I was about to add that Nuno's brilliant exercise in self-delusion reminded me greatly of the daily performances of the French political class, but I guess Nightfly rounded up the issue nicely enough.
What the triumphant appeasers of this new troïka (France, Germany, Spain) "“ who, since Sunday, are congratulating themselves over that "rebuttal" sent to "Bush that moron" and "Blair that dickhead" (the French radio is having a field day. I mean week.) -- fail to understand, is that the signal sent to terrorists from the Spanish ballot is less a blow at the US than the promise of other bombings in continental Europe.
Although they may try it again in the US and the UK (simply because their goal is to murder us whenever they can) they know that they have no strategic impact otherwise: Americans and British demonstrated that attack means retaliation.
In other words, although I'm nowhere near *hoping* it will happen, I can easily imagine that the same kind of attacks in the US next November would have the opposite effect.
Yet they learned that they can blackmail (continental) European voters now. And the non-Islamic terror groups will start thinking about strategy too…