The Basque Country will never be independent from Spain. They had their chance, even if it was very small during the final 70´s and the beginning of the 80’s, but ETA fu*ked all the issue off.

No matter how many innocents they kill or wound, no matter how many bombs they put, no matter how many noise they make, the Basque Country will always be part of the very deep Spain.

Shoemaker too busy spreading liberalism to combat Terrorism so please leave your name and a short message after the tone.... Beeep

There's only one way to get the ETA to stop and that's to extract too high a price for them to continue.

This rules out negotiation of any kind, perhaps a few of them arrested 'disappear'. Once they realize A) they're not getting anywhere and B) they're definitely going to end up dead - the game will stop.

Even the former Taliban in Afghanistan are turning in their weapons. Turned out the light at the end of the tunnel was a train.

As Vino would say "Long live Socialist Spain!"

No, torpedo.

The Spanish government tried the “too high price for them to continue” at the beginning of the 80’s and we still paying the price now. Some ETA members arrested “disappeared” or were shot while they “were trying to escape from the police”. By the way, this happened under the Socialist government of Felipe González.

The consequence: Their popular support among the Basque people augmented amazingly, their propaganda machine around the world succeeded, and the number of volunteers to join ETA did rise a lot. You cannot transform a democratic county in a dictatorial regime with systematic executions in order to erase a terrorist group from your land. The brutality just help the terrorists. The terrorists turn stronger with the brutality and the hate, because they are brutal and hateful. The terrorist have not huge military installations, they leech from the popular support. If you erase the popular support, the terrorist will be defeated. The law, the impersonal and implacable law is the only way to defeat them. And the justice, because if you apply the justice, there is not place for the revenge among the potential supporters of the terrorist group.

Nowdays the ETA does enjoy less than a 3% of popular support among the Basque people. Do you know why? Because more than 97% of the Basque people think that ETA is a bunch of criminals. The Basque people think that there is not one single reason to put bombs that wound or kill innocent people in 2005. Therefore the ETA is today just a bunch of sectarian morons, marginalized among their own people, with very fuzzy dogmatic and delirious ideas inside their tiny brains, and they are in terminal phase. Now, it dies more people in Spain reached by a thunderbolt than killed by ETA each year. They are just a shadow of the ETA that wasted Spain during the latter 70’s and the first 80’s. They are depicted in public even by the very same creators of ETA. Why? Because Spain have been applying the justice and the law to combat them since 20 years ago, and not the brutal tactics anymore. ETA keeps alone in its brutality, and therefore each decent person (in the Basque country and whatever the part of Spain) knows without hesitation that ETA are the Bad Guys.

This is the only way to defeat a terrorist group, including AlQaeda. You can be sure. Your country is following the wrong path, characterized for quick satisfaction but a total failure at long time.

Vino, of course, what was I thinking? We'll threaten al Qaeda with court dates!! That'll show 'em. Maybe Spain has the people to spare for each atrocity committed, but threatening lawless people with the law accomplishes nothing.

Look at England and Australia now that they've disarmed the law-abiding public of personal weapons - old people, the weak, rich and poor alike are picked apart by the jackaks who don't give a fig for the law.

You know, I wish it were different, I wish everyone had some respect for law and human life, but we're up against people who kidnap young men with Downs Syndrome, wrap them in explosives and attempt to march them into polling places. Which law, specifically, addresses such behavior? How does the law stop these people?

Of course, Spain's problems are for Spain to decide, but it sounds like they brought a knife to a gunfight. I know what you're saying, I wish there were better ways to deal with people who want you dead, but I don't remember my parents' generation taking the Nazis to court.

Best of luck!!

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