[lyot]

dat over dat Europees leger van Moslims, dat komt van Debka File.. Ik ben persoonlijk nogal tamelijk sceptisch over wat er daar geschreven wordt.. Maar die quote van Stratfor is 'right on the money'..

even nog eens die tekst gekopieerd van op thoughts from the frontline.. :

"The majority of Spaniards opposed the U.S. intervention in Iraq and Spain's participation in the war. Nevertheless, the Popular Party government that chose to support the war was, according to polls a week before the March 14 election, going to win. The peculiarity of a government following an unpopular foreign policy yet remaining likely to win is easy to explain: There were many other issues on the table, and the voters were not being driven to their decisions by Iraq. Issues such as Franco-German domination of the European Union were more important than the Iraq war.

"The attack on the Madrid train stations changed that. Perfectly timed to be absorbed into the Spanish electorate's psyche, it was designed to demonstrate the price that Spain would be forced to pay for its Iraq policy. What was a less-than-decisive issue for voters March 10 became the defining issue by March 12. The electorate, unhappy with the war in Iraq anyway, now saw themselves paying a price for the war that was simply too high. They voted the Popular Party out and the Socialists in. The Socialists pledged to withdraw Spain's troops from Iraq by June 30.

"From a strategic perspective, this is a massive al Qaeda victory. With one blow, it knocked a major U.S. ally out of the Iraq campaign and raised serious questions as to how far Spain will go to support the United States elsewhere. There can be no question but that al Qaeda understood what it was doing. It struck on the eve of the election in a manner that was clearly intended to cause maximum casualties. When viewed from the standpoint of total casualties (as opposed to total dead), the Madrid attack was almost half as devastating as Sept. 11. But in this case, rather than increasing Spain's aggressiveness as Sept. 11 did with the United States, it caused Spain to draw back.

"The attack has enormous political implications. There are a number of countries that supported the United States in Iraq in the face of majority popular opposition to the war. These countries have political dynamics similar to Spain's. They include Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Australia and Japan. Their governments managed the politics of the war in ways similar to Spain. Each of these governments is highly vulnerable to the kind of attack carried out in Madrid."

There can be no doubting the fact that the message al Qaeda received was very clear. The polls throughout much of Europe show the Spanish feelings are not in isolation. Al Qaeda now knows that if it pulls off some spectacular bit of terrorism prior to an election, it is possible to topple a government which actively opposes it.