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"This wasn't al-Qaida. Somebody is very interested in pinning it on them."

Way,

Only have a minute, but although this is possible, it HIGHLY unlikely. I have this sense, in spite of my own personal reaction to some of your posts, that you ARE interested in the truth. And to believe that this is all a hoax, means that a LOT good honest people are really dumb. As I said before, the conservatives are running the investigation, and sure, some investigators may sympathize with the socialists, but even assuming that this means they are capable of mounting a hoax of such criminal dimensions, what about the conservatives working on the investigation? Are they morons, blind, drunk, AWOL, what? Sorry, but this sounds like conspiracy theory stuff from someone who just wants to believe the worst about the socialists. I don't. I have a lot of friends in madrid who are socialists (I am a painter, so in my business they are hard to avoid). I argue with them, we all get really pissed off sometimes, I think they are REALLY wrong about a LOT of things, but they are my friends. However mistaken they are, that doesn't make them evil. And neither do they believe I am some imperialist that wants to nuke the middle-east to steal its oil, despite the fact that that SOME people here, out of ignorance, believe that about Americans. You, Way, in your profile, say you were a leftie once. Were you a bad person then, or just misguided? Would you have killed US citizens to get democrats into office? Would your friends at the time have? Come on. I just want an honest answer. And if I sound like I am being judgemental I am not.

forrest (gotta run or would say more)

Sorry for the delay in responding, I was away for the weekend, and haven't been near a computer so my hunch may have been debunked by now, but, I'll attempt to answer some of your questions.

I was a lefty, and I was neither a bad person nor misled, I freely adopted the extremely alluring tenets of the Left, I did so out of a desire to belong to something which I only later came to view as destructive. I know them, and quite possibly because of this I am overly mistrusting.

I still feel it was not al-Qaida, for reasons previously stated, though I am no longer as fervent in my belief that Rodriguez Zapatero is personally complicent, though it remains for me a possibility. Figureheads being vaulted to power by more sinister elements who also have much to gain should not be ruled out. Isn't it oh-so convenient that the Moroccan would have cell phones traced back to HIS place of business by "malfunctioning" backpacks? This would be so difficult to plan ahead of time so that the public's cry for swift justice would be satiated? Isn't there a liklihood that conservatives, under pressure also to perform, could be duped into grasping onto every lead sent their way?

My frustration is that, even on this side of the Atlantic, there is sentiment to blame al-Qaida. No doubt within Spain, no citizen, conservative or socialist, wishes this to turn out to be an inside job. This is shaping up to be the swiftest, cleanest, neatest roundup of terror bombers in terror's egregious history, and I don't fault the investigation for disinviting the FBI, as they have NEVER performed in such exemplary fashion, and I say that with as much sarcasm as wonder.

On a side note, I have been referring to Rodriguez-Zapatero as "Zapatero" , that is incorrect, no?

OK, so my theory is looking a little bleak. This from Andrew Sullivan.

Last December, CNN recovered various documents on Internet message boards detailing al Qaeda's intermediate goals in the war against the West. "We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most," the document said, "before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it. If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist Party will be almost guaranteed - and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto." How modest in retrospect their ambitions were! They didn't need more than one blow; and they didn't just get the troop withdrawal in the Socialist manifesto; they got the Socialists elected. Last week, days after the triumph in Spain, another al Qaeda-related group rejoiced in the success of its strategy: "Because of this [electoral] decision, the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories... until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. And we repeat this to all the brigades present in European lands: stop all operations."