March 16, 2024 (EIRNS)—The German Free Democrats (FDP) are surpassing the Greens as the leading war party in the country, with several serious incidents showing that over the past few days.
In the Bundestag plenary session on March 14, Defense Committee Chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann not only supported the motion of the opposition Christian Democrats in favor of delivering Taurus cruise missiles delivery to Ukraine, she even voted for the motion. On March 15, she announced that she would involve the public prosecutor’s office to identify the source of a leak to the t-online news portal of a closed-door part of a Defense Committee hearing on March 12, to which Bundeswehr Inspector General Gen. Carsten Breuer testified that a delivery of Taurus missiles to Kiev would have consequences for Germany’s security. Breuer explained to the committee that the use of Taurus requires the processing of complex amounts of data by technical systems of the Bundeswehr. However, these systems are only available to a limited extent in the Bundeswehr. If they were also supplied to Ukraine, they would no longer be available to the Bundeswehr—and could therefore permanently weaken Germany’s defense capabilities, Breuer said, according to the t-online report. This directly contradicts Strack-Zimmermann, who has repeatedly claimed there was no risk to sending Taurus to Ukraine, that the Chancellor’s “no” to the Taurus was just a bad excuse. Strack-Zimmermann also is the FDP slate leader for the elections to the European Parliament in June.
Also on March 15, Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) spoke out in favor of civil defense exercises in schools to prepare students for war, telling the Funke media: “Society as a whole must be well prepared for crises—from a pandemic to natural disasters and war.” Civil defense is immensely important, including in the schools, she proclaimed: “The aim must be to strengthen our resilience.”
It’s fitting that Bundestag member Alexander Müller, FDP defense policy spokesman, during the secret March 12 session on the Taurus, claimed that two weeks ago, when the government coalition parties rejected the explicit motion by the CDU/CSU for delivering the Taurus, then passed a motion that in general favored delivery of long-range systems to Ukraine; that motion, charged Müller, while not naming the Taurus, was in reality a vote for delivering the Taurus.
