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Exploiting National Tragedy for Political Gain

Following the bombings in the Madrid and subsequent government mishandling of the tragedy, the Spanish people rightly elected new leadership. The old government tried to exploit the pain and suffering of the Spanish people for the sake of long-held grudges against a persistently pesky foe, fingering ETA for the bombings despite evidence of al Qaeda involvement. Acknowledging al Qaeda's hand ran the risk of conceding that deploying troops in Iraq had put the country at risk of terrorist reprisal, one among many objections raised by the majority of the Spanish people in their opposition to Spanish involvement in the Iraq war. These sorts of cynical calculations do not play well in the aftermath of a national tragedy.

Well, usually. There are exceptions. It just so happens we're living in one (witness PATRIOT Act, GITMO, war in Iraq, etc., etc.), but that has begun to change. After all, it's not a Spanish audience House Speaker Dennis Hastert is targeting with these comments:

"Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country and they chose to change their government and to in a sense appease terrorists," Hastert said.

Got the message? Even if your current political leadership has incompetently handled a terrorist attack, compromised national security and has manipulated intelligence for political gain, replacing it with more principled leadership appeases terrorists. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for Osama bin Laden. You foolish Democrats—you're playing right into al Qaeda's hands!

Tom Tomorrow, who provided the last two links above, publishes a letter he received from a Spanish fan who offers a different view. Worth the reading.

Also worth reading: The Knight-Ridder news story reporting misinformation fed by the Iraqi National Congress to the Bush Administration and to the US media—including Knight-Ridder itself. I think they might be a bit pissed about that, judging from their consistent coverage of the decision-making process leading to the US invasion of Iraq. Just a hunch.

Posted by kevinmoore at March 17, 2004 11:28 AM | TrackBack