AZNAR’S ATTEMPTED TERROR-ASSISTED COUP
Condoleezza Rice’s remarks came in the context of a lengthy US tour by Jose Maria Aznar, the defeated Spanish Prime Minister. Aznar was ousted in Spain’s March 13
elections, partly because 90% of Spaniards rejected Aznar’s subservience to Bush in
joining the US invasion coalition in Iraq, and partly because Spanish voters were
convinced that Aznar was lying about the March 11 terrorist attacks on commuter trains
in the Madrid region. Aznar was defeated by the magnificent mobilization of Spanish
trade unions and left parties against terrorism; this recalled the actions of the German
trade unions, who had stopped the Kapp-Luttwitz putsch of 1920 with a general strike.
Aznar was counted as a neocon, and his party contained the remnants of Francisco
Franco’s falangist-fascist apparatus. Aznar was associated with the thesis that the March
11 terrorist attacks decided the Spanish elections in favor of the PSOE (socialist)
challenger, Zapatero. Aznar also claimed that his own defeat was a victory for terrorism, since the newly elected Zapatero, acting in conformity with the will of the Spanish people, withdrew the Spanish troop contingent from Iraq as soon as he had taken office.
The Spanish elections were viewed with hysteria by Washington elites, first because of the Spanish quitting the coalition, but also because the terrorist attacks had failed to produce the expected effects. The Washington consensus had previously been that terrorism would infallibly stampede the voters of any country into voting for the incumbent, but this time it was the anti-Bush challenger who was the beneficiary. Aznar was known to have attempted to call off the Spanish vote and to continue to rule by decree, but his efforts were blocked. Aznar’s briefing would seem to have included the notion that if there was going to be pre-election terrorism, it needed to be of sufficient magnitude to provide a pretext for calling off all scheduled elections.
In mid-April, Aznar began issuing warnings of election-related terrorism. These warnings were directed most immediately to Tony Blair and George Bush. Aznar said, “I told George Bush, and Tony Blair and other political leaders to be extremely careful before elections ... and to be very vigilant.” (Once Noticias, Once-TV, Mexico, April 19, 2004; EIR, May 22, 2004) During his visit to California, Aznar referred more than once to a terrorist attack taking place in the United States in June, 2004, which would lead to a Federal Emergency Management Agency takeover of the country. (International Herald Tribune, May 15, 16, 17, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2004)
On May 18, El Pais reported that Aznar had visited Los Angeles, and had then gone on to Washington, where he met Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Present at the meeting, reports El Pais, were various Democratic and Republican Congressmen. After the meeting, during an intervention at the Heritage Foundation, Rumsfeld spoke about Aznar’s briefing: “In Spain, in Madrid, the terrorists changed the result of the elections, without any doubt. In a premeditated way. as a consequence of the intentions of the terrorists, the election results were changed. I had dinner with Prime Minister Aznar, and he is convinced that this is how it happened.” In California, Aznar told the press on Monday that Islamic terrorism has as objective to influence elections in democratic countries. “If they could do it in Spain, why would they not intend to do it in another place?” he said and added, “It's important to understand that the terrorists will do everything to change the next elections in the USA. They will do everything possible to make the U.S. fail.”
He furthermore said in Los Angeles that he thought that the government of Zapatero sent an “inappropriate message to the terrorists by withdrawing the troops.” Aznar also had a 40-minute meeting with President Bush in the White House. Present at the meeting were: Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. The White House press spokesman identified the meeting as “private” – “a meeting with a good friend of the President.”
An important sidelight on these statements by Aznar was the revelation that the group
accused of carrying out the Madrid bombings was thoroughly penetrated by informants
working for the Spanish police, according to El Mundo of May 6, 2004. The Madrid
bombings were synthetic terrorism. El Mundo reported that among the people arrested for the Madrid bombing were two police informants. This paper published an exclusive
report given by Rafa Zhueri, who was among those arrested after the bombings. Zhueri
revealed that he had worked for years as a police informant for a part of the Spanish Civil Guard (UCO -Undidad Central Operativa). The article was headlined “I informed the Civil Guard that an Asturian offered me dynamite.” The US controlled corporate media ignored these astounding revelations.