Burnt Orange Report

Spain Speaks Again

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

It seems so simple doesn't it?

Spain's prime minister said Sunday he hopes the deteriorating situation in Iraq (news - web sites) will serve as a warning to countries against using preemptive wars in the future.

"The mission in Iraq, which is showing itself every day to be a failure, should serve as a lesson to the international community: preemptive wars, never again; violations of international law, never again," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.

Speaking before some 20,000 supporters at a meeting celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Socialist party, Zapatero reiterated that he had ordered Spain's troops home from Iraq April 18, a day after he was sworn in, "because they should have never been sent there."

On Wednesday, the last 260 of the 1,300 Spanish troops who took part in the U.S.-led occupation returned home. Another 1,000 soldiers remain in Iraq to pack up military hardware and ship it back to Spain. The government says those soldiers will be in Spain by May 27.

Zapatero's predecessor as premier, Jose Maria Aznar of the conservative Popular Party, had supported the war in Iraq despite massive opposition in Spain. Spain did not take part in the invasion but sent in troops afterward.

Zapatero vowed his government would never break, nor support the violation of, international law in order to fight terrorism.

"The real and most efficient fight against terrorism is through the cooperation of all democratic countries, all free countries, in the United Nations (news - web sites) with the cooperation of all and not via unilateral interventions, which only lead to failure," he told the meeting at a bullring on Madrid's outskirts.

So we royally fucked up. Are we seeing it now? Now we are stuck with a situation that is going nowhere, with the 2nd key supporter of the Coalition of the Willing pulling out (leaving England and Poland left, even though I think Poland has been thinking of leaving.) And now we are left with the choice of "staying the course" and increasing troops, changing nothing which means we sink deeper into this morass, or pulling out and leaving the mess to stew in its own juices.

What do we do? Besides not getting into things like this in the first place.