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Originally posted by toy boy
Alltho the spanish presence in Iraq played a major role in the way the people voted, i think the fact that the partido popular lied about that the eta had placed the bombs might have something to do with it too ...... untill late saturday night the party ruled by aznar insisted and even asked reporter to say it is eta while she knew that it might have been al qaeda.
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that's what i've been hearing too. that the vote, too close to call on thursday, was decided by saturday night when it became obvious (to the voters) their government was lying to them.
PBS Newshour interview with Nicolas Checa of Kissinger and Associates.
"NICOLAS CHECA: Margaret, I really think what the key issue here is the handling or mishandling of public information in the 48 hours after the tragic events of last Thursday. I think it bears mentioning that the election was a statistical dead heat, according to public polls the morning of the tragedy on Thursday morning well within the margin of error, one or two points. And it was really not until Saturday evening, as Keith in your set-up shared with us, that the government decided to come forward with information as to the arrest of these five suspects linked to al-Qaida.
As an example, it took a personal call from Prime Minister Elect Zapatero to the interior minister, the Spanish homeland security secretary, informing him that the Socialist Party was aware of the arrest and that he was prepared to move forward with that information. It took that kind of information to get the current government to come forward and announce to the country at large that in fact it was not the ETA lead that would generate success down the road in the investigation, but rather the al-Qaida route.
MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying it more than just a public suspicion that they were withholding information, in fact the Zapatero campaign had to essentially pressure the government to release this information?
NICOLAS CHECA: Precisely. Yet there was a report earlier in the afternoon on Saturday coming out of Spanish intelligence agency saying that they were 99 percent confident that ETA was not responsible for the attacks and that all the avenues of the investigation pointed into al- Qaida.
In the early afternoon after the arrests had already been made, the director of the Spanish CIA denied those reports and it was after that that the campaign manager for the Zapatero campaign had to come forward and basically inform public opinion that there was information that was not being shared with the population."
Later on in the program Checa added the following:
"The government of Spain on both sides of the aisle has a lot of experience in dealing with terrorism and fighting terrorism. I think in the end after the dust settles, after we all understand that the election is over, I think we're likely to see a tremendous amount of European cooperation and indeed a Spanish cooperation on the global fight of terrorism.
Will it happen in the same terms and in the precise specific fronts that we have seen it so far with the previous government -- possibly not. But will the government of Spain be an ally for the global fight on terrorism -- no question about it."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/inter...drid_3-15.html
it must be the easiest lesson in the world to forget, that lying to your constituents is a recipe for losing elections, since politicians never seem to remember it. nixon learned it the hard way - twice. although it didn't cost them elections both reagan and clinton will suffer historically from not heeding it, and bush, well so far he just doesn't get it at all.
when asked by dianne sawyer about the misinformation on the lead-up to war in iraq he looked at her and in all serious snapped, "what difference does it make?"
- js.