Saturday, March 13, 2004

Tracking the Madrid Suspects

The Spanish authorities claim to have good observation tapes from two train stations, Alcalá de Henares and Atocha, that they hope will provide additional evidence about the culprits in the Madrid attacks. La policía investiga dos filmaciones Cinco Días 03/13/04 (my translation).

In his appearance yesterday afternoon before the press, [Interior Minister] Ángel Acebes again reaffirmed that the government's suspicions point principally to ETA. But in favor of this thesis, the ministry didn't offer more than rationalizations and suppositions of connections to the modus operandi of ETA and that organization's intention to make an attack on the station at Chamartín this past Christmas, an act reported at the time by the government, which announced that it had thwarted that operation.

Acebes did not concede the credibility of the letter [allegedly] sent Thursday night by the Islamic terrorists of al-Qaeda to an Arab newspaper in London, in which a group led by Osama bin Laden claimed credit for the brutal Madrid attack. Still, the head of Interior took care not to close the door on the possibility that the attack was directed by a foreign Islamic group ...

Why can't some of our pitiful American press corps take an appropriately skeptical attitude like this toward American Cabinet Secretaries, even in a time of major national shock? Can you imagine a major American paper writing: "Defense Secretary Rumsfeld offered no proof for his latest claims that Saddam Hussein possesses lots and lots and lots of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he continued to repeat the same ridiculous claims that he's made for months that everyone who reads a newspaper already knows aren't true."

No, I can't either. But, as an ad on Telemundo says, "Todos tenemos sueños" (We all have dreams).

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