Call it the controversy that won’t go away…the controversy that has gotten attention here in the United States but is snowballing in Great Britain.
Was President George W. Bush merely joking when he is reported to have suggested bombing Aljazeera’s offices in Doha, Qatar in 2004?
Or was he serious and what we’re seeing now is a massive inter-governmental CYA operation — a fanny-covering bigger than what you’d even see on a Richard Simmons exercise video?
Or, is it a crafty, political-frame ploy by Blair-Bush foes to undermine the two embattled leaders by further weakening their already-tarnished images?
Far from diminishing, this controversy is GROWING by the day. For instance, British MP Boris Johnson doesn’t mince words when he offers breaking Britain’s Official Secrets Act to get the full story out:
The Attorney General’s ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act … we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up.
If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. .. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for.
I’ll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera
It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq…..
…Some of us feel that we have an abusive relationship with this war. Every time we get our hopes up, we get punched by some piece of bad news. We yearn to be told that we’re wrong, that things are going to get better, that the glass is half full. That’s why I would love to think that Dubya was just having one of his little frat-house wisecracks, when he talked of destroying the Qatar-based satellite TV station…
….Who knows? But if his remarks were just an innocent piece of cretinism, then why in the name of holy thunder has the British state decreed that anyone printing those remarks will be sent to prison?
Read the entire statement. The above is highly edited.
Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the government yesterday seemed on-the-defensive, according to a report in The Guardian:
The attorney general mounted a robust defence yesterday of his advice to newspapers that they risked breaching the Official Secrets Act if they published details from a confidential memo reportedly detailing a conversation between George Bush and Tony Blair.
Lord Goldsmith insisted he was acting on his own initiative and was not attempting to gag newspapers but merely pointing out the legal position. His warning was sent out after the Daily Mirror said a memo recorded a threat by the US president to take “military action” against the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. The prime minister replied that that would cause a big problem, according to the Mirror….
The attorney general’s note said: “You are reminded that to publish the contents of a document which is known to have been unlawfully disclosed by a crown servant is in itself a breach of section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1989.” Lord Goldsmith said he was acting on his own initiative in sending the notice. “I’m not acting at the request or under the instructions of anybody else in relation to this.”
And the controversy is picking up steam in Parliament, as the AP notes:
A lawmaker said Friday he had filed a parliamentary motion urging Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a leaked document that allegedly suggests President Bush wanted to bomb the headquarters of Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned editors they could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for disclosing the contents of a document that has been described as a transcript of discussions between Bush and Blair.
Labour Party backbencher Peter Kilfoyle filed a motion calling for publication of the document, which was leaked to the Daily Mirror newspaper. Civil servant David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, who formerly worked for a British lawmaker, have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.
“I would hope we can have a fair and full discussion of the very important issues that were discussed at that meeting,” Kilfoyle, a former defense minister, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
“The information is out there in the public domain and it seems ludicrous that the media can’t discuss it in its entirety,” he added.
The motion has little chance of success, reports the AP. Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers has protested the idea of bombing Al Jazeera and the British government’s attempt to put a gag on the story. And Al-Jazeera? Reuters notes that it’s taking this story very seriously:
Arabic news channel Al Jazeera’s general manager flew to London on Friday to demand the government explain a leaked report that U.S. President George W. Bush wanted to bomb the TV station.
The Daily Mirror reported on Tuesday that a secret government memo said Prime Minister Tony Blair had talked Bush out of bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar in April last year.
“I have come to London in order to reach out to British officials, to investigate about the memo that some claim exists during the past week,” Al Jazeera managing director Waddah Khanfar told Reuters by telephone after his arrival in London.
“It is a matter of deep concern for all of us in al Jazeera, and the Arab world and the media.”
He said a delegation from the channel would deliver a letter to Blair on Saturday asking for an interview.
The White House has said the allegation that Bush wanted to bomb Jazeera is “so outlandish” it does not merit a response.
So the key question arises? Why should anyone CARE about this? For several reasons:
- As you can see from the quote above, the White House has dismissed this as a silly story. But this White House now has a massive credibility problem not only in the United States but abroad. Should it turn out that this was not a joke but a serious proposal it’ll be one more massive black eye for the administration..
- Al Jazeera, even though many disagree with it, is still not an official state radio or TV station that could be taken out during war. If this was a serious proposal, it’s a major lowering of the bar on perceived wartime behavior.
- Bush and Blair are under fire in their respective countries for their war policy. If this is a trumped-up story it NEEDS to come out — so the public knows that the two leaders have bascially been politically smeared. If it is not a trumped-up story, it needs to come out because both governments have been denying it’s a serious story and it would be a red flag about the credibility of both governments.
You could argue that the issue of the confidentiality of converstions between leaders is paramount. Except in this case the overall issue of the credibility of both governments is at play and Washington has denied that there is any truth to this report.
So, how can the air be cleared? By finding out whether it was a joke or a serious proposal. If not: who has been planting this story and why? If so, what was the specific reasoning behind the proposal?
BUT THAT’S JUST OUR VIEW. HERE IS A CROSS-SECTION OF OTHER VOICES:
—The Code Warrior: “The neocons who blow other countries up on a whim and brag about spreading freedom and democracy don’t want discussions of future bombings released, nor the truth Bush will bomb the media who reports his war crimes.”
—Powerline points to and quotes from a New York Sun piece raising the issue of secret conversations between leaders.
—Crooks and Liars says it will HAPPILY print the memo, as a mini-roundup and writes: “This story has found legs after the UK pulled a Patriot act on the press. Why isn’t Karen Hughes flying over there and doing her job for once? What does she do anyway except get Middle Eastern women mad at her?”
—Mojo’s Rising: “Now I can only wonder about all those deaths in Iraq of journalists …who ordered our soldiers to shoot to kill them? What about that Italian journalist our soldiers almost killed? With a leader plotting to take out a news organization he doesn’t agree with over there, need I even ask these questions? The Iraq news according to the Bush administration PR firms rules, eh?”
–Al Jazeera has started a blog Don’t Bomb Us.
—Man On The Grassy Knoll sees it as an operation to get Bush:
The memo was leaked to damage President Bush personally, but also to show that Mr Blair can no longer be trusted in Washington….
….In other words the “Bush to bomb al-Jazeera”-memo is just the latest in a long list of leaks, including Christopher Meyers’ memoirs. The excuse is freedom of the press or freedom of speech, the target is always Bush, Bush himself is never particularly harmed but the institutions themselves emerge with their reputations severely damaged: the CIA and GCHQ, the British Embassy and the FCO, and now the Anglo-American alliance itself.
Only in this case it was actually the alliance that the Conspiracy was targetting. Will they succeed? Who knows? But they’ll certainly carry on trying.
Threatening journalists with the Official Secrets Act is either a ludicrous over-reach designed to help Bush save face over a thoughtless comment, in which case the British press ought to be outraged they are being silenced for such a stupid reason, or it’s a practical application, and Bush wasn’t joking at all. Which is it?
Americans need to be concerned with this story as well. If Bush was serious, we ought to demand accountability on behalf of the killed al-Jazeera journalist as well as those currently being held at Gitmo and in Spain. If he was joking, we ought to demand at minimum that he acknowledge it and apologize for it. A man whose job affords him the protection of having arrested anyone who makes even a joke about hurting him surely ought to understand that not every joke is so easily dismissed.
— React Magazine: “Now if this was just flippant banter between two world leaders, why are they threatening prison time for uncovering it? What’s the big deal? The big deal is that he WASN’T kidding around. He was absolutely serious about blowing up al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar….I am sure that millions of people would be willing to publish the said document on their site. Better yet…give the document to al-Jazeera. Let them publish it. That would be hilarious.”
These are all excerpts. We encourage you to go to the links and read the above posts in full.