WASHINGTON: The election results in Spain have come as a shock to the US government, media and analysts. "This is a big defeat for us," a Pentagon official was quoted by the Washington Times as saying on Tuesday. "Al Qaeda caused a regime change better than we did in Baghdad. No cost."

The conservative Times added that the election results were a 'victory for terror' with far-reaching consequences. Many other pundits agreed. Most US newspapers published editorials with lines similar to these from the New York Times: "Certainly the events in Madrid have been a major blow to the Bush administration's strategy of inducing democratic governments to endorse its military operations even in the teeth of overwhelming opposition from their own people."

Mideast expert Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said an argument can be made that Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were actually winning the war.

"If Al Qaeda's ideology wins victories, it does not matter if Al Qaeda is destroyed in the process." US secret service experts already are painting pictures of terrorism scenarios prior to the November 2 election in the United States. And British Prime Minister Tony Blair must call an election no later than May 2006.

Behind the scenes in Washington talk is of a disaster for the alliance that fought the war in Iraq and of a success for Al Qaeda that is bitter for the United States.

"The terrorists are testing the unity and the resolve of the civilized world, and we must rise to that," Vice President Dick Cheney told Republicans at a Phoenix fundraiser.

The election victory of the Socialists and opponents of the Iraq war in Spain was 'a clear act of appeasement', conservative journalist Robert Kagan wrote.

If they didn't recognize it, columnist Edward N. Luttwak of The New York Times did. "It must be said: Spanish voters have allowed a small band of terrorists to dictate the outcome of their national elections," he wrote in Tuesday's newspaper.

Kagan, like other commentators, drew a comparison between the world threat that Hitler represented at the end of the 1930s - and the appeasement policies that were tried - and the current challenges presented by Al Qaeda.

Former adviser to US president Ronald Reagan, Doug Bandow, said Al Qaeda could reach the conclusion that it has the power to topple US-friendly governments.

The Washington Post placed the fears of the government front and centre: "The rash response by Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapater, Spain's prime minister-elect, will probably convince the extremists that their attempt to sway Spanish policy with mass murder succeeded brilliantly."

Political scientist Nile Gardner of the Heritage Institute said the tactic will be used again in the future, adding that an extremely dangerous development has been put into play.

Kagan considers the western alliance 'at the edge of the abyss' after the events in Spain. Spain "reacted exactly as Al Qaeda had hoped", he wrote. Now the big danger is that other countries in Europe could believe that they could avoid terrorist attacks if they changed their policies.

He sharply criticized EU Commission president Romano Prodi, who said that the answer to terrorism should not be force alone, and terrorism was worse than one year ago. Kagan said Prodi had accepted the logic of Al Qaeda. -dpa