A couple of dozen fellows here at the Hoover Institution had lunch today with Josemaria Aznar, until just two months ago the prime minister of Spain. The event was off the record, but I can pass along one observation: Aznar conveys a seriousness about terrorism that I’ve seen matched only by that of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
In one of Osama bin Laden’s tape recorded messages, Aznar noted, bin Laden spoke of the need to recapture “Al Andalus,” calling on radical Islam, in effect, to reconquer Spain. Aznar felt certain that it will prove only a matter of time before Europe suffered another terrorist attack as catastrophic as that in Madrid—and that between now and November terrorists would do all they could to disrupt elections here in the United States.