Iraq war based on “lies” – new Spain PM
Spain’s new leader promised Monday to withdraw his nation’s 1,300 troops from Iraq and called the war “an error” based on “lies.”
He lashed out at Bush and Blair, saying they needed “to engage in some self-criticism” over their conduct of the war. “You can’t bombard a people just in case they pose a perceived threat,” Zapatero said, referring to the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “You can’t organize a war on the basis of lies.”
Wars like the one in Iraq “only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate,” he added.
“This is the third big ally which has had an election in which those who ran against Bush’s foreign policy won: Germany in 2002, South Korea in 2003 and now Spain in 2004,” said Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Although U.S. officials played down the significance of Zapatero’s threat, independent analysts called the electoral defeat of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s Popular Party a disaster for the Bush administration.
Disastrous policies generally do have disastrous consequences.