Saturday, March 13, 2004

The Politics of Blame for "3-11"

As I've said before, critical thinking and a healthy dose of skepticism are important in processing the early news on the March 11 terror attack in Madrid. Der Spiegel is reporting new indications and/or suspicions that Islamic extremists rather than the Basque separatist ETA were responsible: Erste Festnahmen, Bekenner-Video gefunden 03/13/04.

According to this report, the Spanish social democrats (PSOE) have some reason to be suspicious that the ruling Partido Popular (PP) tried to immediately focus suspicion on ETA, because they hoped to get maximum political advantage from it in today's election. The PP has been leading a strong push against ETA recently, and a major attack like this could look to many voters like a strong confirmation of their direction.

But an attack by Islamic terrorists could have a very opposite effect. Although the PP government support the US and Britain on the Iraq War, that support participation has been extremely unpopular in Spain. An attack by an Islamic group could be seen as a failure of misguided efforts by the PP government.

Spiegel cites the leading Spanish paper El País as reporting that Spain's ambassadors recently direction very quickly after the attacks to blame ETA. (El País made their articles on the attacks free for a day or so afterward, but now they are all behind subscription.) And Spain got a UN Security Council resolution passed Friday condemning ETA for the Madrid attack.

Spiegel also refers to a report in the PSOE-friendly Cadena Ser radio station citing sources in Spain's intelligence agency saying that the evidence pointed to Islamic terrorists with 99% certainty. The head of the agency denied this.

And Spiegel cites a report from a Norwegian paper VG about an Arabic Web site on which messages had appeared as long as a year ago encouraging attacks on Spain in connection with the timing of parliamentary elections.

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