The Spanish newspaper El Pais yesterday published a leaked transcript of a conversation between George W. Bush and Spanish President José María Aznar in February of 2003 which the left blogosphere gleefully reported as having revealed that Bush intended to go to war whether or not Saddam complied with UN Resolutions.

Examples:

Americablog.com:

So, the war didn’t happen because Saddam wouldn’t comply. It happened because Bush and the Republicans wanted it to happen no matter what, whether or not it was necessary.

TalkingPointsMemo:

My ability to bring you the full details on this are, to put it charitably, limited by my inability to accurately translate Spanish. But it seems someone in the Spanish government has leaked to El Pais transcripts of conversations between President Bush and then Spanish Prime Minister Aznar just before the outbreak of the Iraq War. The gist seems to be that Bush was rather candid about the fact that the efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis were a sham and that the war was a done deal.

Not a surprise certainly, but interesting to see it revealed as it was discussed by the actors at the time.

Alternate Brain:

As I’ve said before, the war in Iraq was a done deal in the neocon playbook since 1999. They just had to find the right excuse. (And the right idiot in the Oval Office.)

Libby Spencer:

My Spanish translation skills are also too rusty to come up with an accurate translation but surely it’s only a matter of time before someone of greater skill can tell us exactly what transpired in that conversation. As the White House once again tries to sell a case for another disastrous confrontation in the Middle East, it would be good to review the historical record on how this mess started before we allow our government to compound it.

But, whoops, here comes José Guardia today, demolishing the whole story.

But what the transcript doesn’t say, no matter the headlines, is that Bush was going to invade even if Saddam complied. What it says is that the US would be in Iraq in mid-March whether there was a second UN resolution or not, one that Bush said he would try to get by all means, which is an entirely different matter. As everybody knows, there’s certainly a debate on whether the first resolution was enough or not -many reputable experts think it was, though there’s not unanimity on this, certainly. But the issue is different. ...

Clearly this is not an equivalent to the Downing Street memo, but a leak from a Zapatero administration official to an anti-Bush, anti-Aznar newspaper in the hope of embarrassing the two, and atrociously translated to make it all look worse. But I’m sorry to say they only embarrassed themselves. No matter how much you spin it, the memorandum shows exactly the opposite to what they say it shows. In layman terms, they got hoist by their own petard.

AP:

The Basque separatist group ETA called off its cease-fire today, saying the government was not committed to ending the nearly 40-year conflict. ...

Today, however, the group notified two Basque newspapers that the cease-fire will end at midnight and described itself as “active on all fronts to defend the Basque homeland.”

ETA had declared the cease-fire unilaterally, saying it wanted to negotiate an end to the conflict, which has left more than 800 people dead. ...

The group reiterated assertions that the Spanish judicial system continued to arrest and try ETA members and suspects while the truce was in effect.

“Minimum democratic conditions for a negotiating process do not exist,” ETA said in the statement sent to the pro-independence newspapers Berria and Gara.

“Zapatero’s character has turned into a fascism that left parties and citizens without rights,” ETA said.

ETA also complained that Spanish courts barred most pro-independence candidates from Basque local elections on May 27.

Zapatero, who planned to address the nation later today, has said peace with ETA is one of its priorities.

ETA took up arms in 1968 in a goal of carving out an independent Basque homeland in the mountains between Spain and France.

In 2004, when Al Qaeda bombed a Spanish train, Spanish voters elected the current Socialist government so that it could withdraw from Iraq.

Will the next successful act of terrorism by ETA persuade Spanish voters to withdraw from the Pyrenees?

Hat tip to José Guardia.

When an open boat bearing illegal immigrants to Europe from Libya lost power, Boudafel, a Maltese tug towing a tuna-breeding plant to Spain threw those on board a line and proceeded to give them a tow.

The boat then foundered and sank, and the Maltese tug, obeying orders from owners ashore, refused to stop to provide further assistance.

Survivors were left to cling to the buoys holding up the tuna farm’s system of nets. In the end, 27 young men were rescued by the Italian Navy.

The Independent:

For three days and three nights, these African migrants clung desperately to life. Their means of survival is a tuna net, being towed across the Mediterranean by a Maltese tug that refused to take them on board after their frail boat sank.

Malta and Libya, where they had embarked on their perilous journey, washed their hands of them. Eventually, they were rescued by the Italian navy.

The astonishing picture shows them hanging on to the buoys that support the narrow runway that runs around the top of the net. They had had practically nothing to eat or drink.

Last night, on the island of Lampedusa, the 27 young men – from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan and other countries – told of their ordeal. As their flimsy boat from Libya floundered adrift for six days, two fishing boats failed to rescue them. On Wednesday, the Maltese boat, the Budafel allowed them to mount the walkway but refused to have them on board.

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Last Monday, another open boat containing 53 illegal immigrant African men, women, and children also lost its engine, and was sighted in distress from the air 90 miles south of Malta. Contact with the vessel was lost, and at first the 27 survivors rescued clinging to the tuna nets were believed to have come from this vessel.

In the end, it was established to have been a second boat, and bodies of its passengers were found Friday.

Reuters:

A French navy ship found around 20 bodies floating off the south coast of the Mediterranean island of Malta on Friday, a maritime official said.

The frigate Motte-Picquet was on a routine surveillance mission when it spotted the bodies.

“We are in the process of picking up some dead bodies,” said Emmanuel Dinh, spokesman for France’s Mediterranean maritime authority.

He said he could not give a precise number but said: “There will certainly be around 20.”

Dinh said there was no sign of a boat and the navy could not yet identify where the bodies came from.

“They are in a state of decomposition so they have been in the sea for several days,” he added.

Last week 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean while Malta and Libya argued over who should rescue them. They were eventually picked up by the Italian navy.

Malta refused to allow a Spanish tugboat to land another 26 would-be migrants. Spain decided to take them in.

The migrants’ plight sparked calls from European Union officials for EU countries to adopt common rules to clarify who is responsible for saving them at sea.

Hat tip to José Guardia.

Local government out of control and burdening residents with an ever-increasing array of pettyfogging rules and regulations?

The little village of Fago, located in the Spanish Pyrenees, found a solution to this overly common problem.

Muslims in Spain have already reasserted a right to conduct Saracenic prayers in the mosque in Cordoba. Osama bin Laden has expressed the recovery of the Islamic Kingdom of Andalusia as one of the goals of his jihad. Spanish bishops are justifiably alarmed by Islamic ambitions.

The Independent.

Spain’s bishops are alarmed by ambitious plans to recreate the city of Cordoba – once the heart of the ancient Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus – as a pilgrimage site for Muslims throughout Europe.

Plans include the construction of a half-size replica of Cordoba’s eighth century great mosque, according to the head of Cordoba’s Muslim Association. Funds for the project are being sought from the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and Muslim organisations in Morocco and Egypt.Other big mosques are reportedly planned for Medina Azahara near Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

The bishops of those cities are alarmed at the construction of ostentatious mosques, fearing that the church’s waning influence may be further eclipsed by resurgent Islam financed from abroad. Up to one million Muslims are estimated to live in Spain. Many are drawn by a romantic nostalgia for the lost paradise of Al-Andalus, the caliphate that ruled Spain for more than five centuries.

The Mail reports that the peculiar disease endemic these days to much of Europe, producing enervated victims suffering from a hazardous limpness of the spine, combined with severely diminished testosterone levels, has been found infecting local officials in rural Spain.

Spanish villages are toning down traditional fiestas, in which dummies representing the Prophet Mohammed are blown up, for fear of offending Muslims.

One eastern Spanish village, Bocairent, decided to abandon the custom of packing the head of a dummy representing Mohammed with fireworks after seeing the angry Muslim response to a Danish newspaper’s publication last year of cartoons of him.

Spanish newspaper El Pais also found that several other villages in the Valencia region had also held back on celebrations this year…

Bocairent’s mayor, Antonio Valdes, said blowing up the Mohammed dummy was offensive.

“It just wasn’t necessary, and as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” he said.

The village may not have blown up the wood-and-cardboard Mohammed dummy this year – but it still threw it off a castle wall at the fiesta’s climax in February.

Villages all over Spain hold annual festivals to commemorate the “Reconquista’”, the reconquest of Spain by Christians from the Moors, which was completed in 1492 after more than 700 years of Muslim rule in much of the country.

Spain is now once again home to a growing number of Muslims, mainly Moroccan immigrants, who villagers feel might be offended by some of their traditional celebrations.

I have got to find out the appropriate date, and get myself one of those for next year. Viva Ferdinand and Isabella!

Madrid’s regional government has banned one third of the models from participating in a fashion show, because “excessive thinness might send the wrong message.”

Agence France

Europe and the state of California remain locked in fierce competition for the most absurd government action.