Terror

[rowyn]

Getting just what they wanted.

"CNN also has obtained an al Qaeda document that spells out the terrorist group's plan to separate Spain from the U.S.-led coalition on Iraq.
...
"The strategy spelled out in the document calls for using terrorist attacks to oust Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Partido Popular from power and replace it with the Socialists.
...
"'We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it,' the al Qaeda document says.
...
"the Socialists unseat[ed] the Popular Party three days after near-simultaneous bombings of four trains killed 200 and shocked the nation.
...
"Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Monday he wants the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq to return home by June 30 if the United Nations 'doesn't take control of Iraq.'

"'I think Spain's participation in the war has been a total error,' he said."

I feel sick.

Comments

Update after Spain's orders to pull out...

[level-head.livejournal.com]

And now it seems, based on recent events, that al Qaida has indeed achieved their objective with Spain. It is hard, in light of the timing of bin Ladin's offer and Zapatero's order, to see it any other way.

Moreover, Americans now live with a little taste of the fear prevalent in Israel. We have been hit, we expect to be hit again, we listen to threat levels and reports of vague plots against us, and we are furiously looking for someone to blame. And we talk about bin Ladin all the time.

More than anything else, we have validated his existence as a world power. I'd call that success from his perspective. It is ... unfortunate.

===|==============/ Level Head