Los ESPANOLES CASTIGAN AL PP Y DAN PODER AL PSOE

You might say this was a referendum on the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's lap doggish support of a certain President Jesus Bush's idiotic Middle East kill now, sort em out later policies. Or maybe the blasts and killings of last week just brought people to their senses.

Yesterday the ruling party was voted out of power. Reaction to yet another pig-headed and corrupt political leader who chose to ride the short and unraveling coattails of President Jesus Bush. The Spanish government, eerily mirroring what one could easily imagine the American leadership doing, had insisted that its prime suspect in the bombings was ETA, even as evidence mounted of an Islamic link. The government was accused of withholding information on the investigation to save the election. Sounds like 9/11, eh?

It was the first time in a long line of governments that backed the Iraq war being voted out of office. Incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to bring home the 1,300 troops Spain has stationed in Iraq when their tour of duty ends in July.

American Presidential candidate John F Kerry, as they've taken to calling him now as though to invoke Instamatic memories of President John F Kennedy (John F) Kerry-Kennedy, has...well, what has he called for? Well, he has blasted the Iraq policy but frankly, given that he comes from the same background as Bush and voted to give Bush all sorts of powers to invade Iraq to begin with, what difference does it really make? A slight change in the timbre of the sound bite?

Spain has shown the rest of the civilised world how to take down the lackies and conspiracists who have taken the events of 9/11, twisted them like the bodies and corpses that followed, and have used the lame excuse of "terrrorism" to indoctrinate their own somnambulists. It's a pity that in places like the UK and the USA, there isn't an alternative party of any consequence who might have the vision and popular vote to do the same.

In fairness, for those who loved taking the events of 9/11 and turning them into a senseless invasion of Iraq at the expense of actually fighting the terrorism everyone alleges to abhore, for the knee-jerk reaction and the predictable palaver of the RIGHTeous, have a look at Iberian Notes and just sense the injustice!

"A victory for appeasement. A victory for cowardice. The Spanish people demonstrated today that they have no courage."

Quite enlightening. I guess the victory for senseless destruction and the victory for turning 9/11 into a platform for corporate greed and neoconservative cock-pulling wasn't as long lived as some idiots would have hoped.