Ahh, if we could only get this kind of thing here



This is the kind of government report that shows you have a functioning democracy. The government investigated itself, and found that the Popular Party spun the information it had on the March 11 commuter train bombing in Madrid to influence the electorate, to prevent a backlash for supporting the War in Iraq.

What would the investigation of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq look like if we had a government body with subpoena powers that wanted to investigate this? I guarantee it would hold someone in the executive office accountable rather than saying "Oops" like the 9/11 commission report said.

Spain's govt 'twisted' bombings for gains - report - Yahoo! News

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's previous center-right government 'manipulated and twisted' the Madrid train bombings of March 2004 in a bid to salvage general elections three days later, a parliamentary commission found on Wednesday.

In a 200-page report after a year of bitter wrangling, the commission accused Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party (PP) government of ignoring police warnings that its support for the Iraq war increased the threat from Islamic terrorism in Spain.

The PP, which lost power to the Socialist party amid a backlash at its handling of the Islamic militant bombings, was the only party not to support the commission's findings.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, including a tape by an Islamic group saying the attack was a reprisal for Spain's role in Iraq, the PP insisted Basque separatist guerrillas ETA were the prime suspects in the attacks which killed 191 people.

'The objective was to influence public opinion about the authors of the attack and avoid political consequences which might harm the electoral interests of the Popular Party,' read the final report. The report alleged the PP was afraid of public outcry if the bombings were linked to its unpopular support for the Iraq war.

Popular posts from this blog

New post-convention poll Results look good to me. Now, we have to keep them coming. Further down in the article, there is discussion of how Kerry is gaining ground as a person who understands the needs of people, and a person of character. Key problem is going to be keeping these issues in front of voters, when the Kerry campaign will have a finite amount of cash to campaign on. Bush won't have a finite amount until the Republican convention at the end of August. Other people are going to have to step up and start hammering the Bush administration. Kerry Leads Bush in Post-Convention Poll (washingtonpost.com) : The new poll shows Kerry now claims the support of 50 percent of all registered voters, compared with 44 percent for Bush, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 2 percent. On the eve of the convention, Bush led Kerry 48 percent to 46 percent. Among those most likely to vote, the race is tighter: Kerry holds a 2-point advantage over Bush in the current po...
Read more
Sometimes headlines just write themselves Like this one from the Washington Post today: Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm Michael Brown certainly has shown he can plan a disaster. Look at how awful Hurricane Katrina was. For preventing or fixing things afterwards, he's not so good.
Read more
Reading List It is a good thing to be married to a librarian. Our local system has a web-accessable catalog where I can put a book on hold. Depending on how many people are waiting for the book, in a few days to a few months, my wife comes home with the book I've requested. I was reading "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market" by John Allen Paulos. It is the kind of book that makes mathematics of investing accessable to non-mathematical types (and some of us mathematical folks as well), even as he tells the story of his failed love affair with Worldcom stock. Of course, I set this aside as soon as I got in "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" by Joe Conason. This book takes all of the distortions of the right-wing media, the Bush-Cheney administration, and the Republican "conventional wisdom", and proceeds to refute them, citing facts chapter and verse. I think this book is great. But I've g...
Read more