"Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters"

[dajoki]

The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/scahill

comment | posted December 1, 2005 (December 19, 2005 issue)
The War on Al Jazeera
Jeremy Scahill


If the classified memo detailing President Bush's alleged proposal to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera is provided to The Nation, we will publish the relevant sections. Why is it so vital that this information be made available to the American people? Because if a President who claims to be using the US military to liberate countries in order to spread freedom then conspires to destroy media that fail to echo his sentiments, he does not merely disgrace his office and soil the reputation of his country. He attacks a fundamental principle, freedom of the press--particularly a dissenting and disagreeable press--upon which that country was founded. --The Editors

Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs. The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked "Top Secret" minutes of the Bush-Blair summit. British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has activated the Official Secrets Act, threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo (he has already brought charges against a former Cabinet staffer and a former parliamentary aide). So while we don't yet know the contents of the memo, we do know that at the time of Bush's meeting with Blair, the Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.

The Falluja offensive, one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation, was a turning point. In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local guerrillas resisted US attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children. Al Jazeera broadcast from inside the besieged city, beaming images to the world. On live TV the network gave graphic documentary evidence disproving US denials that it was killing civilians. It was a public relations disaster, and the United States responded by attacking the messenger.

Just a few days before Bush allegedly proposed bombing the network, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Falluja, Ahmed Mansour, reported live on the air, "Last night we were targeted by some tanks, twice...but we escaped. The US wants us out of Falluja, but we will stay." On April 9 Washington demanded that Al Jazeera leave the city as a condition for a cease-fire. The network refused. Mansour wrote that the next day "American fighter jets fired around our new location, and they bombed the house where we had spent the night before, causing the death of the house owner Mr. Hussein Samir. Due to the serious threats we had to stop broadcasting for few days because every time we tried to broadcast the fighter jets spotted us we became under their fire."

[McCamy Taylor]

1. Here's the story in comic strip form "When is a duck a duck?"

from Grand Theft Election Ohio for those who prefer the Classic Comics form of literature:

http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/051128.htm

[Neil Lisst]

10. Good cartoon. Thanks.

aflac!

[Straight Shooter]

2. Threatening to bomb al Jazeera but encouraging rush limbaugh on the air.

Can you even begin to imagine the uproar if al Jazeera was one-tenth as full of crap and lies as rush limbaugh? Try to imagine millions of Arabs nodding their bobbly heads and echoing, "Mega dittos, AJ!"

[dajoki]

14. "up the river"

[Al-CIAda]

3. Paying to plant stories domestically and abroad, bombing others.

Hmmm...now just who sent those anthrax letters?

[BJW]

6. I share your suspicions

[chalky]

4. Bomb Al Jazeera and pay Iraqi reporters to print "favorable" articles.

It's the Amurikan way.

[dajoki]

9. and our own reporters n/t

[5X]

5. If they are willing to bomb an independent news source in a foreign....

country, who else would they be willing to bomb, say Jordan hotels?

[BJW]

7. I share your suspicions

[dajoki]

13. i think most of us do n/t

[peacetalksforall]

8. Will just one professional or wannabe journalist please write up

all these blatant contradictions and grievances against the people of the U.S. and the world by the PNAC and right wing world? Please document all the horrors for reference.

The enemies of U.S. values are our so-called leaders.

We have a country full of green card, visa, and naturalized guests and citizens who have absorbed more U.S. values and practice it every single second then the people who lead us - including military brass, corporations with significant interest in profiteering, the barons for whom these wars are being fought, and a Congress who is many years late in responding to a stinking, filthy, un-American leadership. We are being led by crazy and dangerous people. We need our own terror alert system and more help from the rest of the world to educate us about our so-called leaders. We need to give a big thank you to the serious investigative journalists and bloggers in this country who are educating us.

We are in dire straits. It is not U.S. American to bomb a newspapers' headquarters or shoot their journalists from the air while they are reporting from a rooftop.

[Al-CIAda]

11. .

[Al-CIAda]

12. .

[Al-CIAda]

15. .