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Bush-Blair: The Aborted Plot to Bomb Al-Jazeera?

alas

15:08 / 26.11.05

I have been surprised that no one seems (so far as I can tell) to have created a topic to discuss this leaked memo. So, I'll step in. And, appropriately, let's give Al-Jazeera themselves the first word. (Let me know if I missed a topic on this, of course...)

Thoughts? How is it playing in Britain--both the leaked memo and the government's response to it?

sleazenation

17:03 / 27.11.05

This has been quite muffled in the UK because as the BBC report on this story points out

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has warned newspaper editors against publication [of the memo], citing the Official Secrets Act.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:18 / 27.11.05

So if the IoS is anything to go by, lots of discussion in the papers today about the injunction, how rarely it happens, what it means etc. You'd think that Blair and Goldsmith would have, by now, realised it's not a good idea to hide documents from the British people, even though they may not hold any smoking guns people get terribly worked up over what might be in there.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:12 / 27.11.05

That's the thing I find bizarre about New Labour. They are masters at media manipulation, but don't seem to actually understand the nature of the media's AUDIENCE- they/we have a short attention span, but resent being told we're not allowed to know about stuff.

Ganesh

21:40 / 27.11.05

Interesting piece in today's Observer. I've been afraid to start a thread about it, in case Bush bombs Barbelith.

quixote

00:31 / 28.11.05

Even if the Chimp-in-Chief was joking, how does someone in his position even think of something like that? How is it possible that anyone should have to talk him out of it? I mean, I don't have a high opinion of the Shrub's mental capacity, but this comes in lower than low. This isn't stupid. It goes right through and comes out on the other side in some realm of negative intelligence that I hadn't even known existed.

(I don't have that high an opinion of Bliar either, after he threw in his lot with Chimpie, but how can he even stand to talk to him?)

alas

01:02 / 28.11.05

I think Bush and co. don't think this is stupid at all, because they believe they can get away with it. Now, how Qatar was supposed to deal with being bombed--were we going to call it an accident?--I have no clue, but so far they've been able to weasel out of any claims that they've been targeting journalists.

ibis the being

01:49 / 28.11.05

Has this story hit the American media at all? I don't see it anywhere, not even on Daily Kos, though perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

Phex: Dorset Doom

05:42 / 28.11.05

I've not heard any American friends mention it, in fact they were quite shocked when I bought it up with them, and I haven't seen a thing about it on any American news sites, even the left-leaning ones. So assume that the yanks have no idea, which is a fairly good rule of thumb for most interactions with them

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:59 / 28.11.05

Well, it's not so surprising really, remember Bush referred to a reporter as 'an arsehole' a shade too near a live mike, John Major called his Cabinet 'bastards' when he thought an interview was over but tape was still running. And of course, several centuries ago, overheard conversations proved disastrous for the Archbishop of Canterbury...

alas

11:58 / 28.11.05

Well, first off, I am a yank, if an unusually well-informed one, and I did know about this. My partner-in-crime, who is more of a news junkie than I am, caught a glimpse of it in his daily reading of the various news sources he tracks--not sure if it was Huffington Post or maybe just yahoo/google news.

We found references--brief, and probably buried in the non-online versions of the sites--on CNN.com, MSNBC.com, the Washington Post, etc., and it was the headline yesterday on commondreams.org. So it's not entirely fair to say it's been completely silenced in the US media, but it hasn't received much attention, admittedly. Thanksgiving weekend didn't help matters.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:21 / 28.11.05

Lady - part of the weirdness about this is just that - we don't know whether it was a serious suggestion or a joke, and at present the Official Secrets Act is being waved to stop us from finding out. Boris Johnson commented that when he told Blair he was off to Belgrade, TB jokingly said he would ask them to step up the bombing. That's just byplay. In this case, I'm more curious about the context we don't have about the proposal.

Lurid Archive

15:24 / 28.11.05

I think, given the way the conflict has been conducted with respect to international law, that it would be rather naive to assume the Bush administration are (or were) incapable of such an act (Blair isn't relevant in any meaningful way). And, iirc, the pressure against Al-Jazeera was pretty strong at the time since their reporting was hostile to the US. I'd be interested to compare how the dates compare with the break of the Abu Ghraib torture story, since (again from memory) it seemed to me that that marked a turning point in the invective against Al-Jazeera...because at least some of the anti-US things they were saying turned out to be true.

Still, without wanting to downplay this, it seems hard to think of this as extremely significant given that what the Bush administration actually has done far exceeds what we are speculating it may have been planning.

Lurid Archive

15:49 / 28.11.05

Just had a quick look at http://www.juancole.com/ to get some backgroud.

The US bombed the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera in 2003 and the Kabul offices in 2001. Theres a handy timeline here.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:07 / 28.11.05

The thing to remember here is friendly nation, Lurid. In Kabul and Baghdad they knocked out the al-Jazeera offices, then claimed that it was an error in the broader context of bombing generally. There's a huge difference between that and dropping a single bomb on a specific building in a non-combatant nation, in terms of PR if not morality.

w1rebaby

18:27 / 28.11.05

Which would explain the reaction internally. I'm a little suspicious, though, of the idea that Blair talked him out of such an action. That strikes me as wishful thinking, and promotion of the line "look, y'know, if I hadn't been there it would have been much worse". No sane Bush aide or advisor in the US would have countenanced such a plan, not without a lengthy period of supportive propoganda and invention first, which would not really be worth it. I find it unlikely that Blair was particularly reponsible, given the level of influence he seems to have had - or been interested in having - on other matters.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:29 / 28.11.05

There were two memos.

As found on:
Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers.

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