From the Opinion Journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003057

BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 3:55 p.m. EST
Weasel Watch--I
The Times of London reports Germany's coalition government "was on the brink of collapse yesterday" because of a spat between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat, and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party, over the former's proposal for a contingent of U.N. troops to safeguard Saddam Hussein's hold on power in Iraq. The plan was leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel, apparently by someone in Schroeder's party.

It appears that Schroeder is too much of a weasel even for the Green Party to abide:

But the detail in the plan published yesterday . . . did not form part of Foreign Ministry calculations. German diplomats are well aware that an American plan for a robust UN inspection system was floated last year and dropped, having drawn little international enthusiasm. A European reworking of that plan, drawn up without the consultation of the United States, would be seen only as an affront by Washington. . . .

Herr Fischer has now been snubbed at least three times by the Chancellor. He was not warned in advance when Herr Schröder started to mobilise voter support during the general election campaign by warning against a US-led war. He was also wrong-footed when the Chancellor announced that Germany would never accept a UN resolution "legitimising a war" against Iraq. Herr Schröder has also mocked and publicly called to order one of Herr Fischer's key diplomats, the German envoy to the UN.

In another setback for Schroeder and his fellow weasels, the AFX wire service reports from Dubai that Iraq's foreign minister, in an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, "ruled out the deployment on Iraqi soil of any UN peacekeepers." It seems the Germans are even more intent on keeping Saddam in power than Saddam himself is.

Yesterday we raised the possibility that French and German leaders may be worried that if America liberates Iraq, it will find evidence that those nations have violated U.N. sanctions against Iraq. An essay in the Asia Times Online claims that "expurgated portions of Iraq's December 7 report to the UN Security Council show that German firms made up the bulk of suppliers for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs"--and that this was true "both prior to and after the 1991 Gulf War."

We know from the account of Iraq's erstwhile bomb maker, Khidhir Hamza, that France and Germany have long supplied Iraq with weapons (and at scandalously high prices), but if they continued to do so after the impositions of sanctions, their actions were not merely venal but criminal.