Not Poodles, But Lions

The statements of suspects in the Madrid bombings have undercut the anti-war argument that al Qaida only attacks Western targets in response to specific grievances in the Islamic world. Planning for the Madrid attack began long before the Spanish agreed to help America end the dictatorship in Iraq. In fact, it began before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The latest round of terror warnings comes with a fresh dossier of information, some new, some old, that has been made public. And lo and behold, Britain, too, was scouted for Islamist terror targets long before the Iraq War.

Melanie Phillips sums it up:

It has been a constant appeasenik refrain that Britain would never have become an al Qaeda target had Tony Blair not gone poodling up to President Bush and allied Britain to the defence against terror. Yet it appears that this 'old', pre 9/11 reconnaisance activity included targets in Britain. If this is true, it is the first hard evidence that the targeting of Britain was nothing to do with the reaction to 9/11 -- because it was a target before that event took place.