Spain Terrorist Attack

[<TROUBLE^MAKER>]

They kept saying on the tube France is upping it&#39;s security alerts that&#39;s the last place they are going to attack.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by <TROUBLE^MAKER>@13 March 2004 - 01:33
They kept saying on the tube France is upping it&#39;s security alerts that&#39;s the last place they are going to attack.

Al Qaida apparently says we&#39;re (the U.S.) next-again.

France is an interesting case as re: terrorism; so are Germany and Russia.

I have some suspicions about any prospective terrorist acts which might occur in those countries.

[<TROUBLE^MAKER>]

Originally posted by j2k4+13 March 2004 - 00:13--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (j2k4 @ 13 March 2004 - 00:13)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-<TROUBLE^MAKER>@13 March 2004 - 01:33
They kept saying on the tube France is upping it&#39;s security alerts that&#39;s the last place they are going to attack.

Al Qaida apparently says we&#39;re (the U.S.) next-again.

France is an interesting case as re: terrorism; so are Germany and Russia.

I have some suspicions about any prospective terrorist acts which might occur in those countries. [/b][/quote]
It just blows my mind wondering why they haven&#39;t struck again in the US.

Russia was/is pretty friendly to Iraq because they want the money they are owed. Tho at the same time they have that hornets nest called Chechnya, that makes THEM a target for Al-quada types.

France has the largest Muslim population of Muslims in Europe, but they have a history of granting them asylum one example is the AYATOLLAH CHOMEINI forced in to exile by the Shaw of IRAN.

[tracydani]

Originally posted by sara5564@12 March 2004 - 22:16


These people are actually sane, fanatics yes but sane none the less. This means that these cold and calculating killers could literally be the neighbour that you meet down the Gym, chat to, and probably quite like...now that is far more scary than obviously mad zealots...

This exact thing happened here on a military base where I work.

A young lady and her boyfriend, along with whatever local group of idiots decided they were going to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of 911. The only thing that stopped them was that she spoke to a friend and made a comment about not going near the base that day.

The local police found them with enough ingredients to do very serious damage here.

After we all found out what was going on, that was the scariest thing of all to me. She worked at a convenient store right across the parking lot from where I work and we saw each other practically every day and knew each other to make small talk whenever I went to get a soda or something.

She was a very nice person and seemed well liked by all her customers. I didn&#39;t know much more then that about her though. I could just imagine how all of her co-workers must have felt. To know that the person they all worked with day in and out and quite possibly even spent some time after work hanging out with was planning to kill as many of them/us as happened to be near when they did this thing.

I&#39;m not sure how I would have slept after that if I was any closer to her. I&#39;d always be wondering about the people around me for quite a while.

TD

[kAb]

I just read,

March 11, 2004 - Date of Spain Attacks
911 days after Sept. 11, 2001

[Shiranai_Baka]

Ok im really interested by these stories.. but can someone elaborate on the acronyms here? Its pretty hard to figure out the terrorist groups&#39; names e.g.: ETA etc.. etc..

[h1]

I just heard on the radio that 5 suspects have been taken into custody, waiting for more.

[Biggles]

The probability that it was AQ who attacked the Spanish seems to be growing with the arrest of 5 suspects (3 Morrocans and 2 Indians).

Some of the protests in the Madrid streets have become anti-government. The chants have turned from "No to ETA" to "your war our dead". Interestingly, not all news channels are translating the chants yet, although most are using the same Euro News feeds.

With regards attacks elsewhere, it is difficult to predict what will happen. It must be remembered that although France, Germany and Russia were anti the war in Iraq they were pro the war against the Taliban in Aghanistan and Germany has the largest contingent of European soldiers in Aghanistan (something that appears to be totally over-looked by some commentators). AQ trained most of the terrorists that have attacked Russians in Chechnya and many hundreds of Russians have died at their hands. AQ also has links to terrorists in Georgia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Indeed the overwhelming majority of the 50,000 or so trained in AQ camps either fight in Afghanistan or in the former Soviet Union.

In addition to supporting the war in Afghanistan, France has recently enacted legislation which has deeply angered Muslim fundamentalists. It would be a foolish French Government that ignored these facts - and whilst many like to accuse the French of a multitude of vices, foolishness is not one of them.

I think it would be overly simplistic to simply equate support for the war in Iraq with likelihood of attack although AQ has does have political reasons to put coalition countries to the top of their hit list.

First and foremost AQ wants to be seen as the natural bulwark against the west. The primary purpose of this is to overthrow pro-western governments in Arabic countries. I have heard some arguments stating that the attack shows that there was a link between Saddam and AQ. This is fundamentaly wrong headed. It, rather, shows that AQ has put a priority in replacing Saddam with an Islamic government (which Saddam for all his evil ways clearly was not). AQ wishes to make Iraq a battlefield for its ideology and wishes to show disaffected Iraqis that they can strike at the heart of the infidels in their own countries. It could be argued that AQ are actully delighted that 1) we overthrew someone resistant to their way of thinking (being an Islamic fundamentalist was a fast track to Saddam&#39;s jails) and 2) we have given them a place to pitch battle. It may also be argued (by the cynical) that we in the west are not entirely unhappy in keeping most of AQ&#39;s forces tied up fighting in the ME. The Iraqis are just the poor sods stuck in the middle.

However, the attacks will not be exclusively centred on coalition countries over the longer term as AQ has a bone to pick with all those involved in Afghanistan too. It is merely the recent visibility of the coalition forces that has focused AQ attention.

By nature these attacks are also opportunistic and the closeness of Morroco to Spain will have had a bearing. Nevertheless, once in the EU, travel is relatively easy and from Spain these attackers could have gone anywhere. A bit like getting from Mexico to the US is the tricky bit - but once in the US going from Texas to Iowa is no big deal.

As a counter to the fairly dry and academic argument above, my sympathies go out to all the bereaved and injured of the insane attrocity of the Madrid bombings.

[sArA]

Well, no one has mentioned the fact that we have not had an attack yet here in the UK...Makes one rather uncomfortable I can tell you.

[yonki]

Originally posted by Shiranai_Baka@13 March 2004 - 20:09
Ok im really interested by these stories.. but can someone elaborate on the acronyms here? Its pretty hard to figure out the terrorist groups&#39; names e.g.: ETA etc.. etc..

ETA= Euskadi ta Askaltasuna=Basque Country and Freedom. Its almost funny that they use that name.

But they probably arent behind the killing this time.