brief Schroeder and he's said to be worried that the US will overreact.....going to this option first.
All of this in some fashion led to the 2003 frustrations between Schoreder's government and the US.
Who else confirmed the story? So far....no one. That's the odd part of the story.
Who is Steiner? Well....in the early eighties as a lawyer, he came up to get within the German foreign service group. He did some impressive work in Prague in 1989, and was noted as a four-star player within the German government. Shortly after being noted.....he was picked up to be a special adviser to Chancellor Schroeder.
He was apparently serving as a 'go-between' with the US after 9-11 and was advised of various plans in the works.
Then, oddly as you come to the end of 2001....Steiner is in Moscow for some situation and gets himself into the "caviar affair" (as referred to by the German press). From what one can read from this episode.....he'd come into Moscow and had a German military officer attending to his situation....and at some point demanded the military officer go and fetch him some caviar. It was in some insulting way....probably in a public setting with the Russians in attendance....and things went downhill fast.
This German military officer got with two associates who'd also been treated in the same fashion....they filed a report, and in a matter of days....Steiner was having to defend himself back in Berlin.
The nickname given to Steiner? That's an odd thing because he was already getting noticed a fair amount, and he was called the "extra foreign minister". Note, he wasn't the German foreign minister so it kinda begs how Germany's foreign minister at the time (Fischer) felt of him. British press in this time period of 2001....noted that there was a 'mini-war' (the Guardian's words, not mine) going on between Fischer and Steiner. Fischer apparently felt Steiner was undermining the efforts of the German Foreign Ministry.
Steiner, after resigning, ended up within days....working for the UN. Based on Wikipedia....he kinda stayed with them for most of the next decade....coming back in 2010 to work for the German Foreign Ministry again. This would have occurred under the joint government of CDU/CSU/FDP, with the Foreign Ministry run by FDP's Guido Westerwelle, not the SPD side as some might suspect.
In March of 2012, Steiner was finally placed as the German ambassador to India, and based on various news reports.....Steiner will be retiring sometime this year.
So, the odds of the Bush-nuke war in Afghanistan being true? On a given day.....various military plans are written and drafted. You go through versions. So when someone says 'everything is on the table'....it kinda means that the first version of the plan is totally open and nothing has been shut-off or cleared from the table yet.
You could sit and ponder upon this and ask.....if you did get through all the stages of planning and the nuke attack was still option one.....what exactly would you nuke in Afghanistan? Underground bunkers? There are none. Cave complexes? You could do the same damage with regular bombs. Military industrial sites? There are none. Communications sites? There might be a couple of telephone network or satellite network sites.....but a dozen-odd regular bombs would do all the damage required.
It's a comical thing if you sit and think about this long enough. Other than dropping some nuke in the middle of the Afghan mountains to just announce yourself and your intentions....means nothing and has no plus-side. It's not Japan where you needed to cease a war. In Afghanistan....there was no real authority and situated government to react to such a situation.
It's been almost fifteen years since 9-11 and there's just not much new on the event. The 10,000 details have been told over and over. So the marginal discussion of this possible new item is worth five minutes of 'thrills'. Then you dig into this and kinda wonder why no one else is part of the story, and how the 'told story' works with reality. Why didn't Fischer relate the story? Why not Schroeder?
In the end....you have to wonder if the story related is a hundred-percent true.....fifty-percent true....or ten-percent true. Just because the German press prints something....doesn't exactly make it a hundred-percent factual. Sorry if I'm skeptical....but there's been too many bogus stories with minor elements of truth built into them, and you get to being constantly skeptical.
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