Who Done It?

In the few days before the Spanish national election, it is in their Government's best electoral interests that ETTA be blamed by Spanish voters.

In the U.S. however, Bush and his gangsters needs the electorate to believe it was Al Kaeda, in order to attract further support for his 'War On Terrorism' and international invasion policies from a multitude of voters including Latin-American.

In a few days time, whatever the reality, both Governments will probably adopt the most politically expedient choice that it was a joint operation by the two suspect groups.

The only problem for the Administration is announcing which oil-rich Muslim country (against whom they have the strongest possible evidence which cannot be revealed for security reasons) trained the alleged terrorists. Even though Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer available, Iran, Syria or Libya are ready and waiting to be invaded after the election.

In fact, it has never taken a major group or groupings of terrorists to plant bombs which kill large numbers of innocents. Just planning by almost anyone wishing to achieve certain public reactions and with easy access to explosives.

When seeking the true authors of atrocities, it always pays to ask the question "How many Government Ministers and politicians died in those attacks?", before deciding upon responsibility.

Out Of Adversity .....
For some reason, it would come as no surprise if the President were now to make political capital out of the Madrid atrocity by weeping more crocodile tears and including it along with 9/11 in all his electioneering speeches. After all, there are 6 million Latino voters to be gulled.

They are coming for you John Webb...

Richard Hofsteader once characterized American politics as having a paranoid strain. John Webb is the perfect example.

Paranoid or not, as predicted, it is hard reality that the President is busily milking this terrible tragedy for every photo-opportunity available.

The Spanish Ambassador to the US was onThe News Hour last night, and he went with the ETA explanation. In addition, it should be noted that he was a kidnap victim of ETA in the 1970s.
Our fearless leader, of course, made a visit to the embassy, and made the usual speech about how the US will stand firm, etc, and how "we" are prepared to hunt down the terrorists regardless of the cost. The Spanish ambasador had the expression one wears when standing next to a ranting loony: uncomfortably polite, but desirous of being somwhere else besides listeining to such ranting.

I would think that this one time when the Bush administration wouldn't want to link the bombing to al Qeada. It just illustrates the fact that the war in Iraq instead of making the world safer has made those that are part of the "nations of the willing" targets for al Qeada. It also draws attention to all that is negative about the Iraq war which can't be good for Bush's election campaign.

(other than that I don't know the first thing about Madrid to offer anything else)

Revel,
For some who support Bush, any attack is seen as evidence that "we" are "winning." I think that some of it is a result of the fundamentalist mindset that enjoys feeling persecuted. The Bushies think they are engaged in armageddon, and it is up to rational people to stop them from continuing their destructive little game.

Yeah, Aznar tried pinning it on the Basques too, and look how well that was received.

Aznar is the first to be run out of office over this stupid terror war nonsense. We aren't going to squash them. They want to be free of our control over their leaders. They've wanted this for some time now. All we have to do to end the war on terror is to back down from controlling THEIR leaders so that they can get back to Islam instead of western-stylied palaces based on oil wealth. If we refused to buy oil unless the people there got a cut of the profits ( as is the case in Alaska ), we wouldn't have terrorists trying to blow us up all the time.

Suggesting we need to kill them all is just making a bad situation worse, and hiding our own guilt in this matter.

Aznar was the first, but he won't be the last.

These are fanatics, they want not only the middle east to be "true Muslims" they will tolerate you only so long as you do nothing that offends their sensibilities. They want to return to the 10th century not only in terms of religion but in terms of the world order, when they were on top. Leave them alone and they will not go away, but simple push it to the next level.