Madrid

Sunday media watch.

1. Condi tells the Spaniards how to vote:

[NBC Meet the Press host] MR. RUSSERT: ...Are you concerned that the Spanish government and today's election may fall as a result of embracing the president's policy on Iraq and this attack?

DR. RICE: I believe that the Spanish people understand that they've had strong and good leadership in President Jose Maria Aznar and his government, that fighting terrorism cannot allow one to be intimidated.

2. Condi covers 200 deaths with the "Stuff Happens" doctrine:

MR. RUSSERT: But if this was al-Qaeda and they successfully killed 200 Spaniards and wounded 1,500, they're far from being decapitated. Al-Qaeda is alive and well.

DR. RICE: They are going to win skirmishes in the war on terrorism

3. The New York Times forgets about one of the IRA's theatres of operation:

Since the 1970's, Germany and Greece have known leftist terrorism, while Italy has suffered both leftist and rightist violence: in 1980, Italian neo-Fascists killed 84 people and wounded 200 in a bombing in Bologna. Until the peace agreement in Northern Ireland six years ago, the Irish Republican Army also sponsored separatist violence in Britain, while France still struggles against nationalist extremism in Corsica.