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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (126436)	3/17/2004 12:35:20 PM
From: redfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"The evidence I've heard about is that they were almost immediately able to match the "taggents" in the Madrid explosives to those which had previously been confiscated from an ETA cell." That's what they initially claimed, but they later disclosed that the terrorists had used a completely different explosive, one that ETA hadn't used in ten years and that is under tight control in Spain.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (126436)	3/17/2004 12:50:09 PM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The SPIEGEL documents the chronology. spiegel.de Some key points: March 11: 7.39-7.41 explosions. At 10:30 am the Renault Kangoo with the Arab tape and seven detonators is found near a station. At 12 pm Aznar is calling some chief editors of newspapers and "recommends" them to stick to the ETA version. At 1 pm Interior Minister Ángel Acebes accuses ETA. At 5 pm telephone conference with foreign journalists. Again the ETA version is promoted. 8.26 pm Only now the finding of the Renault Kangoo is admitted. Saturday, March 13 10 am Spain reports to the German secret service BKA that the explosive "Goma 2 Eco" was used in the attack. Spain claims it had been used previously by ETA - which is a lie. 9.15 pm Mariano Rajoy, the candidate of the Popular Party, calls the demonstrations against the PP illegal.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (126436)	3/17/2004 1:37:01 PM
From: boris_a	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Please provide evidence that they intentionally misrepresented the facts that they had in hand in the immediate aftermath of the Madrid attack... In the immediate aftermath, maybe. But even when piece for piece of evidence poured in (by home and foreign intelligence) they still maintained "there's no doubt" about the ETA being the bombers. This this went on for almost two days. (BTW taggets nor explosive was ever used by the ETA.) They never said what kind of strict evidence there has been to conclude "without any doubt". Then there has been an written advice (found by ElPais) to all embassies "to offensively use every possibility to promote the ETA being the bombers". Then here: spiegel.de "... A German police official said that they have been supplied with proofs "wrong beyound imagination" ..." From here nytimes.com Prime Minister José María Aznar personally called the top editors of Spain's major dailies twice on the day of the attacks. In the first round of calls, Mr. Aznar said he was convinced that ETA was responsible. "He said, `It was ETA, Antonio, don't doubt it in the least,' " said Antonio Franco, editor in chief of the Barcelona-based El Periódico de Catalunya, in an interview." When even foreign press had already a lot of information about the true nature, Spains officials still maintained to the "ETA without any doubt" version. Blame intelligence again? Come on. If Aznar was the tough leader he liked so much to represent, he'd should have the guts and go out and tell the truth. Maybe he still had won the election. By showing his fear to loose and his obvious squirming and manipulating, he (or his party, that is) didn't deserve nothing else than to be blown away. Unfortunately, now it looks like a win for the terrorists. But from Iraq2 to this extremeley fishy story, Aznar is the one to blame. Maybe after an investigation to find out exactly where all the hints in direction to the AQ "got lost" we will know absolutely hard evidence. Probably Jose Maria Aznar will not get away with only one hour of questioning. OTOH, I don't think Zapatero is much interested in this story. He's more a MoveOn guy. Back to the fight against terror, and not bragging about the skeleteons in the wardrobe of the old admin.