Is the German Army Empowered to Carry Out Targeted Killings?
17th December 2009 By Peter Schwarz World Socialist Web Site | 17 December 2009 Over the course of the past few weeks, the German government as well as opposition parties have systematically deceived the German population over the real background to the September 4 airstrike near the Afghan city of Kunduz, which killed up to 142 persons. It has now been established that German army colonel Georg Klein gave the order for the strike with the deliberate intention of killing the large number of people in the vicinity of two hijacked tankers bogged down in a sandbank. The government was aware of this fact from the outset, and the parliamentary opposition parties had been informed by November 3 at the latest. Nevertheless, all of these parties claimed up until last weekend that the bombing was aimed exclusively at the tankers and that the many victims were merely inadvertent “collateral damage.” On the night of the airstrike, Colonel Klein had written a report which states unequivocally: “On
