Once again, terrorists have committed mass murder on an unsuspecting people. Once again, the news is flooded with images of horror done to innocents in the name of a political agenda. This time, the murderers have struck in Madrid, Spain, on crowded railroads in the middle of the day, killing 200 people and wounding perhaps 1500. 

DAMN them.

I don't care about the politics or aims of the group that did this thing. The black hats ride together. As far as I'm concerned, all terrorists need to be exterminated like the cockroaches they are. Anyone who deliberately targets innocent men, women and children just to get attention or cause fear for some political reason has no humanity, and has forfeited all claim to human rights.  I felt the same way in the days after 9/11... all two and a half years of them, so far.

The topic of discussion seems to be what political group is behind this atrocity. If it's al-Qaeda or a group linked to them, as it certainly seems to be, then the "talking heads" think that tomorrow's election may go ill for Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. The thinking here is that if Spain was attacked because they joined the Coalition to liberate Iraq, the voters will vote him out of office. If it's "just" a Basque separatist group (members of which recieve training in Iran and Lebanon, by the way -- remember the comment about the black hats), then his party may win re-election. The big question seems to be "Are the Spanish people are going to throw Aznar out of office because of his support for the US and UK in Iraq?" I certainly hope they don't think that appeasing the terrorists will make them go away, because it won't. If the terrorists -- whoever they are -- find that they can force the people of Spain to meet their demands with a few lousy bombs, they'll be back again.. and again... and again.

Wait a second... am I missing something here? Everyone's concerned that al-Qaeda may be behind the attack on Spain because they're angry that Spain was our ally in Iraq? I thought that the Liberals and other anti-liberation groups have been insisting for a year that al-Qaeda may have been in Afghanistan, but had nothing to do with Iraq. Why are they suddenly concerned that al-Qaeda committed an act of terrorism in Spain because of its involvement in Iraq, without mentioning Afghanistan? According to Liberal doctrine, Osama bin Laden hated Saddam and wanted him removed for ideological reasons.

This is no surprise, of course. We've known all along that Iraq is the main front of the war on terror, haven't we? Several months ago, in fact, al-Qaeda shifted its focus from defeating the evils of democracy in Afghanistan to defeating the evils of democracy in Iraq. If we can defeat al-Qaeda and establish a real democracy in Iraq, we will have dealt a mortal blow to terrorism, and the terrorists know it. The signing of Iraq's interim constitution last week -- with its incredibly progressive bill of rights -- was a serious win for our side, though the "mainstream" media reported it with a barely-stifled yawn.

According to Norwegian investigators, a message on an al-Qaeda web site last year said, "We must make maximum use of the proximity to the elections in Spain in March next year. Spain can stand a maximum of two or three attacks before they will withdraw from Iraq." Al-Qaeda has been looking for ways to get the US and our allies to withdraw from Iraq since the minute we went in.

I'm sure that the Left will come up with some tortured logic to explain how al-Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq before poor, innocent Saddam was removed from power, but has since decided to punish the whole world for doing so. (Liberals insist al-Qaeda and Saddam had no contact, despite all the evidence that they had a working relationship for over a decade.) I'm not about to buy such a twisted explanation any more than I'd be willing to buy this attack being Muslim retaliation for El Cid's reconquest of Spain from them in the 11th century. And in either case, does it matter why terrorists murder innocents? It is inexcusable, indefensible, and intolerable that they do so.

The War on Terror goes on, and this proves it. It's a threat to the entire world, not just the US, and this proves it. This war is one we can't afford to stop fighting, proactively, wherever terror groups find support. This proves it.