{"id":561,"date":"2004-03-13T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2004-03-13T21:45:29","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-03-13T14:45:29","modified_gmt":"2004-03-13T21:45:29","slug":"al-qaeda-eta-or-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/13\/al-qaeda-eta-or-both\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Qaeda, ETA or both?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Albritton,<\/a> writing in his blog, Back to Iraq<\/a>, believes there’s reason to consider that the Madrid train bombing might be a joint operation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reason that al Qaeda wouldn\u2019t work with \u2014 or help fund \u2014 groups that further its own ends in the short run. (Which is why it never worked with Saddam. Not only did it not share any long-term goals with Iraq, and in fact wanted to destroy Saddam\u2019s government, but it didn\u2019t share any short-term goals either. Saddam didn\u2019t want to destroy the United States. He wanted an end to sanctions so he could go back to trying to dominate the Middle East \u2014 something bin Laden wants to do himself.)<\/p>\n

So. What conclusions may be drawn? As Juan Cole notes<\/a>, if the ETA did it, it would be seen as local significance and probably bolster the standing of Jose Aznar\u2019s conservative party prior to the Sunday ballot. If it\u2019s jihadists, this will be seen as on par with Sept. 11, 2001, Bali and Lockerbie \u2014 and the War on Terror will have suffered a setback. The U.S., paradoxically, probably would like to have the bombers come from al Qaeda because that would bolster Bush\u2019s charge that the War on Terror is ongoing \u2014 so don\u2019t change commanders in the middle of a war.<\/p>\n

However, either\/or is too limiting. I think this was probably some kind of joint venture between the ETA and jihadists, but, still, I wouldn\u2019t be a bit surprised to see this as a wholly Islamist enterprise. We just don\u2019t know the full story yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Chris points out, it is too early to know but this is an interesting insight that the mainstream media, to my knowledge, has not written about. <\/p>\n

Update: I was wrong. BBC is speculating about collaboration.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Albritton, writing in his blog, Back to Iraq, believes there’s reason to consider that the Madrid train bombing might be a joint operation: There\u2019s no reason that al Qaeda wouldn\u2019t work with \u2014 or help fund \u2014 groups that further its own ends in the short run. (Which is why it never worked with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}