When I think about it I just can't believe it. It's something that has never happened in this country. For as long as our country has been in existence, more than 225 years. Through all our history: Slavery, the Civil War, two World Wars, the Cold War, Vietnam and many trying times I'm sure I have left out. But this War on Terror - or as your President calls it "tara" - will cause our, ahem, government to cancel and/or postpone the election in the case of a terrorist attack. Now I saw Mr. Isikoff, the man who wrote this Newsweek article, on TV last night and he made the statement like in the article that:

But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections--as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives--has led analysts to conclude "they want to interfere with the elections," says one official.

He uses the word 'success' in regard to the Madrid bombings. He believes that it is a fact that the bombing itself caused the voters in Spain to change their minds. As with most things, there were many factors that contributed to the change in Spanish leadership, one of which was that the incumbent president first blamed a local terrorist group (ETA) for the bombing, and when the evidence built up that it was Muslin extremists, he still wanted to blame ETA. For more info check out these two links:
Terrorism & Democracy: Zapatero Moves Spain Into The Peace Camp
The Spanish Elections
More on this tomorrow....


I've always heard it's the truth in a joke that makes them so funny
Tom Tomorrow
This Modern World: Defending the Bush Doctrine

Krugman on DeLay
Machine at Work
Here's the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay's brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?

More on the intelligence from a veteran
Corrupted Intelligence
In our various oral and written presentations on Iraq, my veteran intelligence officer colleagues and I took no delight in sharply criticizing what we perceived to be the corruption of intelligence analysis at CIA. Nothing would have pleased us more than to have been proven wrong. It turns out we did not know the half of it.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 11:31 AM