The conservative commentariat in the US wasted little time in establishing the party line interpretation of the election results in Spain as tantamount to appeasement of Al Qaeda.

"Bin Laden's Victory in Spain" thundered the headline of Andrew Sullivan's piece published on his influential web-site the day after the Spanish election: "In yesterday's election victory for the socialists, Al Qaeda got even more than it could have dreamed of. It has removed a government intent on fighting terrorism and installed another intent on appeasing it."

John Ellis, cousin to the US president, one-time news analyst for Fox News, and heavyweight Washington pundit confidently asserted in the aftermath of the bomb blasts: "Europe is in now. That's what 3/11 means. [Eight million people] took to the streets because they were furious about what happened in Madrid. Game on. The game is to kill every terrorist that walks."

The unexpected triumph of the socialists forced him to reassess in record time and within days he was sounding the official note from Washington: "The Spaniards just handed Al Qaeda a huge political victory two days after Al Qaeda attacked their country and killed 200 Spanish citizens."

Even the op-ed pages of the so-called liberal New York Times echoed the conventional wisdom of the conservative consensus. The day after the election, two of three op-ed pieces excoriated the "cowardice" of the Spanish voters, and it was left to the invaluable Paul Krugman to serve once again as the sole voice of sanity and reason on the page.

David Brooks' column squarely accused the Spanish of appeasement in the war on terror. "You do not give terrorists the chance to think that their methods work," he huffed, before drawing an offensive and incorrect comparison between Europe and the US: "If a terrorist group attacked the US three days before an election, does anyone doubt that the American public would rally behind the president or at least the most aggressively anti-terror party?"

Today, it is Thomas Friedman, the page's supposedly liberal foreign policy voice, with his piece: "Axis of Appeasement." Enough said.

The conservative Washington consensus, hurriedly put together in the aftermath of this devastating denunciation of its prosecution of the war on terror, is that the events in Spain signal a big win for Al Qaeda. The terrorists, the argument goes, have succeeded in getting rid of a politician who staunchly opposed them and replaced him with one whose policies are more to their liking.

It is understandable how desperate the Bush administration and its allies must be to propagate such an interpretation rather than acknowledge the failure of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as an anti-terror measure. Unfortunately, such an interpretation is readily recognisable as little more than a somewhat panicky attempt to put a positive spin on a damaging political reality, and only succeeds in further undermining the administration's credibility.

Let's back up a bit and look at the real issue that the Spanish voters expressed their opinion about with their election of the anti-Iraq war socialists. The issue in question was whether the Iraq war was an effective means to combat international terror. From the start, the Bush administration has tried to equate the Iraq war with the war on terror. In the eyes of the Bush administration, the two are inextricably linked, and the invasion of Iraq was sold to the world as a crucial front on the war on terror.

Indeed, it was argued at the time by those who were opposed to the invasion of Iraq, both inside the US and outside, that the invasion of Iraq was actually counter-productive to the war on terror. The invasion and occupation of Iraq diverted crucial resources from Afghanistan, where the Taliban has regained control of roughly one-third of the country, and allowed Al Qaeda to regroup and rededicate itself to its deadly mission, which they appear to have done with spectacular efficiency.

The second argument against the Iraq war was that it was an unjust war that would muddy the moral high ground in the war on terror, and give ammunition to, and re-ignite the deadliest instincts of, the terrorists.

This is the context within which the election results in Spain must be understood. It was not a vote for "appeasement." It was a vote against the Iraq war.

The Spanish voters reaffirmed that they were serious about combating terror. Upwards of ten million marched through the streets following the terrorist strikes in Madrid to show the unity of the Spanish people and their determination to stand up and not be cowed by terror. The election results reflected the national consensus that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, that its support for an unjust war had made Spain less safe not more, and that it was the government of Jose Maria Aznar that was to blame.

There is good reason for the Bush administration to be extremely worried by this turn of events on the Iberian peninsula. The election results in Spain have revealed the bankruptcy of Bush's approach to terror as well as threatened his ability to continue to frame the debate on terror in terms that are advantageous to him and disadvantageous to his opponents.

You are either with us or you are with the terrorists, President Bush famously told the world in his address shortly after 9/11. Since then it has become clear that by "us" he means his administration, and not the US.

This positioning has been central to Bush's presidency and is central to his campaign for reelection. The suggestion that to be critical of Bush's policies is to give aid and comfort to the terrorists has been very effective in marginalising opposition to Bush. The Bush reelection strategy seems to be to plant the idea in the minds of the electorate that a vote for Kerry is a vote for Bin Laden. The Bush campaign has already begun to run an advertisement portraying Kerry as soft on terror that has caused a furore due to its flashing of a menacing picture of a Middle-Eastern looking male on the screen to help make the point.

Bush's team has long attempted to establish the principle that to question the invasion and occupation of Iraq is tantamount to being soft on terror. The results of the election in Spain mean that it will now be possible to question the war on Iraq without being accused of questioning the war on terror. Sure, the Bush team will continue to try to make that argument, but as people begin to digest and make sense for themselves what happened last week in Spain, this position of theirs is becoming increasingly untenable.

It is no wonder that Bush and his supporters are worried. This is why they are all over the media, tarring the Spanish people as appeasers and cowards. The puerility of their name calling reveals the depth of their fear. What the Bush team are beginning to sense is that the confidence game they have been pulling on the US public is running out of suckers. The false choice that they have put before the public -- between Bush and Bin Laden -- has been revealed as a sham. The Spanish elections have shown us all the cracks in the Bush world view. The Bush administration is running scared -- and it's beginning to tell.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.