Home > Minister: Bush must be ’shot down’

Minister: Bush must be ’shot down’

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 8 September 2005
5 comments

Europe Governments Catastrophes USA

Thursday, September 8, 2005

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) — A conservative German minister in a southern state has caused uproar by saying U.S. President George W. Bush should be "shot down" for his handling of the crisis in hurricane-struck New Orleans.

Andreas Renner, Social Minister in Germany’s southern state of Baden-Wuertemberg, clarified later that he had only meant Bush should be downed politically.

During a visit to a local company on Tuesday, Renner said of Bush: "He ought to be shot down."

He later retracted the remark, saying he meant Bush should be shot down "in a political sense", according to the Reutlinger General-Anzeiger newspaper.

Opposition Social Democrat (SPD) politicians in the state called for his resignation, noting conservatives were quick to call for the resignation in 2002 of a former SPD national justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who according to press reports compared Bush to Hitler.

Daeubler-Gmelin is reported to have said that by threatening to attack Iraq, "Bush wants to distract attention from his domestic political problems. That’s a favorite method. Hitler did that too."

She was later replaced.

Renner’s Christian Democrat Party (CDU) is traditionally close to the United States and has openly supported the Bush administration in marked contrast to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europ...

Forum posts

  • He didn’t say that. Here the German words: "Bush gehört abgeschossen". In this context it means to be removed, by using slang language.

    • Thanks for corection

      I’m sure he meant what he later point it to be shot down "in a political sense"

    • Yes, yes, yes, but where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you really need him?

    • I think they put Bush as president and Cheney as vice president for just that reason. The beast with two heads. If Lee Harvey were to remove Bush then Cheney would be openly in charge, and who wants that.

    • Well since it was later disclosed that Lee Harvey did not work alone, maybe both George Warmonger and Dick Cheneyburton could both be taken out by one of those magic bullets that Lee Harvey is so famous for....