We don't yet know for certain who planted those bombs, although Al Queda is a strong candidate. We don't know for certain to the extent that the terrorist bombings last week altered the outcome of the election. However, we can be reasonably certain as to how terrorist organizations like Al Queda will perceive yesterday's election results. To them, this was a major victory, and like it or not, perception is often reality.

Not that this was completely unexpected, as <a href="http://www.techcentralstation.com/031204I.html>this column from last Friday pointed out:

The terror incident in Madrid occurred only three days before the Spanish national elections -- well within the period of time when the Spanish people's nerves will still be on edge from the experience of catastrophic terror. The explosions on Thursday will still be echoing on Sunday.

Perhaps this was a sheer coincidence, and the terrorists had no intention of causing people to change their minds about which candidates to vote for. But if it wasn't a coincidence, then this would compel us to recognize a potentially horrendous new development, namely, the use of catastrophic terror to "persuade" the Spanish people vote against the pro-America policy of Prime Minister Aznar's party.

If this is the case, then the Spanish election Sunday will carry a significance that will transcend the borders of Spain, and which could make it one of the most decisive elections in the short history of modern democracy. For if the Spanish people vote against Aznar's party, then it will appear to the terrorists that they have succeeded in manipulating the domestic policy of an independent nation through an act of catastrophic terror. They will have succeeded in making a nation change its mind about who is to lead them -- and that would be a setback from which our world might never recover.

Factually this may not be the case: the vote may conceivably go against Aznar's party for reasons having nothing to do with today's terror. But to the terrorists, such a doubt will not exist. If Aznar is defeated, they will be convinced that it was their act that produced this result; and, God forbid, they may well be right.

This conclusion is the last conclusion that anyone could possibly want the terrorists to draw, because if they believe that they can alter the outcome of an election in Spain, it will inevitably tempt them to try to alter the outcome of future elections in other nations of Europe by a similar use of catastrophic terror.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that they might not also be tempted to use catastrophic terror to affect the next national election in the United States. Indeed, it is all too easy to concoct nightmare scenarios in which a series of coordinated attacks immediately before the election created a climate of such fear and anxiety that a serious question might be raised about the validity of the national election itself.

Like I said, a person's perceptions is often their reality. It'll be hard for the terrorists to have any other perception but that their attack last week led to the change of a western government. Such a perception will make further attacks far more likely, even if it turns out not to be true. Spain freely voted yesterday, and the outcome just made the world a far more dangerous place.