The US was ready to use nuclear weapons in their ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, according to a former German diplomat, whose interview was published in Der Spiegel this weekend.
The George W. Bush administration “really played through all possibilities,” including the use of nuclear weapon against Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks in the US, Michael Steiner, a former adviser for ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said in an interview to Der Spiegel weekly.
“The paper was written,” he said, and the then-German Chancellor was afraid the US President administration would “overreact in the first shock, being properly placed in a bunker” following the attacks.
In addition, Steiner revealed that Schroeder refused his idea to express “unconditional support” to the United States right after the 9/11 attacks. “A state may not give blank checks,” Steiner noted in his fresh interview.
Tensions between Bush and Schroeder later led to Germany’s strong opposition to the military invasion of Iraq in 2003 alongside France and Russia.
Michael Steiner, 65, who retired this summer, was one of the leading German diplomats for decades.
As it was earlier reported, within four days of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had put together a vast plan to fight terror in 92 countries, a leaked 2005 letter by then CIA Director George Tenet revealed in June 2015.
Through its campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the US may be responsible for the deaths of millions, a study conducted by the Nobel Prize-winning NGO Physicians for Social Responsibility determined this spring, Russian News Agency Sputnik reported on Sunday.
The investigation demonstrated that US-led wars “directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan for a total of around 1.3 million.”
Highly aggressive military campaigns, including indiscriminate drone strikes and meddling in internal affairs of other countries has turned the United States into “the most feared” nation globally viewed by many as “a great threat to world peace,” independent activist Michael Payne said earlier this year.
INP/AH