Report: Bush Talked of Bombing Al-Jazeera

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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moghrabi said:
Reverend Blair said:
I guess freedom of the press in America is gone.........
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I'm starting to think that the press in America is gone.
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I am starting to believe that the press in America is gone.
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heck, I am starting think that America is gone. RIP???? :wink:



( and to think that these talking heads .....US style get the big bucks.. :x
 
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Reverend Blair

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RE: Report: Bush Talked o

Yeah, it's pretty bad. The US used to have such a vibrant and diverse press too. Now if you want real news in the US, you have to search it out from foreign services or in the alternative press. Since those sources don't have the access that the mainstream US press does, the coverage and investigative reporting isn't as strong as it should be.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Re: RE: Report: Bush Talked o

Summer said:
And people wonder why I get most of my news from foreign sources on the internet rather than our own media...

Feh.
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know what you mean. If it were not for the internet , we all might be in serious trouble now. ........and not even know it.

What a "godsend" the internet has been for info. and news. and (IMHO ) so much healthier than sitting passively and watching the telee. ( Mainly commercials with spots of news in between.)
 
moghrabi

moghrabi

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RE: Report: Bush Talked o

We are both right then. First it is Doha, not Dohar.
second, it is in Qatar not Dubai.

Thank you.
 
moghrabi

moghrabi

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Warning over Jazeera bombing report

2 hours, 17 minutes ago

Britain has warned media organizations they are breaking the law if they publish details of a leaked document said to show U.S. President George W. Bush wanted to bomb Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

The government's top lawyer warned editors in a note after the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Monday that a secret British government memo said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had talked Bush out of bombing the broadcaster in April last year.

Several British newspapers reported the attorney general's note on Tuesday and repeated the Mirror's allegations, which the White House said were "so outlandish" they did not merit a response. Blair's office declined to comment.

Al Jazeera, which has repeatedly denied U.S. accusations it sides with insurgents in Iraq, called on Britain and the United States to state quickly whether the report was accurate.

"If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Al Jazeera but to media organizations across the world," the Qatar-based station said in a statement.

The story would also be a shock for Qatar, a small Gulf state which cultivates good relations with Washington.

The Mirror said the memo came from Blair's Downing Street office and turned up in May last year at the local office of Tony Clarke, then a member of parliament for the town of Northampton. Clarke handed the document back to the government.

Leo O'Connor, who used to work for Clarke, and civil servant David Keogh were charged last Thursday under Britain's Official Secrets Act with making a "damaging disclosure of a document relating to international relations."

WHITE HOUSE SUMMIT

The Mirror said Bush told Blair at a White House summit on April 16 last year that he wanted to target Al Jazeera. The summit took place as U.S. forces in Iraq were launching a major assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

The paper quoted an unnamed government official suggesting Bush's threat was a joke but added another unidentified source saying the U.S. president was serious.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response."

The attorney general told media that publishing the contents of a document which is known to have been unlawfully disclosed by a civil servant was a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

Kevin Maguire, the Mirror's associate editor, said government officials had given no indication of any legal problems with the story when contacted before publication.

"We were astonished, 24 hours later, to be threatened with the Official Secrets Act and to be requested to give various undertakings to avoid being injuncted," he told BBC radio.

Al Jazeera said that, if true, the story would raise serious doubts about the U.S. administration's version of previous incidents involving the station's journalists and offices.

In 2001, the station's Kabul office was hit by U.S. bombs and in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a U.S. strike on its Baghdad office. The United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.
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http://tinyurl.com/87xvn
 
jimmoyer

jimmoyer

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A lot of the people in the Bush administration very well know the complexity of al Jazeera. They do know al Jazeera's positives and negatives on influencing the region.

And they do know that these broadcasts have offended and delighted the arab audience often getting more of them to think and learn than any other broadcast outlet in the region.
 
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Reverend Blair

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RE: Report: Bush Talked o

They know all that and they wanted to blow it up anyway? Must be that they're terrified of the truth coming out about what they've done then.
 
moghrabi

moghrabi

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Did Bush Really Want to Bomb Al Jazeera?

Jeremy ScahillWed Nov 23, 5:49 PM ET

The Nation -- On November 22, Britain's Daily Mirror published a startling allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based on a memo stamped "Top Secret" that had been leaked by a Cabinet official in Blair's government.

Is the allegation "outlandish," as the White House claims? Or was it a deadly serious option? Until a news organization or British official defies the Official Secrets Act and publishes the five-page memo, we have no way of knowing. But what we do know is that at the time of Bush's White House meeting with Blair, the Bush Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The Bush-Blair summit took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was there to witness the assault and the fierce resistance.

A day before Bush's meeting with Blair, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld slammed Al Jazeera in distinctly undiplomatic terms:

REPORTER: Can you definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed?
RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.
REPORTER: Do you have a civilian casualty count?
RUMSFELD: Of course not, we're not in the city. But you know what our forces do; they don't go around killing hundreds of civilians. That's just outrageous nonsense. It's disgraceful what that station is doing.

What Al Jazeera was doing in Falluja is exactly what it was doing when the United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when US forces killed Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reporting on events Washington did not want the world to see.

The Falluja offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation of Iraq. On April 5, 2004, US forces laid siege to the city after the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the US forces, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Falluja on April 7, they faced fierce guerrilla resistance. A US helicopter attacked a mosque, hitting the minaret and killing at least a dozen people. Within a week, some 600 Iraqis were dead, many of them women and children. By April 9, some thirty Marines had been killed and Falluja had become a symbol of resistance against the occupation.

What was more devastating than the direct resistance US forces encountered in Falluja was the effect the story of the local defense of the city and the US killing of civilians was having on the broader Iraqi population. A handful of unembedded journalists, most prominently from Al Jazeera, were providing the world with independent, eyewitness accounts. Al Jazeera's camera crew was also uploading video of the devastation for all the world, including Iraqis, to see. Inspired by the defense of Falluja and outraged by the US onslaught, smaller uprisings broke out across Iraq, as members of the Iraqi police and army abandoned their posts, some joining the resistance.

Faced with a public relations disaster, US officials did what they do best--they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporters exposing the reality of the siege of Falluja, senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." A few days later, on April 15, Rumsfeld echoed those remarks calling Al Jazeera "vicious."

It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere," a source told the Mirror. "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."

To date, there has been no credible rejection of the Mirror's report from the White House or 10 Downing Street. Instead, the British government has activated its Official Secrets Act, threatening news organizations that publish any portion of the five-page memo. Already, one British official has been accused of violating the act for allegedly passing it on to a member of Parliament. Former British Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle has called on Blair's government to release the memo. "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions," he said. "I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."

The Bush Administration clearly blamed Al Jazeera for undermining the first siege on Falluja and fueling Iraqi public opinion and resistance against the US occupation. Given Washington's record of attacking Al Jazeera both militarily and verbally, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Bush Administration could have simply decided that it was time to take the network out. What is needed now is for a British newspaper or magazine to publish the memo for all the world to see--and if they face legal action, they should be backed up by every major media organization in the world. If true, Bush's threat is a bold confirmation of what many journalists already believe: that the Bush Administration views us all as enemy combatants.
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http://tinyurl.com/9fh9j
 
moghrabi

moghrabi

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RE: Report: Bush Talked o

The 2 parallel lines are going to overlap very soon. At that point, Bush goes down in history the same way Hitler did.

IMPEACH BUSH!!! Indeed
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Re: RE: Report: Bush Talked o

moghrabi said:
The 2 parallel lines are going to overlap very soon. At that point, Bush goes down in history the same way Hitler did.

IMPEACH BUSH!!! Indeed
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IMPEACH bush PLUS Try him in Hague for WAR CRIMES!!
 
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