NOV 22, 2005

Second, this revelation would vindicate Eason Jordan, the ex-CNN VP, who claimed at Davos that the US was deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.

Finally, what else is this current US Administration capable of? "

"Reporters in the US and Britain are enraged by reported US plans to use force against media organs, " said Abd al-Bari Atwan, chief editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper to Al-Jazeera.  The issue of Bush's plan to bomb Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha will be widely discussed in Washington and London, he added.

Al-Jazeera has said it is investigating the report and urged the US and British governments to challenge it.

But the White House has reportedly said it wouldn't dignify what it called "something so outlandish" with a response, according to a report.

The Arab TV channel is accused of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency. Its coverage of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan had also drawn criticism from Washington.

Al-Jazeera infuriated both the US and Britain by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.

According to information now available in the public domain, President George Bush planned to bomb pan-Arab television broadcaster Al-Jazeera's headquarter in friendly Qatar. The British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret.

The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.

The transcript of the pair's talks during Blair's 16 April 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. At that time the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.

Blair allegedly feared such a strike, in the capital of Qatar, a key western ally in the Gulf, would spark revenge attacks.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

The question is if there was no fear of revenge or of a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, would Blair have signaled  Bush to 'Bomb Al-jazeera'?

If the answer is yes, then it is plausible that Al-jazeera office in Kabul may have been bombed because a) it was in a war zone b) there existed no perceived fear of revenge attacks c) Afghanistan was not an ally for sure d) chances of a massacre of innocents were almost zilch, as no  'collateral damages" were reported either by the embedded journos or by any one.

The Daily Mirror on Tuesday quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush's threat was "humorous, not serious".

Imagine any one in the USA "humorously" stating that "he would like to bomb this building or hijack a plane or kill people". In fact there have been several arrests of people with middle eastern decent and features who in "good humor" cracked a joke "at the wrong place and or at the wrong time". One guy was deported because he was "taking too many pictures". He was a tourist, overstayed. He was sent back home overseas. File closed!

Another source told the Daily Mirror: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Another source said: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

But a spokesman for Blair's Downing Street office said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."

According to one reader of this news, "they are doing damage control, wait for the spin..."

Another said "You don't tell people when there is a leak. You let them find out themselves...by that time they are ready to defend their position and minimize the damage".

The Mirror said the memo turned up in the office of then British lawmaker Tony Clarke, a member of Blair's Labor Party, in May 2004.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing it to Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke. Both are on bail and will appear in front of a Magistrate in central London next week.

Clarke returned the memo to Downing Street. He said O'Connor had behaved "perfectly correctly".

He told Britain's domestic Press Association news agency that O'Connor had done "exactly the right thing" in bringing it to his attention.

The Mirror said such a strike would have been "the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq war itself".

The newspaper said that the memo "casts fresh doubt on claims that other attacks on Al-Jazeera were accidents". It cited the 2001 direct hit on the channel's Kabul office in Afghanistan.

In November 2002, Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Aljazeera's office

In April 2003, an Al-Jazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a US State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike was a mistake.

Tony Blair's former defense minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the transcript.

"I hope the prime minister insists this memo be published," he told the Mirror.

"I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion," he said. "If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were architects of the war," the newspaper quoted Kilfoyle as saying.

Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, said Tuesday that, if true, the memo was worrying.

"If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control," he said. "On this occasion, the prime minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been."


Here's my two cents: "Two wrongs don't make one right...unless might is right!