Syria Intervention May Endanger Merkel's Re-Election

SPIEGEL ONLINE - International - German Politics 2013-08-26

It is an election that few German politicians will soon forget. In 2002, as the US was ramping up its anti-Iraq propaganda preparatory to invading the country the next spring, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said, "Germany will not participate in a war against Iraq." It is a sentence that put relations between Berlin and Washington in a deep freeze.