Christopher Allibritton offers some of the best analysis of the Madrid bombings that I've seen. He rightly notes that we don't yet know much, and that all the people pointing the fingers have their own agendas. As far as the Spanish elections go, it may not matter who's to blame so much as who Spanish voters believe is to blame. According to
Hobson's Choice, the excellent blog by James R. McLean, it depends on which part of Spain you live in. We'll see. But Allibritton makes a plausible case that while the forces behind the bombings could just be Islamists, they could also be a "joint venture." Allibritton offers interesting background on the ETA -- and much else.
Who's to blame?
Christopher Paine
March 12, 2004
...My opinion, such as it is, is that this may have been a team effort, although I lean toward it being led by Islamists. Terrorism isn't a clear-cut enterprise and stateless groups like ETA and al Qaeda often interact in overt and covert ways. (In fact, they interact so often and so deeply that the failure to find any substantial links between Saddam Hussein's former regime and al Qaeda should be seen not as a failure of investigators to look deeply enough but as proof that there were no links at all.) ...