On Bullshit

God I hate Marcus Gee. I'm sure he's not alone in this, but he uses the attacks in London to repeat a blatant falsehood: that the bombings in Madrid caused the downfall of the Aznar government. Simply put, this is not what happened, and only the most partisan of analysts could call it that. Aznar was already heading down in the polls before the election before the bombings of March 2004. Indeed, before the bombs Aznar and Zapatero were almost neck-and-neck.

And then the bombs came.

What happened next? Well, if you're a republican hack like Gee, you see the aftermath of Madrid in a particular light - "The Spanish, wetting themselves in fear, elected a government that promised to take them out of Iraq, in the hopes that they wouldn't be hurt again. The Spanish thus proved themselves to be spineless cowards." Gee doesn't say that, but it's pretty obvious that's where he's going.

Of course, there's reality - not that Gee would choose to see it. In reality, when the bombs went off in Madrid, the Aznar government chose to lie about it to the public - blaming the Basque separatists rather than an Al Qaeda affiliate. Fortunately, the deception was unmasked before the election, and Aznar was rightly punished by the electorate. Gee might be pissed off that Spain then pulled out of Iraq, but he should answer a very simple question - would he prefer that politicians who lie about matter of life and death go unpunished?