Spain's vote against mendacity:Thomas Oliphant

[jbfam4]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/16/spains_vote_against_mendacity/

THOMAS OLIPHANT
Spain's vote against mendacity
By Thomas Oliphant, 3/16/2004



Governments that lie and cover up on matters not only central to national security but also to the commitment of armed forces abroad are inviting rejection.


From the outset, however, clues that led away from ETA and toward Al Qaeda registered with increasing force on Spanish public opinion. The result was revulsion and anger on a scale sufficient to sweep away the preelection polls and predictions. The government fell, and the Bush administration will have difficulty deflecting suspicion that it was complicit in a coverup.



The initial handling of the bombings calls into question both the Bush administration's credibility and its judgment. Intelligence sharing between the two governments has been intimate. US officials followed security matters in Spain especially closely because the Al Qaeda cell there was important to 9/11 logistics as well as ongoing planned operations. The idea that the Bush administration was not aware that the five men detained over the weekend had been watched for weeks before the attacks is preposterous.


The Spanish lesson is that fighting Al Qaeda has clearly been undercut by the preoccupation with Iraq. The picture of Aznar standing in the Azores with Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair just before the war started a year ago is eloquent evidence to the phoniness of the pledge Bush made that the role of the United Nations in the war and its aftermath would have to be central. The Spanish lesson is that it had better be by June 30 or the Spaniards are gone.

The most important lesson, however, is that in a time of national shock only truth is acceptable. Bush might want to remember that before he makes his next use of 9/11 imagery in his campaign commercials or digs his hole deeper with more manufactured descriptions of the "threat" Iraq posed a year ago that required a near-unilateral invasion and occupation in haste.

[RobertSeattle]

1. I love it when Pundits use the word "Mendacity"

I can just see the "Morans" scratching their heads, "Men, what? What state Mendacity in?"

[library_max]

2. "Wreckacity" they could understand,

but "Mendacity" probably doesn't compute on any level.