Free Republic

<p>Let me get this straight. Two-and-a-half years after September 11, on a similar eleventh day of the month, 911 days following 9-11, and on the eve of Spanish elections, Al Qaeda or its epigones blows up 200 and wounds 1,400 Spaniards. This horrific attack follows chaotic months when Turks were similarly butchered (who opposed the Iraq War), Saudis were targeted (who opposed the Iraqi war), Moroccans were blown apart (who opposed the Iraqi war) and French periodically threatened (who opposed the Iraqi War).</p>

MADRID : Spain's prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq and criticised US President George W. Bush after Spanish voters ousted governing conservatives who took the country into the controversial war. "The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster," Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio on Monday. He spoke just before the European Union held three minutes' silence in tribute to the 200 people killed in last Thursday's bombings of crowded Madrid commuter trains. An ongoing investigation into the attacks has found growing evidence they were carried out by...

<p>The terrorist attack that massacred 200 of your countrymen, and injured over a thousand, was a horrific act. The world grieves with you. We all know it could have happened to our people in our countries just as easily as it happened in Madrid last Thursday.</p>

Radical Islam has scored its first unambiguous victory against the West, and it should have been visible at a long distance (Why radical Islam might defeat the West, July 8, 2003). Winston Churchill's quip that the appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last does not apply when the prospective victim expects to be in another world before the crocodile comes around. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party crushed Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party in Spanish elections on Sunday. US commentators expressed consternation that Spanish voters would reject America's ally in the Iraq war after al-Qaeda's apparent act...

It's a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe's future. A close election campaign, with Aznar's party slightly ahead, ended with the Popular Party's defeat and the socialist opposition winning. It might be argued that the Aznar government's dogged refusal to admit the obvious quickly enough led people to blame it for a cover-up. But why did they seek to delay assigning the blame on al Qaeda? Because they knew that if al Qaeda were seen to be responsible, the Spanish public would blame Aznar not bin Laden! But there's the real ironic twist: if the...

Is Al-Qaeda trying to knock off American-allied governments? The victory of Socialist PSOE in the parliamentary elections, and the subsequent announcement that its leader and President-elect José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will pull out the Spanish troops in Iraq may say so. I think AQ is planning to hit allied countries in electoral times, so their leftist groups can hold their governments responsible for the attacks on the tune they supported the US in Afghanistan and/or Iraq (this may not apply in Britain, since Tony Blair is an honest lefty). Could be Italy, Poland or Denmark next? Even Britain? AQ wants...

When the next bomb goes off--perhaps this time in Poland--the families of the dead should blame the people in Spain who voted to run from terrorists and cower before them, instead of standing strong against them.         Sound cruel?  Perhaps, but it's the sad truth.  The majority of Spaniards decided to follow the illogical path of blaming their president for the attack in Madrid instead of the people who actually carried out mass murder.  In doing so, they handed the butchers a victory.  Terrorism and murder have been handsomely rewarded this day.       When word broke about the vicious attack in...

The (PSOE) Socialist party may have won the Spanish elections yesterday, but Al-Qaeda was the real victor and you can bet they’ve been at the non-alcoholic bubbly all night long. While those of us who support the war on terror need to remember the victims of the Madrid bombings, let’s not mince our words with regard to the collective knee-jerk reaction of Spain’s electorate and the now-ruling Socialists. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the soon-to-be Spanish Prime Minister, was up bright and early this morning, skipping to the tune of appeasement. He declared categorically that all 1400 of Spain’s troops in...

The Spanish stock market doesn't like the socialists. The broad index is down 27.4 to 814.97, a drop of 3.25%. Only two of the 105 companies in the index are up today. All the other indices in Europe are down 1.25% or less, except Norway's, which is down 2% (and Norway's market is essentially oil and shipping).

The election in Spain that turned the government over to the Socialists sent a clear message to al Qaeda: Their bombing worked. Much of the population reportedly did not want to join the US-led coalition to impose regime change on Iraq. Now they have decided to sit on the sidelines of the global Jihad, but they will learn some very harsh lessons in the process. As far as the Jihadists are concerned, any show of weakness is always an invitation to attack again. Moreover, on March 11, an al Qaeda dispatch published in the Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds Hafs al-Masri, crowed...

<p>MADRID -- Spanish voters, many of them outraged at what they saw as government attempts to play politics with the terrorist train bombings last Thursday, handed the Socialist Party a dramatic upset victory yesterday over the Popular Party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a staunch US ally in the war in Iraq. Many voters also expressed fury that the incumbent Popular Party had, they felt, made Spain a target for Al Qaeda by backing the US-led war in Iraq even though more than 90 percent of Spain was opposed to the invasion.</p>

The electoral defeat of Spain’s conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party by the morally corrupt forces of the left is a stunning victory for terrorism. Before the March 11 atrocities Aznar was leading in the polls. The bombing gave the left the wedge issue it needed, and one it used with the kind of ruthless dishonesty which is its trademark. he election result signalled terrorists everywhere that mass murder pays. The only thing that could persuade terrorists otherwise would be the belief that the result was an aberration. I reckon if you believe that you must be a...

Blame Spain for the Next Terror Attack                                                               When the next bomb goes off--perhaps this time in Poland--the families of the dead should blame the people in Spain who voted to run from terrorists and cower before them, instead of standing strong against them.         Sound cruel?  Perhaps, but it's the sad truth.  The majority of Spaniards decided to follow the illogical path of blaming their president for the attack in Madrid instead of the people who actually carried out mass murder.  In doing so, they handed the butchers a victory.  Terrorism and murder have been handsomely rewarded this...

MADRID - Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero brought the Socialists from the political wilderness to a spectacular polls victory on Sunday and will now need his cool head and calm temper to unite Spain after its worst bomb attack. Rodriguez Zapatero, who until Thursday's bombing was considered an outsider for Spain's top job, had angered many in his own party with his lack of aggression in the months after he took the leadership in 2000 following a heavy electoral defeat. But his tendency to compromise may prove a valuable asset as he looks to form a government with left-wing allies or...

MADRID (Reuters) - If al Qaeda did mastermind Spain's bloodiest bomb attacks, its militants could claim to have caused a spectacular election upset in Madrid, but some analysts said the defeated government only had itself to blame. The train blasts that killed 200 people triggered a backlash against the party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar -- a staunch ally of Washington over the Iraq war -- and handed power to the Socialists who opposed the conflict. "If the al Qaeda network is behind these attacks, then you can certainly say that al Qaeda is responsible for removing the Popular...

New PM promises realignment in Europe Zapatero signals move away from US Giles Tremlett in Madrid Monday March 15, 2004 The Guardian When he ordered the crowd of flag-waving supporters at his headquarters to stop their celebrations and stand silent for a minute's homage to Madrid's dead and injured last night José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was starting what he pledged would be a new style of government. Where the past four heavy-handed years of José María Aznar's People's party had seen increasingly bitter and divisive splits between Spaniards, be they left or right, Madrileño or Basque and Catalan, the 43-year-old...

Spain's voters carried a monumental burden into their polling stations yesterday. In two very different districts of Madrid, one working class and the site of one of Thursday's explosions, the other extremely affluent and loyal to the conservative government, people spoke passionately about the new moral international dimensions to what had, until four days earlier, seemed a humdrum election. In El Pozo, where one of the trains exploded, the Socialist Party was expecting its usual landslide victory. Many in the neighbourhood had lost friends or family in the explosion. "The government is to blame for the attacks," said Tamara Pizarro,...

Spain's socialists defeated the conservative government in the general election last night, delivering a serious blow to the American-led war on terror. The government was swept from power amid public disenchantment with its policy on Iraq and its conduct following the Madrid train bombings, in which 200 people were killed and 1,400 injured. It persisted in blaming the Basque extremist group Eta. Now there are growing indications that al-Qa'eda bombers carried out the Madrid massacre in an attempt to influence the election result. The government conceded defeat as the Socialist Workers' Party and its radical allies easily won a majority...

Washington gave a thinly-veiled warning to Spain and other European countries yesterday that to waver in the fight against global terrorism would lead to catastrophe. With anxiety growing that Spain's victorious Socialists might deal a wounding blow to America's coalition by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq, the White House launched a co-ordinated offensive clearly tailored to pre-empt calls for a new approach to the fight against terrorism. Hailing the staunch support of Jose Maria Aznar, Spain's prime minister, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said he hoped that other leaders would not "shrink from our responsibility, collective responsibility, to...

NO ONE will say it publicly, but both sides of politics know that the barbarous events in Spain have the potential to affect Australia amid the heightened sensitivities of an election year. Even as the Spanish bury their dead, here the judgments are quietly being made: which side will the re-emergence of the issue of terrorism benefit at the ballot box? Conventional wisdom dictates that the nation, gripped by fear and memories of the Bali bombing, will turn to the "man of steel", John Howard, his steady hands the only choice to guide the country through these dark days. But...