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Terrorist attack just prior to election, made the Spanish voters COWER to the Terrorists.

Actually, it was probably more due to the fact that the majority party blamed the attacks on the Basques, even when they had no real evidence of their involvement, and it blew up in their faces. It would be like if Bush blamed 9/11 on some unpopular minority here in America.

Also, here's a question for pondering: if Spain follows the will of its people and pulls out the troops, is that a victory for terrorism or for democracy?

Actually, everything looked like ETA - which had tried to carry off just such a train bombing twice within the two months prior to March 11, and had been caught trying to bring 1,500 pounds of dynamite into Madrid the very weekend before. All of the verifiable information was released as it came in and the actual bombers (or at any rate, the group) were identified within 12 hours.

What happened was that the Spanish media, which is just as anti-Aznar as ours is anti-Bush, began releasing leaks from the police investigation and just flat out rumors ("suicide bombers," etc., although of course there were none). After AQ's message telling Spain to surrender, the Socialists swung into action and within no time at all the aftermath of the bombings became a giant political rally and it was all focused on Iraq. There were even attacks upon PP (Aznar's party) headquarters and the usual street demonstrations that the left likes to substitute for rational argument.

Prior to the attack, Iraq had dropped into the background and was no longer really considered a major issue in the election at that point. Many Spaniards were even proud of Spain's international role.

What you had was carefully manipulated hysteria. I think it could easily happen here, too.

BTW, everybody, please remember that more than 10 million Spaniards did NOT vote for Zapatero, and are probably even more upset than we are about this.