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A majority of spanish,3 days after terrorist strike in Madrid,voted for ZAPATERO who took off spanish soldiers from Irak immediately! Exactly what BENLADEN wanted...

Since the Madrid bombings on 11 March there has been considerable media interest in a document found on radical islamist websites some months ago by researchers at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). The document recommends "painful strikes" against Spanish "forces" specifically around the time of the Spanish elections and there has naturally been much speculation about the relationship between this text and the Madrid events. Brynjar Lia and Thomas Hegghammer now present some clarifications and reflections on the significance of the 42-page Arabic document called "Jihadi Iraq, Hopes and Dangers". Date and origin of the document According to the...

Lebanon Daily News Al-Qaida gets a victory in Spain By Dan Sernoffsky Thursday, March 18, 2004 - Daily News Sportswriter On Friday, a series of explosions rocked a number of commuter trains in Spain. At least 200 died and another 1,600 or so were injured. Two days later, Spain's electorate ousted prime minister Jose Aznar, an unabashed supporter of the United States and its war against terror. Replacing him was Jose Zapatero and Spain's Socialist Party. Zapatero had campaigned on a platform of pulling Spanish troops, about 1,300, out of Iraq, and aligning himself with Germany and France in...

<p>It may take weeks before the identity of those responsible for the 3/11 bombings in Madrid is established, and by then a new government, led by the Socialists, will be in power in Spain. But one thing is already certain: Europe has not yet taken the full measure of the terrorist threat to its way of life, indeed its existence as a zone of peace and prosperity in an unstable world.</p>

MADRID, March 16 — In the aftermath of its national election, Spain, along with the rest of the world, is struggling to answer a harrowing question: who really won on Sunday, the Socialists or the terrorists? For the departing foreign minister, Ana Palacio, whose center-right government staunchly supported the American-led war in Iraq and lost the election, the answer is clear. "We are giving birth to a new world, and it is sad and dangerous and sick," Mrs. Palacio said in an interview. "We are giving a signal to terrorists that they can have their way because we have given...

That bitter, sullen faction of the Spanish left which coexists alongside the other enlightened, honest left has just rediscovered its fondness for a kind of armchair conspiracy with a branch office in the streets, particularly in Madrid’s Genova St. [headquarters of the PP]. It was a perfect symbiosis of lies and violent direct action, the purpose of which was presumably the search for electoral profit from terror, and the delegitimization of a possible Partido Popular victory at the polls. This is its special contribution to participatory democracy and dialog. Insult is also a way of conversing. The Madrid slaughter had...

The opposition Spanish Socialist Party has defeated the ruling Popular Party. This was not what the polls predicted would happen a week ago, but there has been an obvious and important intervening event. It is now clear why the Spanish government was adamant that the Madrid train bombers on March 11 were likely to have been ETA Basque separatists. The public response to the growing perception that this was an Islamist attack was to blame the government for the attack, arguing that it would not have happened if the government had not sided with the United States in Iraq. We...

The defeat of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party in Sunday's Spain election represents a stunning setback in the war on terrorism, contends Middle East expert Mansoor Ijaz. Asked what Aznar's defeat means for U.S. allies, Ijaz told Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby, "It means they better get they're election flack jackets on, because this represents a dangerous mutation in the ability of terrorists to instill fear in governments all over the world that supported the United States." Aznar had been ahead in the polls as last week began, but Thursday's Madrid train bombing had voters blaming him for...

The thumping defeat inflicted upon the Right-wing Popular Party in yesterday's Spanish elections was a blow for the war on terrorism. Jose Maria Aznar, the outgoing prime minister, took big risks to back the United States after September 11, and most especially to send troops to Iraq. Even his decision to take on his home-grown insurgency in the Basque country went against the grain of much elite opinion. He may well have mishandled last week's terrorist atrocities in Madrid. But whoever was responsible - whether al-Qaeda or ETA - will be pleased to have intervened so successfully in a democratic...

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spaniards voted Sunday in a general election thrown wide open by a reported al-Qaida claim that it staged the Madrid rail bombings to punish the government for supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Ruling Popular Party candidate Mariano Rajoy led most polls until Thursday's bombing, which killed 200 and injured 1,500 others. His conservative party had been projected to win most seats in the 350-member Congress of Deputies, and maybe retain its outright majority. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the rail attack. But just hours before polls...