[Friend of thunder]

Pretty bazaar for a government that is supposedly doing a cover up.

DB I think you are at least partially mistaken. Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, claimed "the Interior Ministry has confirmed the responsibility of ETA." At best it was bad crisis management. Whether it was deliberate misrepresentation or not it was seen as such.

Many were angered by what they felt was a government cover up. However, if al-Qaeda sees it as a sing as fear - as opposed to anger - the effect is the same.

[DB]

And from the same article:

"I don't think it was conscious manipulation," says Jesús Barquín Sanz, director of the University of Granada's Criminology Institute. Blaming ETA "was the result of a pre-established mind-set."

Just before Christmas they caught the ETA attempting to bomb the same trains in a similar manner. After a successful similar attack only a few months later it would be natural to assume the same perpetrators.

The fact remains that it was the very same government that is being accused of covering up who provided the contrary evidence to the public that indicated the ETA was probably not responsible. And for all we really know at this point both ETA and al Quaeda could have been working together.