Talk:Coalition of the willing: beginning of the end
The take published on the Spanish elections is incredibly one-sided. Adminspin has been taken for face value and facts have flown out the window.
1. Before the Spanish election, polls showed that most Spaniards BELIEVED that the PP would win, but a majority of Spaniards did not WANT the PP to win.
2. The PP government was caught lying and manipulating news on the bombings, maintaining its completely baseless claim of them being the work of ETA. This more than anyhing else, motivated the defeat of Aznar's party.
3. Traditionally, high turnouts favour the left in Spain. The bombings had the effect of increasing turnout.
The idea that the Spanish electorate "ceded" to terrorism is both untrue and very insulting. The millions that marched against the terrorists in the days following the blasts bear this out.
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Sheesh. Note that in similarity to the corrupt U.S. election process, a majority of citizens have a preceeding notion of outcome which is opposite their voting intention. Spain had one of the largest anti-invasion protest turnouts in the world. The unfortunate bombings seriously interfered with the opportunity to demonstrate the power of the people to remove an unwanted and unrepresentative government. The imperialist right turned the election from one of revolt against bad government into one of support for their nightmare of fear. --Maynard 08:39, 29 Jan 2005 (EST)
document claims
I think that we need to be careful to document claims. Can we find a source that substantiates that the Netherlands, or any other troops, will be redeployed to Afghanistan? Artificial Intelligence 07:38, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)
Source: Radio Nederland Wereld Omroep -- daily program with extensive discussion about a leaked memorandum about the deployment to Afgh... since then confirmed by the NL military.
There is an interesting aspect to the NL redeployment: some parlamentarians want the government to publish which metric it is using to determine the effectiveness and usefulness of the troops wherever they are deployed. The gov't claimed "success" while pulling out the troops, but is not willing to state how it measures its success. The parlamentarians want the publication of the metric to be used to assess their usefulness before Dutch military are deployed anywhere. The same folks want an up-front determination of the length of stay. This measure could be passed by parlament, and thereby scuttle the planned redeployment. Finally, there are moves afoot elsewhere in Europe to send "military advisors" in a NATO guise. The NYT lists 150 under this rubric... again, would be interesting to check this out further.
