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Originally posted by smellthecoffee
wouldn't it be the hight of irony if by years end if 3 of the leaders in the "coalition of the willing" ie Bush, Blair and Australia's Howard fail to be re-elected. All face general elections around the end of the year. What would this say about militarism in recent times?
News Analysis: Iraq war looks like a dud in Spain vote
By John Vinocur/IHT (IHT)
March 07, 2004
MADRID: In the Socialist Partys keynote television campaign commercial, a young woman leads a parade of dissatisfied Spaniards, accompanied by decent-folks-on-the-march background music, to a translucent ballot box.
One by one, they write their voting concerns on blank sheets of paper. The first stuffed in the box says, No to War. A ballot colored like the blue and gold European flag gets pushed in next.
Little room to guess about the message. The Socialists have believed they can tap a deep well of support in next Sundays national elections by focusing both on the governing conservative Popular Partys backing the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its forging a new Spanish foreign policy discarding and even mocking the countrys old subordinate, sometimes submissive relationship to France and Germany.
But the evidence so far says the Socialists are finding far less traction than they had hoped with the accusation that the Spain of Prime Minister José María Aznar sold itself out to the Americans and became isolated within Europe in the process.
The most obvious indicator is that Aznars former deputy and designated successor, Mariano Rajoy, is running comfortably ahead in the polls, regardless of the 1,300 Spanish troops now in Iraq. His lead is such that virtually all of Spains political calculations turn less on who will win than whether the conservatives will be able to govern alone or need a few votes in help from a small regional party.
While Spaniards demonstrated massively against the war, Spains mind-set now seems elsewhere, having taken on board a more assertive, self-interested Spanish role in international affairs. According to the countrys most authoritative polling organization, the Center for Sociological Investigation, voters are most concerned by jobs, and terrorism, hardly a theoretical worry in an election campaign playing out against the police seizure on Feb. 29 of suspected Basque terrorists heading for Madrid with 500 kilograms of explosives.
Some real irony enters here. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist candidate, was described in a hagiographic profile by the newspaper El País as focusing on three basic issues. They were Spains problems with regionalism, immigration, and terrorism. Iraq? Not mentioned in the article.
And if the Socialists led with the war in their first main TV spot, when Spains television equivalent of the Spitting Image political satire staged a typically cruel 30-minute mock debate between Rajoy and Zapatero (no actual confrontation is planned), the Socialist puppet didnt get around to mentioning Iraq until the 21st minute, and then only in passing.
Aznar, who is leaving office after two terms, broke in at every turn on the show, his puppet holding Rajoy folded over his arm like a ventriloquists dummy, then popping up, still moustached but disguised as a woman, and finally wearing a peroxide blond wig à la Harpo Marx. In a famously no-holds-barred program that suggested the soon-to-be former prime minister lurked behind every bush in Spains future, there was nothing more about Iraq.
Rajoys tactic appears to be one of letting the Socialists go on about the war without response. After all, the method largely worked when the Popular Party easily won regional elections just after Saddam Husseins ouster.
Instead, Rajoys foreign policy emphasis is on the idea that as Spain has become, in his words, the worlds eighth biggest economy and Latin Americas biggest investor. It also transformed under Aznar into a major league international player intent on protecting Spanish national interests. Allied diplomats believe that Rajoy, who has wide experience with international terrorism as a former interior minister, will not vary greatly from his mentors Atlanticist positions if he is elected.
How realistic an assessment this may be is an open question. Joaquín Roy, Jean Monnet professor and the director of the European Union Center of the University of Miami, in Florida, has said that Rajoy knows very well that the future of his party and country rests on a solid relationship with Spains European partners, and not in a distant location. He knows that Spains reign will not stay on the Texas plains.
But the issue of how Spain can tend best to its interests linked both to the United States and Europe is a debate that has not taken place. Rather, the most aggressive Socialist shot at the Aznar-Rajoy approach has been a repetition of a charge made last year by Zapatero that their allegiance to the Americans has meant Spains winding up on the hit-list of international terrorism.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, the European Unions former special representative in the Middle East, and now a Socialist parliamentary candidate, asked what Spain had gotten from its role alongside the United States and Britain, and in leading other EU countries to foil France and Germanys attempt to speak for Europe during the run-up to the war.
His own answer was: Weve gotten nothing. On the contrary. Spain is now a priority target of the Islamic fundamentalists and has lost respect and credibility in a very complicated world. The Spanish didnt realize this, but are starting to because it is affecting us daily in Europe, in the Arab world and in our relations with Latin America.
But the argument, made on TV two weeks ago, does not appear to have caught on in public discussion. The Socialists platform on Iraq comes down to Zapatero saying, if he gets in, hed pull out the Spanish contingent on June 30 although on the not terribly likely condition that the United Nations has taken over responsibility for the country. In fact, a senior official who works with both Aznar and Rajoy in the Moncloa executive complex believes the Socialist attempt to tie the governments good relations with the Bush administration to an alleged new element of daily danger in Spanish life may have backfired.
Were the country, par excellence, in Europe that knows about terrorism, the official said. There are over 1,000 dead here from our own variety. What we do is fight it. To say we should run away from terrorism is a basically immoral argument. If we think were the target, it would be all the more reason to fight. But the premise is a lie because we are not specifically a target of Islamic fundamentalists.
Rather than finding the war as an offensive weapon, the Socialists have been pushed into using it as shield against Rajoys accusation that their allies include Catalan politicians who held secret talks with ETA in violation of a pact among the major parties not to negotiate with the Basque terrorists.
Zapatero countered that it is the Popular Party that hangs on to an unseemly alliance, one with war, with Bush, and with the most reactionary American administration in recent times.
Every day, people are talking about my alliances, he complained. Referring to the American Democratic hopeful, he said: Were aligning ourselves with Kerry. Our alliance will be for peace, against war, no more deaths for oil, and for a dialogue between the government of Spain and the new Kerry administration.
The Democratic presidential candidate, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, has said nothing yet about finding a potential soul mate in Zapatero.
International Herald Tribune
Originally posted by jimnyc
I don't know if this is a likely scenario. Does Australia and the UK have someone like Kerry running against the incumbent?
Kerry can barely stay even with Bush and he's been nonstop campaigning, whereas Bush has barely even started.
I am sorry the man makes me yack everytime I see his ugly mug on my t.v. and then have to listen to his hatefull whiny voice....yuck spit yack ptooey.
Originally posted by smellthecoffee
wouldn't it be the hight of irony if by years end if 3 of the leaders in the "coalition of the willing" ie Bush, Blair and Australia's Howard fail to be re-elected. All face general elections around the end of the year. What would this say about militarism in recent times?
My bad I mis spelled.Originally posted by MadMax
I'd much rather be a part of the coolition of the willing than the coolition of the retarded!!!!
Coalition I shalltype it 100 times and all will be o.k.Originally posted by kcmcdonald
well smellthecoffe you'ld just love that wouldn't you? To bad it won't happen, with Bush, Blair, Anzar and the rest of the "Willing" the world will be a much safer palce for the next 4 years...
:
Originally posted by kcmcdonald
hey coolaltion works man, we are cool aren't we?
He He
Originally posted by smellthecoffee
well this is the good old boys at thier best!!
I post a premise that IS possible. I neither endorse or reject the idea and I have facists like kcmcdonald getting all pumped up and telling me I'm supporting Kerry. I'd be very careful labelling people retards here...that would be suicidal! The most govt controlled civilized country on the planet, murdering it's own people at a rate unseen in any other civilised nation, less personal freedom, corporate run governing, having bombed more than 50 countries since ww2. WE didn't boot the UN we ran away because we couldn't get out way! Americans spout Fox News catch Phrases like trained parrots and think that's being informed....don't make me laugh!! not to mention loudly applauding whilst basic civil rights dissolve!show me the links between Iraq and ANY attack on US prior to the invasion? and don't get all humanitarian on me with that stuff about killing Iranians and Kurds....The USA and Britain gave him the Chemical weapons he used and the helecopters modified to use them!! Face it Saddam was the poster boy for the West, propped up...armed to the teeth...allowed to kill as many arabs as he liked until he went feral.then we made the change. Killing 5200 Iraqi kids per month under the food for oil sanctions was " a price worth paying" according to Allbright. Bush still wanted more so the United States of Haliburtan invaded and put an Ex-employee in charge! Gee....no self intrest there!
Originally posted by CrazyLiberal
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072100-03.htm
http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/oaw98/sanction.htm
http://www.fff.org/comment/ed1001d.asp
Here you go OCA
Originally posted by CrazyLiberal
OCA asked if someone could find proof that the USA had caused it, or even if it had ever happened at all. No the USA did not play a major role in it sorry I did not clarify what I was saying when I posted those links. I was just proving that it did happen.
