I CAN'T BELIEVE the Spanish government is so clueless. Turns out that they were bragging that Obama was going to be at the meeting of the Alliance of Civilization in Turkey at the end of this week, but no, Obama is voting present (unclear whether he bailed out or he simply hadn't confirmed 100%). So, what do Zapatero's people do? Well, blame the neocons and the jooooos, of course!

Charlemagne has it right:

In other words, Mr Obama has not even landed yet, and we are straight back to the same old same old. It is true that some prominent conservative commentators had issues with Mr Obama going to the Alliance event in Istanbul. But imagine you were a Spanish "government source" preparing your prime minister's first ever meeting with Mr Obama, especially a few days after Spain annoyed NATO mightily by announcing it was pulling its troops out of Kosovo without telling its allies first. I would hesitate to brief the local press that the man is a patsy of neocons and shadowy Jewish lobbyists.

Maybe this is the Jews' fault too...