Aznar's defeat comes at worst possible moment for Bush

By RUPERT CORNWELL in Washington

What goes up sooner or later comes down - and the downfall of the ruling centre-right party in Spain is further proof that George W. Bush is no exception to this immutable law of politics and of life.

Last year almost everything went right for Mr Bush - but no longer.

The failure to find any Iraqi WMD, the grim state of the jobs market here, and the unexpectedly aggressive performance of Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have combined to push the President's approval rating down to barely 50 per cent.

On top of this now comes the stunning defeat for Jose Maria Aznar in Spain.

It has come at the worst possible moment for George Bush - repudiation by a major ally of his war in Iraq, just as the White House attempts to use the first anniversary of the invasion to justify its policies.

Under its outgoing prime minister, Spain was after Britain and the USA itself, the highest profile member of the so-called 'coalition of the willing.'

Mr Aznar took part in the tripartite eve-of-war Azores summit with Mr Bush and Tony Blair, while Spain was co-sponsor alongside the US and Britain of the failed Security Council resolution last March that would have put a United Nations imprimatur on the war.

Then, three days after the Madrid terrorist bombings for which Muslim groups increasingly appears responsible, Spain switched sides.

The victory of the anti-war socialist party in effect realigns Madrid with France and Germany, and leaving Italy and Poland, along with Britain, as the main European supporters of the war.

Washington meanwhile must confront the grim fact that for the first time, Al-Qaeda - if it was behind the attacks - has influenced, if not changed, the result of a democratic election in a major Western country.

Yesterday Mr Bush called Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the incoming prime minister to congratulate him, but there was no disguising the disappointment at the White House, for all its attempts to minimise the impact of what had happened.

Two hours before the polls closed in Madrid, Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, was on network television proclaiming her belief that "the Spanish people understand that they've had strong and good leadership in Jose Maria Aznar and his government."

Not only was that view quickly and harshly contradicted by the election result; so too was the Bush administration's assumption that a major terrorist attack in Europe would draw sceptical populations closer to Washington.

In Spain, the opposite appears to have happened. Spanish voters seem to have decided that being close to the US is a risky proposition.

Some US officials say Mr Aznar's party may have paid the price for playing politics with the attacks, instantly and categorically blaming them on the more convenient target of the Basque organisation ETA, before the facts were fully known.

If his government had acknowledged from the outset that Islamic terrorism could also have been involved, the outcome might have been different, they say.

But even that explanation may backfire against the White House, which for months has been facing accusations it manipulated pre-war data on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify a war which it was determined to wage, whatever happened.

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the intelligence failure, which is now undergoing final editing, reportedly delivers a devastating verdict on the CIA's performance.

"It's shocking," Carl Levin, a Democratic member of the committee said, "There has to be accountability."

In domestic political terms too, the Spanish election outcome is a setback, as Mr Bush gears up for a re-election campaign that suddenly looks much trickier than it did only a month or so ago.

Most ominous of all perhaps, the closely watched 'Is the country on the right track?' political barometer has shifted sharply against Mr Bush, with Americans saying by a 60 per cent to 39 per cent margin, according to a new Gallup poll yesterday that the US is headed in the wrong direction.

This worrying finding came as the Bush administration was wheeling out every weapon of its own to present the Iraq war, on its first anniversary, as a success.

The public relations blitz ranged from co-ordinated media appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfield and other top officials to the presentation of evidence of the threat posed by Libya's erstwhile nuclear programme.

It was abandoned, Washington contends, because Colonel Ghadaffi concluded that if he continued trying to develop a bomb, he would meet the same fate as Saddam Hussein.

But this carefully marshalled case for the war is now overshadowed by the stunning events in Spain.

Moreover the White House PR offensive will be countered by demonstrations, culminating with what anti-war protest groups say will be 200 events across the country next Saturday, March 20, the exact anniversary of the bombing raids on Baghdad which signalled the start of the war.

In a foretaste, peace activists and relatives of the 564 US troops who have died in Iraq held a vigil outside the Walter Reed Army Hospital in northern Washington, before staging a silent protest in Lafayette Square, opposite the White House.

- INDEPENDENT