Tuesday, March 16, 2004 |
16:28 - Hold still-- there's some duct tape on your eyes. Just a sec-- hold on... RRIIIIP!
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/15/spain.invest/index.html
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Via Andrew Sullivan:
A December posting on an Internet message board used by al Qaeda and its sympathizers and obtained by CNN, spells out a plan to topple the pro-U.S. government.
"We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it," the al Qaeda document says.
"If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist Party will be almost guaranteed -- and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto."
That prediction came to fruition in elections Sunday, with the Socialists unseating the Popular Party three days after near-simultaneous bombings of four trains killed 200 and shocked the nation.
As infuriatingly picture-perfect as the operation has been for al Qaeda, for which we can only admire their shrewdness in identifying a soft target and playing it like a cheap violin, there's one thing they gave up this week: the advantage of our uncertainty.
Until now, we've been operating by guesswork. As many Den Bestes as we have, analyzing the situation and the available intelligence and coming up with battle plans likely to hurt the enemy, there are just as many nay-sayers and people convinced that our actions are misguided and our assumptions flawed. Everything we've done, from Afghanistan to Iraq, has been subject to gainsaying and denials of validity-- often from the mouths of the very Taliban or Saddam, claiming to the bitter end that we're attacking them for no reason, that we're using 9/11 as the pretext for an unjust war against innocents (bolstered, of course, by a credulous media only too willing to give more credence to Baghdad Bob than to Donald Rumsfeld). It's been easy for anti-war types to bray in public about how Iraq and al Qaeda are totally unconnected; how al Qaeda is a hobbled threat at best, without the capability to plot anything that would really affect us anymore; how Bush and his conservative allies are bungling the War on Terror and how a leftist or Socialist government could do it better.
But now that's all shot down. Now we have causal links in black and white. Now we know exactly how they're operating, and what kind of tactical goals they're seeking.
Let's absorb this: al Qaeda is out there and operational. They're sorely hurt by Iraq and desperate to see our efforts there fail. And they're rooting for Socialists-- and actively working to install them in office-- because Socialists, whether they intend to be or not, will be on al Qaeda's side.
I wonder if these message boards are where Kerry talks to his "foreign leaders".
There's nothing more I can say. Dammit. How much clearer can the path in front of us get?
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