Aznar Drank the Kool-Aid, Too

The Spanish president Jose María Aznar also joined Bush and Blair in hyping the non-existent WMDs: Aznar y las armas de destrucción masiva El Mundo 02/02/04.

Aznar's reputation hasn't taken nearly the hit that Tony Blair's has over the issue, although the war was massively unpopular in Spain. In Spain and Italy, both of whose governments supported Bush on the war, the war itself was more unpopular in opinion polls than in Germany and France.

Aznar is stepping down as head of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) as they head into national elections in March. But he's served two terms, and he wasn't hurt nearly so badly among his own party by the war as Blair was in his Labour Party. The opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Greens were opposed to Aznar's Iraq policy, but the PP supported him.

Aznar is highly regarded as having purged remnants of Francoism out of the PP, which is the direct successor to Franco's Falangists. The PP is now regarded in the EU as a fully democratic party.

But Aznar did hype the WMD fraud, too, even though Spanish intelligence can't be said to be as culpulble in originating it as their American and British partners. For instance, on 02/13/03, Aznar declared in an TV interview, "You can be sure, and all the people watching us can be sure, that I am telling them the truth: the Iraqi regime has weapons of mass destruction, has connections with terrorist groups and has demonstrated in the course of its history that it is a meance to everyone."

Yes, Aznar drank the kool-aid, too. (For those not brushed up on your cult history, that figure of speech refers to the mass murder-suicide of the People's Temple cult, who drank poisoned Kool-Aid.)