Did The President Propose To Take Out Al Jazeera? Did George Bush seriously suggest that coalition forces should bomb
al-Jazeera headquarters because he was unhappy over their coverage of
the siege of Fallujah in 2004? The story seems confirmed because Britain is prosecuting these guys
under the Official Secrets Act. Since there's no case unless real
secrets are revealed, that's a rock-solid confirmation that the story
is accurate.
If the story were false in any way, they'd be charged with libel instead.
LONDON (AP) — A civil servant has been charged under Britain's Official
Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper
said Tuesday suggested that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded
President Bush not to bomb the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.
Al-Jazeera said in a statement that it was
investigating the report. "If the report is correct then this would be
both shocking and worrisome not only to Al-Jazeera but to media
organizations across the world," it said.
The network said that if true the report would
"cast serious doubts" on the Bush administration's explanations of
earlier incidents involving Al-Jazeera journalists and the American
military.
The document was described as a transcript of a conversation between the two leaders.
"A good reason for believing in the authenticity of the memo is
that an unnamed spokesman for Blair was quoted in the original story as
saying that Bush's remark was "humorous, not serious." This is as much
as to concede that some such conversation did in fact take place. It is
of course not always possible to tell when the president is joking, but
another who saw the transcript claimed that he was "deadly serious, as
was Blair." (This by the way is a rebuke to those who routinely taunt
the prime minister as "Bush's poodle.")
Another and again somewhat inductive reason is the response of Colin
Powell, who was finally asked about the meeting to his face outside St.
John's Episcopal Church in Maclean, Va., on Sunday morning. The Daily
Mirror's reporter, Ryan Parry, asked him a question that contained the
date and subject of the meeting, and was successively told "I can't
remember every meeting," … "I don't know, you'll have to forgive me," …
"I don't recall this," … "I don't remember the Al Jazeera thing,
frankly," along with several more brushoffs of the same "nondenial
denial" sort. I am not the world's greatest fan of Powell or of his
secretaryship, but the chief steward of American foreign policy might
be expected to remember a proposal to bomb the territory of a friendly
neutral that is the site of U.S. Central Command, as well as a sharp
dispute about it between his president and his country's chief
political and military ally. If he doesn't feel confident enough to
say: "That is too absurdly untrue to deserve even a comment from me,"
then he is not doing much better than stalling.
It is high time that this question was ventilated by people other
than British editors and journalists who labor under the repressive
conditions of the Official Secrets Act. Al Jazeera is not describable,
perhaps, as a strictly objective station, but it is the main source of
news in the Arab world because it is not the property of any state or
party, and it has given live and unedited coverage of things like the
elections in Iraq. In 2001, its office in Afghanistan was destroyed by
"smart" bombs. In 2003, its correspondent in Baghdad was killed in an
American missile strike. If it becomes widely believed that it has been
or is being targeted, the consequences in the region will be rather
more than Karen Hughes' "public diplomacy" can handle."
The very fact that so many people allow for the distinct possibility
that Bush may have been serious tells you a lot about Bush. People do
not have much confidence in his judgement.
LONDON (AP) — A civil servant has been charged under Britain's Official
Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper
said Tuesday suggested that 
