Madrid Bombings

I’d like to say that my nation Spain is united against such barbarian crime. But it’s not true.

Even today, there are who shout political messages.

This should be a day of sorrow and pain here.

The BBC 5

Carlos 03.11.04 at 7:40 pm

“It’s hard to imagine how they could have more effectively discredited a cause that was hardly very creditable to begin with.”

I think the problem with many terrorist organzations is that they care about their reputations in a small circle. They aren’t worried about general credibility. Neither the ETA nor Al Qaeda have goals which are likely to be advanced by their actions if you examine them from the point of view of a neutral outsider. But neither group is really appealing to the neutral outsider. They are gaining credibility among their small group of extremist sympathizers. And unfortunately they do gain credibility in those groups by killing civilians.

“They are gaining credibility among their small group of extremist sympathizers. And unfortunately they do gain credibility in those groups by killing civilians”

Well, ETA has in fact, lost credibility, even among extremist sympathizers for quite some time. What now calls itself ETA is in fact a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what once was ETA. That process by which an organization becomes gradually smaller and more unhinged from reality over time is what is at work here. This may be the last phase of the metamorphosis of a relatively popular group into a collection of psychopaths.

I don’t know how the ETA compares to the IRA as far as terrorist activity is concerned, but if it turns out they are responsible, the actions they’ve taken are the kind of actions that will lose them support. I don’t really know well how the IRA were regarded in the Republic of Ireland, the last time I was there I was 18 and didn’t really think about it much. But I know that my father and his friends (immigrants to the U.S. from Ireland) lost more and more regard for the IRA (which they all supported to one degree or another) with each civilian bombing. I hope that any Basques who were quietly supporting the ETA will put to rest any ideas that ETA is worth supporting.

I just hope this attack results in ETA being thoroughly destroyed.

Not so easy to do, if the ETA leadership has been radicalised (and, even worse, may be taking its cues from Islamic militants). For all Blair’s bellicosity on Iraq, he’s taken a very different path with regard to NI than that of Aznar in Spain, and this may be ETA’s parting ‘fuck you’ to him. Or perhaps the equivalent of an Omagh, a sign that these remnants of ETA’s terror wing have utterly marginalised themselves.

Just horrific, though. The bastards.

Tragically, maybe not psycho. MSNBC is reporting that Spanish officials have disovered an abandoned van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape containing Koranic verses near a stop the trains made. Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4502950/

al Qaida claims responsibility for the attack.

It is still too early to tell who is responsible for this horrible atrocity. It seems to me to be very much in Aznar’s interest for it to be ETA. The murderers being al Qaeda would reflect dangerously on his Iraq stance. ETA being to blame, on the other hand, would strengthen his party’s hardline stance against ETA and Basque nationalism. Those incentives suggest not taking the Spanish government’s initial attribution of blame at face value.

I have no idea who is really to blame, nobody does yet. Al Qaeda’s fax to al Quds al Arabi doesn’t prove anything on its own – it has every reason to want to claim “credit” for it, since it would prove its vitality. And these attacks do not fit ETA’s modus operandi, but who is to say that they haven’t learned evil lessons from al Qaeda? We’ll have to wait and see what evidence turns up… and mourn the victims.

As of now we have not a definitive proof of who did it, however everybody where I live, in Catalonia, thought quite instantly that it would be ETA.

To be sure there are some changes respect of the usual modus operandi, amongst them the lack of a warning when using explosives. Such warning are not so much to avoid victims than to target police agents, that have to go near the possible bomb site. Some times there are two bombs one rather small, and then another bigger, that has some chance to catch some agent.

So we have to wait to have a confirmation. If it is ETA, the PP may get a boost, if “al qaida” it may be the reverse. The PP government has electoral motives to claim that’s ETA, or at least to maintain that’s a possibility.

What is sure is that if ETA ends associated with this massacre they will lose a lot of support even in the Basque Country.

DSW

I sincerely doubt it was the ETA because it does not fit with their modus operandi. And if it turns out to be AQ or some other islamist terrorist operation, I do hope that the post will be edited to reflect the truth.

rhc.

If it is ETA, then it fits into the raison d’etre of Aznar and his party- that Basque separatism is alive and evil and thus heavy law’n’order measures are necessary now more than ever.

If it is Al Qaeda, then the spin is that the Madrid bombing is chickens coming home to roost, as Aznar’s public support of the Iraq war may have pissed some Al Q folk off and thus made Spain a target (that, presumably, it wouldn’t have been if he’d stood pat or taken a Chiraqist stance).

Keith, I think you may prove largely right. It may be significant that the police “discovered” the damning van after a “tip-off from a concerned resident”:. Hmmm.

However, an interesting sidelight is the astonishing decision by the Security Council yesterday to immediately condemn ETA by name unanimously. That was before these possible Islamist terror connections came to light, but officials at the UN noted that it was highly unusual to namie a specific perpetrator in any case.

A US official cast doubt on the e-mail claim, saying it had been established the group involved had claimed other attacks falsely and probably consisted of a few people with a fax and a computer.

There is a small but chilling possibility that since the explosive was a “signature” type used by ETA, conceivably an ETA cell provided materiel for the attack by an al-Qaeda-linked group on ETA’s turf.
Either an ETA operation or a such co-operative scenario would probably kill off any remaining grassroots support for the separatist cause, however.

Many thousands of Basques marched in protest at the bombings last night in the autonomous region.

RE: The IRA and ethnic cleansing–in its more lunatic Third Worldist moments in the 1970’s and maybe into the 1980’s, “Brits Out” was read by at least some IRA supporters (my mother) as meaning the Unionists would have to “return” to Great Britain.

Independientemente de que grupo sea responsable de las matanzas del 11-M. Del analisis de la situacion se desprenden conclusiones inquietantes:

-Nos han pillado en bragas.
-Han matado a 200 seres inocentes, podrian haber sido 1000 si hubiesen querido.
-Pueden volver a hacer algo similar o peor cuando les venga en gana
-La ferocidad y crueldad de nuestros enemigos no tiene limites ni fronteras

Una de las maximas prioridades europeas en los proximos meses deberia ser tratar de identificar nuestros puntos debiles y admitir que hemos cometido errores en materia de seguridad y de lucha antiterrorista. Simplemente, no hemos estado a la altura de las circunstancias. No hemos sabido apreciar las implicaciones del nuevo orden mundial emergente tras los atentados del 11 de Septiembre. Mientras en Europa ciertos individuos se preocupaban sobre la situacion de los
terroristas encarcelados en Guantanamo y supuestos recortes a las libertades personales, otros terroristas han planeado y ejecutado la matanza de Madrid.

Europa carece, a dia de hoy, de mecanismos de seguridad antiterrorista adecuados para prevenir
atentados y para perseguir, neutralizar y eliminar a los terroristas y a aquellos que les apoyan o protegen. Cuanto antes reconozcamos nuestros errores en materia de seguridad y de actitud, antes seremos capaces de vencer en la guerra global contra el terrorismo.

Europa debe de adoptar una actitud dinamica y decidida para neutralizar la amenaza terrorista. EEUU ha decidio adoptar esta linea de actuaccion. La guerra contra el terrorismo no deberia ser responsabilidad exclusiva de los EEUU. Las victimas del terrorismo son globales: Nueva York, Bali, Mombasa, Baghdad, Jerusalen, Moscu, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Estanbul, Madrid… Europa no encontrara en el mundo un mejor aliado que los EEUU. Juntos hemos destruidos a los dos grandes demonios del siglo 20, el nazismo y el comunismo. Juntos tambien podemos ganar la batalla contra uno de los demonios del nuevo milenio, el terrorismo.

La otra opcion seria adoptar una actitud pasiva-dialogante-pacifista a veces rayando el derrotismo, del estilo “contra el terrorismo no se puede hacer nada”. La linea de actuacion que dicha corriente de pensamiento parecen sugerir es la de seguir como hasta ahora y culparnos a nosotros mismos por lo ocurrido, o mejor aun, culpar a EEUU por la existencia del terrorismo. Su estrategia para el futuro se resume a esperar que los terroristas entren en razon y asumir que aun en toda su crueldad, los terroristas nunca llegaran a utilizar un mecanismo atomico contra civiles. En la guerrra contra el fanatismo la serenidad, la pasividad, el pacifismo, el derrotismo y la actitud dialogante son recetas seguras para la victoria del terror.

El mejor homenaje que Europa puede hacer a las victimas de la matanza de Madrid es poner a disposicion de nuestras fuerzas de seguridad los instrumentos necesarios que les permitan atrapar a los responsables de las matanzas, aplicarles un castigo de proporciones equivalentes al crimen cometido y evitar que algo similar vuelva a suceder. Un bueno punto de comienzo seria la revision de la todavia no aprobada constitucion europea. Salir a la calle con las manos pintadas de blanco y en alto como diciendo “yo no he sido” no es la forma mas efectiva de luchar contra el terrrorismo ni creo que conforte mucho a las victimas de la barbarie.

Berlin, 13 de Marzo del 2004

“The answer, ofcourse, is Isreal.”

It usually is.

Gary: sometimes one doesn’t feed the trolls because one knows it’s best, or simply out of “hands off” disgust. Another possibility is that of those reading the comments, almost no one bothered to read the “Real 911” because it was recognized for what it is: crap.

El humo de estas bombas huele mal ¿Quién tiene que ganar mas en estas elecciones, tras el asesinato? Me niego a darles mi voto. Viva España

I’ve been out of contact for the last couple of days and hadn’t seen the real911 post. if I had, I would probably have taken my usual recourse when dealing with anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering trolls, and deleted it. As it stands, seeing that a number of people have responded effectively, I’ll leave it stand.