BUSH: BOMB AL JAZEERA

DAILY MIRROR REPORTS BUSH wanted to bomb Al Jazeera.  Blair talked him out of it. Bush said to be “joking.” [story]

Al-Jazeera infuriated Washington and London by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.
The station, watched by millions, has also been used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to broadcast atrocities and to threaten the West.
Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha.
Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".
Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.
To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.
The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.
In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.

THE MOST SPECTACULAR foreign policy disaster since the start of the war may be an understatement.  Bush has been at war with the free press for some time. Is this just a more overt sign? [hat tip to Sister]

FIRST DENIALS ARE IN [BBC] A White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response."
. . . A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."
But Mr Kilfoyle - a former defence minister and leading Labour opponent of the Iraq war - has called for the full text to be published.
"I believe that Downing Street ought to publish this memo in the interests of transparency, given that much of the detail appears to be in the public domain. 

AND A LITTLE BIT MORE [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.
The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera's headquarters inDoha, Qatar, when he met Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004. The Bush administration has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-American sentiments.
The Daily Mirror attributed its information to unidentified sources. One source, said to be in the government, was quoted as saying that the alleged threat was "humorous, not serious," but the newspaper quoted another source as saying that "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair."

MUCH ALLEGED more to follow.

Comments

[The Viscount]

This news should have shocked me into outrage. It didn't. That is where we are today.

[Fusioner]

Bush: Kill the Messenger

This has been a standard tactic since before Bush was elected. Look at it now in reference to the Plame outing, the pressure on the NY Times to print WMD myths, etc...

A recently as last week... Cheney's attacks on those who see and understand the reality of the Iraq war. It all boils down to the same thing:

Kill the Messenger

[Jorge]

This Bush comment had to be one of his jokes made in a relaxed moment in the meting with Blair.

But the most reveling consequence is the rest of the world press giving this any credit.

Journalism is creating it's own reality where Bush and the United States is the demon and beheading and bombing yihadists some sort of resistance heroes or necessary consequence from the Iraq invasion. That is, when ever you invade a country its people will react first sacking everything at hand and latter killing their own people in order to expel the enemy.

The fact that Al Jazzera journalists are giving credit to the bombing speaks bad of their intelligence and objectivity, showing us that they are more involved in helping Al Quaeda than informing of what is really happening around.