Madrid

Our weekend posts contained one incorrect prediction, that the despicable PP would win the Spanish election, and one correct one, that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy would seek to package the terrorist attack as a worthy sacrifice for the worthy war in Iraq. However, the PP defeat has upped the required level of rhetoric for the VRWC, who now must label the Socialists and their voters as terrorist sympathisers. There are examples all over Blogistan today of this line of reasoning but perhaps predictably, a perfect storm of lunacy is attained by Opinionjournal:

The Terrorists Win One
The war on terror suffered a setback yesterday when Spain elected a Socialist government, apparently in response to last week's terror attacks in Madrid.

The Socialists and the terrorists are on the same side, at least as far as the liberation of Iraq goes.

The rest of tirade shows, amongst other things, the risk of getting one's accounts of the world solely from fellow VRWC spinners. There is, as we predicted, the lame reference to "3/11," not the correct "11-M." One report is weirdly sourced to an obscure Australian newspaper:

The Weekend Australian reports that some 1,000 antigovernment demonstrators gathered in Madrid Saturday "to blame [last] week's bombs in the capital on the government's unpopular decision to support the US war on Iraq."

No, as any respectable news accounts would show, those protests were sparked by a belief that the PP government was covering up the investigation. Then there's the whole assumption that the European "weasel" countries have been sitting on the sidelines, not cooperating in the War on Terror. But from today's New York Times, we learn that:

France's senior military officer said today that Osama bin Laden had on several occasions narrowly escaped capture by French troops working alongside American forces in Afghanistan, although he conceded that Mr. bin Laden's capture would not in itself suffice to dismantle Al Qaeda.

Dubya is doubtless hoping for an election season surprise of capturing Osama, but how will the VRWC handle it if Osama is captured by French troops?

Finally, Opinionjournal's opening tirade on 11-M lacks any reference to the casualties of last Thursday's attack, until right at the end:

The election outcome has had a demoralizing effect on pro-war bloggers. "It's a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe's future," writes Andrew Sullivan. John Ellis calls it "the most depressing political development since 9/11, bar none," and says his "assertion that 3/11 would engage the EU in the War on Terror as never before was proven wrong in record time."

Buck up, guys. Every war has casualties and setbacks, and this isn't the end of the world.

So who are the casualties here, the dead and injured, or the truly devastated Andrew Sullivan and John Ellis?