Spanish PM-elect vows to pull troops out of Iraq, lashes Bush: "'The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster,' Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio Monday.
Spain's Socialists won 43 percent of the ballots to 38 percent for the PP, largely because of the near-total public opposition to the war, Zapatero said.
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Many voters had expressed anger at [current Spanish PM] Aznar, who had previously announced he was retiring after the elections. He was jostled and booed at Sunday while some protesters shouted "Aznar: your war, our dead."
Zapatero, making good on an pre-election pledge, said that barring new developments in Iraq before June 30 -- the date the United States has promised to hand power over to an Iraqi provisional government -- Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq "will return home". "
"Bush and Blair, both of whom are facing elections in coming months, need to engage in 'self-criticism,' Zapatero said.
'You can't bomb a people' over a perceived threat, Zapatero said in comments coming five days before the first anniversary of the March 20 start of the war.
'You can't organise a war on the basis of lies,' he said, alluding to Bush's and Blair's insistence the war was justified by their belief -- so far unfounded -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat.
'Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate,' he said. "
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