The general Spanish reaction to Colin Powell's performance at the UN has been something along the lines of: they have pretty good evidence of Iraq's weapons programs and signs that point to a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. However, none of this is irrefutable proof. The Spanish government says it is. All the other political parties disagree with them.

On the Security Council it looks like the US, UK, Spain, and Bulgaria want action now and everybody else wants to give the inspectors more time. I do not think giving the inspectors more time is going to turn up anything new and I think Powell's presentation demonstrated sufficiently that Saddam Hussein deserves to be overthrown, as if anybody doubted it.

They had a Parliamentary debate on the war yesterday at the Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid. José María Aznar defended his current course of strong support for the Alliance. Zapatero, the Socialist leader in Parliament and probable 2004 candidate, came out yesterday against an attack on Iraq even if there's a second Security Council resolution. He said, "War without proof would be disproportionate and unjust." Said Llamazares of the United Left, "This war is illegitimate and unjust." Anasagasti of the PNV said "The war is an imperative of the economic growth of the United States." Puigcercós of the Republican Left said, "The Government has broken up European consensus," and Saura of Initiative said, "Don't trade blood for oil." All of these people are going to look extremely stupid after the war when the evidence of Saddam's weapons programs and links to terrorism all comes out, not to mention the horrific violations of human rights. As I've said before, Saddam has done to death tens of thousands of innocent people in the basement cells of Baghdad and hundreds of thousands more on battlefields and in areas of repression since he effectively took power in 1969. When it's all thrown in people's faces at once the Belsen effect will make everyone forget all about whether one UN resolution or two was necessary to overthrow the murderous son-of-a-bitch, and those who said the war was unjust will have some serious explaining to do.

Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Intermón-Oxfam have shown their real colors. Gee, I thought they were supposed to, respectively, give health care to poor people, work to free political prisoners (USA = 0, Iraq = thousands, by the way), lie about the environment, and feed hungry people, respectively. Well, they're all working agianst the war. They've jointly set up a website, www.antelaguerraactua.org, should you want to check it out. I don't, personally, so there's no link, but you can look at it if you want. None of those people are getting any of my money ever again, and I gave just a little to Doctors Without Borders at Christmas. They will never see one more duro of my cash. I don't care whether they do good work or not, which Oxfam and DWB are at least occasionally known to do; Amnesty and Greenpeace are just assholes, in my opinion. Do the people who support these supposedly humanitarian organizations understand that they have stridently leftist and anti-American political agendas, that they're the same old pinkos dressed up in different costumes?