Spain

Typical, batman. Sorry but I don't believe in Terrorists setting the agenda or making the rules.

I DIDN'T SAY you were FOR Terrorism. Stop putting words in my mouth and mis-representing my position. I did insinuate that you have a much more permissive attitude towards them...

Do you really think that AQ was in Spain, the US, Canada, Germany, Turkey (et al) and not in Iraq?

 

giddyup: Frankly I still think of you as a BBS friend. I'm sorry we never arranged lunch when I was in NC. But you get a flat out screw you for suggesting I have a more permissive attitude toward terrorists. Screw. You. The fact that you would suggest that is exactly why I put those words in your mouth -- because I knew they were already there.

Al Qaeda probably has a presence in most large countries. Should we attack all of them? Should we attack Canada?

My point was that you equated being soft on Iraq, which we now know (and which many of us here suggested before we did know for certain) was not a threat to us and did not have serious AQ ties, with being soft on terrorism and that is just pure crap. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone, even in the Bush admin, that would tell you Al Qaeda was more of a problem in Iraq (or Spain) before the war than after. Period.

In closing, once more, screw you for the above suggestion and don't make it again. It's way beyond the pale, I don't deserve it and I deeply resent it.

 

Sorry if I offended. Didn't mean to and can't really comprehend why you were so offended...

The words you wrote were these: "Stop pretending there are two sides (for and against Al Qaeda). "

I didn't equate being soft on Iraq as being soft on terrorism. In fact you converted it in your protest to my accusation that you were FOR terrorism. I promoted the position that terrorists don't set the agenda or define the rules.

Seems like you wanted to let them do both with your expression that the Spanish government should have stayed out of the war on terror especially in Iraq.

I see a verifiable gulf between being FOR Al Quaeda and being PERMISSIVE.

AQ murders Spaniards and the lesson you cite is this: the Spanish government shouldn't have supported the US in the War on Terror (specifically the Iraqi theatre).

I think we should adopt that "the enemy of my friend is my enemy" and rain an American Jihad down on Al Qaeda. This group will never stop, so someone has to stop them. They are eager to die for their cause so let's kill them. Easier and better now than later.

Unscrew. You. Hey, it was you who didn't call....

 

giddy, as I told you before, I was busy with a girl. That's why I didn't call.

The war against terror has NOTHING to do with the war on Iraq. That's my position, it's the position of most of Europe, most of Spain, most of the world, and increasingly most of America. That was my original beef with your post. Stop saying stuff like "war on terror/Iraq." I'm more than happy to war on Al Qaeda. I supported the action in Afghanistan and I will support any true action against a terrorist group who actually attacked us. Iraq is not that and you should stop carrying the Bush LIE that they are. Enough already with that. It was stupid before we found out it was untrue and it's considerably more stupid now.

And you don't see why I'd be offended by being accused of being permissive of terrorism? You don't see why I'd be offended by being accused of being permissive of a group of people who murdered 3,000 Americans? What the hell? It offends me again that you can't understand why this would offend me. This would offend any American. If you don't understand the difference between opposing terrorism and Al Qaeda and opposing an unnecessary war in Iraq I don't even want to talk to you anymore.

 

p.s. Before you edited, you posted "war on terror/Iraq." I should have quoted you, but I didn't anticipate you editing.

 

Just want it stated again that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or al-Quaeda. That was made up by "intelligence" officers to make the case for war.

I, too, support the War on Terror and supported Afghanistan, just as I will support any action to remove a DIRECT threat to this country. Iraq was not such an action.

 

The War on Terror is not subtitled "Revenge for 9/11."

Our justification for this War on Terror goes back at least to 1993 and the first attack on The WTC in the basement-- if not the marine barracks in the 80s.

9/11 was a clarifying moment that enough is enough. A lot of things are wrong in that regioin of the world: Saddam was wrong. Al Qaeda is wrong. The Taliban was wrong. Qadaffi was wrong; didn't he get right?

Most of those are gone and the others are in the process of leaving-- even leaving this earth if necessary.

The US is not perfect, but I'm unaware of any massacres incited or beheadings performed at the behest of our religious zealots like Jerry Falwell or Donald Wildmon or even our political figures like Cheney and Bush.

 

What I'm saying is vote for who you're going to vote for regardless. But don't change your mind and vote for the pro-al quaida party (whoever you perceive that to be) if bombs start going off.

The Spanish people probably voted the ruling party out because they felt they were misled but it certainly LOOKS like they voted them out because of the bombs (after all, the ruling party was winning in the polls). All this will serve to do is encourage terrorists to bomb civilians before major elections in an effort to affect the election. The terrorists probably don't even care too much on who will win (with GWB being a probably exeption). They just want to do what they do - instill terror.

 

Well, actually it was two w/in the continental US (WTC x2) and several outside of it, as well as a few more that were stifled before they happened.

In Spain, prior to the Iraq war, I don't know of any.

Good to see that you have your facts straight, Dadakota, as usual.

 

Spain may withdraw Iraq troops

Spain's Socialist Party prime minister-elect says he will pull troops out of Iraq - unless the UN takes charge.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said: "The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster."

He called for a grand international alliance against terror and an end to "unilateral wars".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3512144.stm

_______________________________________________________

I would be really surprised if Spain actually pulled their troops out so fast. This turn of events is amazing ----- the war "coalition" is collapsing fast with hardly anything of real value accomplished in Iraq.

 

activities in....not exactly issues with.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter to much what we think ultimately, enough spanish voters apparently saw it that way.

 

SJC,

Are you denying that the Nazis burned the parliment building? Or are you saying that the socialist party in Spain would not be capable of such an act?

Which part are you calling stupid?

Nazi's burn parliment

Just want to be clear before I respond, and Batman....I hardly call someone stupid just because they have a different opinion.

DD

 

I'm a little flummoxed by the reaction to DD's earlier post. As someone who does not accept the official version of the 9/11 events as reasonable or logical or even plausible, I'm open to considering anything. (But as I mentioned earlier, I do not see any reason to suspect inside complicity in this instance.)

I can assume that everyone who's rejected DD's post out of hand in turn fully accept the official 9/11 explanation?

 

I just want to remind people that the Social Democrats who won in Spain are similar in philosophy to the Social Democrats who have governed most of the major european countries off and on over the last 4-5 decades. The party in Spain pushed the country into NATO and supported the first Gulf war. Any suggestion that they are pansies is wrong. Very much so. Any suggestion that they will be weak on terror is wrong. Very much so. This does nothing to weaken the war on terror and probably does a lot to improve it... as Spain will no longer be wasting blood and treasure in Iraq but can instead, put those assets to work fighting terror just like we should have.

The War on Terror should not be subtitled "Revenge on Saddam."

 

Josh Marshall hits the points...
_____________

I should preface this post by saying that I have only a loose knowledge of Spain's internal politics. But judging by English language press reports in this country and abroad, one can glean some basic outlines about the stunning finish of today's election in the country.

We've long known that Spanish Prime Minister Aznar's support for the Iraq war masked the war's profound unpopularity within Spain. But a good economy and time had pushed Iraq from the political front-burner. And thus Aznar's Popular Party seemed on track for a clear, if not overwhelming victory.

The Madrid attacks pushed Iraq back to the forefront, thus crystallizing opposition to the government. And that opposition was mightily intensified by an apparently widespread and growing belief (also seemingly an accurate one) that the government had deliberately withheld or obscured information about who was behind the attacks so as to avoid the backlash which eventually occurred. Namely, they fixed on blaming ETA -- the Basque separatist group -- despite increasing evidence pointing toward some sort of al Qaida connection.

That seems to be a rough consensus analysis, though it must be extraordinarily difficult to make sense of the volatility of public opinion reacting so rapidly to such a traumatic event.

A couple points suggest themselves.

One of them -- discussed in this article in the Post -- is just how little Spanish or other Western intelligence services seem to have known about this. There was no chatter, no hints. The entire operation seems to have slipped through entirely unnoticed by anyone. That suggests the possibility that we're really flying blind on the actual terrorist threat, or at least that it's quite possible for al Qaida or affiliated groups to launch a major attack without our even getting hints that it's going to occurr, let alone being able to stop it.

Another point touches on the assumptions that many seem to bring to this whole event.

Just after the bombings there was a rush of commentary and news coverage to the effect that this was Spain's (and Europe's) 9/11 and that, confronted with the reality of what we're up against, they'd get religion, shall we say, on the war on terror. And in this case the war on terror could be loosely read as the Iraq War.

Now, clearly, that doesn't seem to have happened in Spain. But the issue here isn't simply one of predictive accuracy. The whole line of thinking is based on flawed assumptions and, to a degree, on crediting the administration's spin about why our policies have been so unpopular in Europe.

America and Europe never saw eye-to-eye on how to take down the network of terror cells and associated Islamist terror groups we know as al Qaida. But the disagreements have been greatly overstated. The heart of the matter, the rub, has always been about whether the 'war on terror' in any way included or was in any respect advanced by overthrowing the government of Iraq.

(To frame the matter ungenerously but with real precision, the question came down to whether you fight back against the terrorists by striking back at the terrorists or at someone else.)

Whatever else they thought of the Iraq war, very few people in Europe saw any real logic to the (terror war = Iraq war) equation. Some supported the Iraq war for other reasons. But few saw the two connected as the Bush administration tried to present them. And not a few saw the Iraq adventure as positively counterproductive to stemming the tide of Isalmist terror.

Whoever you think is right or wrong in this, that is the nature of the rift over the 'war on terror'.

Now, if that's the war as you see it, that Iraq war was either irrelevant to fighting terror or would itself produce more terorrism, then the apparent response of the Spaniards doesn't seem at all difficult to fathom. Nor is it reducible to facile claims of appeasements.

We'll be reading these tea-leaves for some time to come.

-- Josh Marshall

 

I had heard an earlier conspiracy theory, possibly even here on Clutchfans D&D, that was speculating on whether Aznar's own government did this to shore up their support. The thinking being that the only thing going for Aznar's party was their anti terror credentials and they needed a reminder of why Spain needed a government that would be tough on terror and knowing that the bombing would be either blamed on ETA or on Al Qaeda which in both cases Aznar could use to justify their govt's decision.

I'm not sure how much credence I would give to this theory or that the Socialist did it. Either way its too easy for the political calculation to go wrong and they would've killed a bunch of their own citizens for nothing. This is why I also dismiss the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was deliberately done, or even known ahaed of time, by the GW Bush admin..

 

Yes our intelligence should've spotted that a major threat to one of our close allies but to be fair our intelligence has done a bad job of spotting threats to us.

 

Obviously the latter. The socialist party in Spain would not be capable of such an act. To even ask this question is as stupid as saying the Democrats or the Republicans flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings (I know that some people have come up with conspiracy theories, but these are ridiculous).

For the record, I called your statement stupid, not you. You are obviously not stupid, but you are sometimes rather ignorant and simple-minded when it comes to assessing political events in foreign countries, even though I believe you are well-traveled, and, as I said, obviously not a stupid person at all.

With regards to the elections in Spain, I think what really doomed Aznar's party (Aznar was not running anymore anyway) was that Aznar and his people were too quick in blaming ETA for this and to many, it appeared that this was done in order to try to get some short-term political gain. People felt misled by that. Anyway, even now, one cannot completely rule out that ETA was still somehow involved in this, perhaps even in some kind of cooperation with Al Quaeda. Just a week or so before the bombings, a truck with 500 kg of explosives that ETA wanted to use on trains was discovered.

 

By the way, on a personal note, I left Spain two and a half days before the bombings, and I had even considered staying in Spain and going to Madrid for the Champions League match Real-Bayern which took place the evening before the bombings. Some of my colleagues from my MBA program live in Madrid and they had friends or relatives who were injured or killed. Terror is not far away from any of us.

 

SJC,

Thanks for the clarity.

I pointed that out merely as an interesting tidbit, not as something I seriously believe the socialist party would do.

However, I am sure the terrorists knew that the elections would be happening and it played a role.

Truthfully, if the media did not cover these events the terrorists would not be so vigilant in doing them. They would have to find another way to make their point known.

DD