Grumpy allies

last updated 8 January 2015

Munich

The U.S. and Europe sniped at each other over the Iraq war once again this week, this time at the annual Munich security conference of defense and foreign ministers. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Germany had been right to stay out of the war, while U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was appalled at the many anti-war Europeans who argued the U.S. was just as bad as Iraq. “I know in my heart and in my brain that America ain’t what’s wrong with the world,” Rumsfeld said. The rhetoric was heated, but the only violence at the conference came when a French bodyguard accidentally fired the gun in his pocket into the marble floor. Four people were treated for marble splinters.