Ally and Target: US Intelligence Watches Germany Closely
Source: Spiegel
German intelligence services cooperate closely with the NSA, but the country is also a target of US surveillance, as a document seen by SPIEGEL makes clear. The spy software XKeyscore is operated from a facility in Hesse, with some of the results landing on President Obama's desk.
The US military compound in Griesheim, near Frankfurt, is secured with a tall wire fence topped with barbed wire. The buildings are relatively modest and surrounded by large areas of green space, which has long led local residents to suspect that many of those working at the facility spend much of their time underground -- and that they are engaged in espionage.
The so-called "Dagger Complex" is one of the best protected sites in the German state of Hesse. Griesheim resident Daniel Bangert recently discovered what could happen to those who show a little too much interest in sites like Dagger. In early July, Bangert -- inspired by the leaks of whistleblower Edward Snowden -- used his Facebook account to post an invitation to a "stroll" to the Dagger Complex, for the purpose of "joint research into the threatened habitat of NSA spies." But before he could embark on his outing into the world of espionage, Bangert found himself dealing with the police.
Lawmakers in the German parliament, the Bundestag, have also expressed an interest in the group of buildings near Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt. The campus houses one of the most important European branches of the National Security Agency (NSA), the American intelligence agency that has come under fire worldwide as a result of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
According to internal NSA information, which SPIEGEL has seen, the agency's European Cryptologic Center (ECC) is headquartered in Griesheim. A 2011 NSA report indicates that the ECC is responsible for the "largest analysis and productivity in Europe." According to the report, results from the secret installation find their way into the President's Daily Brief, the daily intelligence report given to US President Barack Obama, an average of twice a week.
Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-is-a-both-a-partner-to-and-a-target-of-nsa-surveillance-a-916029.html
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)Warrants it.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Who watches us?
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)And build ovens.........
The us has nothing in common with germany.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Exported weapons of mass destruction, supported death squads, propped up murderous dictators, enslaved millions and started illegal wars in the middle east.
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)Blame america first, always , and whenever possible.
think they were saying that, just pointing out you seem to be ignoring America's genocide and the horror of slavery.
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)Mankind has been brutal since day one. The us has always been ahead of the times and always been above what the rest of the world is doing. Slavery was not unique to the us, and even still exists in some countries today.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)You okay with that bit of unwarranted, illegal aggression?
DavidDvorkin
(19,406 posts)So, no, we haven't always been ahead of the times and above the rest of the world.
ornotna
(10,763 posts)And this is just a small sample. We're not the angels you seem to think we are.
ConcernedCanuk
(13,509 posts).
.
.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/my_lai_massacre.htm
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai massacre is probably one of the most infamous events of the Vietnam War. The My Lai massacre took place on March 16th 1968.
My Lai was a village of about 700 inhabitants some 100 miles to the southeast of the US base of Danang. Shortly after dawn on March 16th, three platoons of US troops from C Company, 11th Brigade, arrived in the Son My area having been dropped off by helicopters. 1 Platoon was commanded by Lieutenant William Calley and was ordered to My Lai village. They were part of Task Force Barker the codename for a search and destroy mission. They had been told to expect to find members of the NLF (called Vietcong or VC by the US soldiers) in the vicinity as the village was in an area where the NLF had been very active.
When the troops from 1 Platoon moved through the village they started to fire at the villagers. These were women, children and the elderly as the young men had gone to the paddy fields to work. Sergeant Michael Bernhardt, who was at My Lai, was quoted in 1973 as stating that he saw no one who could have been considered to be of military age. He also stated that the US troops in My Lai met no resistance. An army photographer, Ronald Haeberie, witnessed a US soldier shoot two young boys who he believed were no more than five years of age. Other photos taken at the scene of the massacre show bodies of what can only be very young children.
Those who returned to the village claimed that it took three days to bury the bodies. They were later to report that some of the children had their throats cut and that some of the bodies had not just been shot but had also been mutilated.
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Then there's the Highway of death:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34041.htm
Baghdad radio had just announced Iraq's acceptance of a cease-fire proposal and, in compliance with UN Resolution 660, retreating Iraqi troops were ordered to withdraw to positions held before Aug. 2, 1990.
Nonetheless, President George H.W. Bush derisively called the announcement an outrage and a cruel hoax.
The Home of the Brave, it seems, wasnt quite ready to stop the massacre
U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours, says Joyce Chediac, a Lebanese-American journalist.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel, one U.S. pilot said.
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Then Idiot-Son continued the slaughter over a decade later, and left an unstable mess behind.
"Mission Accomplished" indeed.
(sigh)
CC
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Death squads, WMDs, and South American dictators, racist voting laws are all more recent than Nazi Germany. I'm not saying we should forget but there are very few people left in Germany that were responsible for those atrocities. It's a modern progressive social democratic country and economy now.
And save that "blaming America" nonsense for Free Republic. That kind of talk is straight out of the mouth Bill Bennet and the neo-con war machine.
The Blame-America Crowd Can Destroy America If We Don't Counterattack
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2161061/posts
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Not just the ~6 million Jewish people who were shot(including on the Eastern front!), gassed, and died in many other horrible ways(forced starvation, disease from being kept in horrid conditions, etc.), but plenty of Poles and some Roma & Czechs, too, were exterminated, as were hundreds of thousands of other "undesirables".
For all the terrible things that have happened(the officially sponsored Trail of Tears tragedy, and the killings of tens, hundreds of thousands of Native American civilians at the hands of renegade soldiers and vigilantes, millions more dying from other causes etc.).....we didn't get as bad as Hitler had, at least.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)This is what countries do to each other. Hell, we caught an Australian spy not too long ago.