It’s long been established that the U.S. right wing knows little and cares less about the intricacies of foreign politics (see previous entry), so it’s no surprise that the pundits’ condemnation of Spanish voters’ spineless for voting in the Socialists in response to Al Qaeda’s attacks on commuter trains is, well, wrong. As Paul Wells argues in his latest Macleans column — and damn it if he isn’t required reading again — Spanish voters voted against a government that was lying to them about the attacks. Aznar’s government went to extraordinary lengths to pin the attacks on ETA despite evidence to the contrary, and people caught on that they were being lied to: it was more politically expedient to the ruling party that Basque separatists, rather than Islamic terrorists, were responsible. And voters, no dummies, got them for it.

This, of course, has nothing to do with governments trying to link Al Qaeda attacks with Iraq because it was politically expedient to do so. Nothing at all.