Reply #: Let's not beg the question.

[July]

We can't say it's right or wrong if we don't even agree with the premise that "everybody" says that the attacks were meant to sway the election.

"Everybody" so far appears to mean right wingers who are unhappy that Zapatero is calling them on their argument that the Iraq war is doing some good in the war on terror.

The same everybody does not know what the motives of the attacks' perpetrators are.

Spaniards oppose terrorism, and have been doing so, with some success (as far as ETA is concerned), a lot longer than we have. They have also opposed the Iraq war, overwhelmingly. As the Spanish press has been reporting, the Aznar government actively pushed the ETA theory of the attacks even when their intelligence service strongly believed that an Islamic militant group authored the attacks. When that came out, the people were upset.

The attacks themselves may have influenced the election, but what I have seen and heard is that the manipulation of information by the government did not sit at all well with the people, and this may have decided the election. However, I have also seen on Spanish television that two polls showed the two main parties about even before the election, and Aznar's party lost some support in the previous election, so it's not clear that they were certainly going to win.

I've been getting my information from Spanish television (TVE), Spanish papers (El Pais and El Mundo), and Spanish friends with whom I've spoken and emailed.

We shouldn't be accepting the right wing's premises. They would like nothing better than to convince people that the Spaniards are soft on terror (which is laughable). That leads them to the equally absurd claim that Spain is "for" al Qaeda. Leading to the claim that opposing the Iraq war or wanting to get out is against the U.S. Leading to "a vote against Bush is a vote for the terrorists." We've been down this road before. Let's nip it in the bud.