Bombs Away, But We're OK
BushCo's War Against the Press

If you haven't been following the Bush vs. Al Jazeera plotline of the last week, here's the basic plotline from Salon:

Last week, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported that George W. Bush had told U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004 that he was planning to bomb the Al-Jazeera offices in Qatar. The report, based on a leaked top-secret government memo, claimed that Blair dissuaded Bush from bombing the Arab cable news channel's offices. An anonymous source told the Mirror, "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." The Mirror quoted a government spokesperson, also anonymous, as suggesting that Bush's threat had been "humorous, not serious." But the newspaper quoted another source who said, "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball in Newsweek focus on whether this really was a joke as well as the role of the British government in attempting to put the clamp-down on the media:

U.K. authorities consider the memo, described as minutes or a transcript of an April 16, 2004, White House meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, so diplomatically sensitive that Blair’s attorney general last week warned U.K. media by e-mail that they could face prosecution under the country's draconian Official Secrets Act if they reported on its contents. But all the legal threat appeared to do was call more attention to the still-mysterious document and, at a minimum, appear to confirm its existence.

Bush administration officials initially dismissed the memo’s allegations about Bush’s threat against Al-Jazeera as “outlandish.” U.S. officials later suggested that if Bush did talk with Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera, the president was only joking. Asked directly today about Bush's purported threat to bomb Al-Jazeera, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Any such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd." McLellan did not respond to follow-up questions as to whether Bush actually said what the memo says he did.

But a senior official at 10 Downing Street, Blair’s official residence, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, recently seemed to give credence to the Al-Jazeera threat. The official told NEWSWEEK London Bureau chief Stryker McGuire: "I don't think Tony Blair thought it was a joke."
[...]
But given that what the Daily Mirror knows and doesn't know about the document—its reporters have never actually seen a copy—it is likely the purported Al-Jazeera comment never would have gotten the attention it has had it not been for the British government's decision to invoke the Official Secrets Act.
[...]
Because of the Daily Mirror’s reputation for Bush-bashing and sometimes erratic fact-checking (the paper’s editor was fired after he approved publication of what turned out to be faked pictures showing British troops abusing detainees in Iraq), the paper’s initial report about the memo and Bush’s alleged threat against Al-Jazeera was largely dismissed or ignored—especially by U.S. media. But the Mirror’s allegations sparked an international uproar after U.K. Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith sent his e-mail to British editors last week warning them of possible prosecution if they published any more of the sensitive document’s contents. “If the attorney general hadn’t issued his warning, the story probably would have died,” one British media executive following the controversy said.

Now the suppressed document has become a cause célèbre: Maguire told the Frontline Club that bloggers and other publications from around the world have indicated a willingness to defy the U.K. government and publish the document in full—if they can only get their hands on it.

Steve Clemons over at the Washington Note also points to this op-ed in the London Guardian by Al-Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Kanfar. Before getting to some excerpts from that op-ed, Clemons also notes:

Furthermore, TWN has confirmed this morning that there were several other government officials and civil servants in the meeting between Bush and Blair and that Secretary of State Colin Powell was one of them. Powell would have known that few things would be worse for America's image than bombing Al-Jazeera's Doha headquarters, so let's hope that he helped broker restraint. So far, Powell has continued his silence on these closely-held policy discussions.

Now, here's a bit from the Guardian op-ed:

Until 2001, al-Jazeera was perceived in a positive way in the west as a whole and the US in particular. It was seen as the single most important force for reform and democracy across the Arab region. Harassment by Arab regimes was considered proof of its professionalism and testimony to its objectivity. Indeed, al-Jazeera had from its foundation the slogan of "the opinion and the other opinion" and refused to favour one side over another at the expense of truth. As a result, in record time al-Jazeera became the Arabs' number one channel, and last year it was voted the fifth most influential brand name in the world, after Starbucks, Ikea, Apple and Google.

In the aftermath of the September 11 events, al-Jazeera found itself on the frontline of media coverage in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The greater its reputation became globally, the more frustrated some western governments became. The "other opinion" this time did not seem to suit international decision-makers. Criticisms started pouring in and created an opportunity for some Arab regimes to incite the US administration against al-Jazeera; some have even gone as far as demanding the closure of al-Jazeera as a precondition for full cooperation with the US.

Iraq has been a crucial turning point not only in al-Jazeera's work but for media coverage as a whole; 74 journalists, crew and their translators have lost their lives since the start of the war - two of them belonging to al-Jazeera. As far as harassment goes, al-Jazeera has incurred the biggest share. It has been accused by the US of inciting violence through the broadcast of al-Qaida tapes and of playing footage of beheadings. Our viewers know that no beheadings whatsoever were shown on our screens. And we follow strict professional rules in handling the tapes of Bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders; we only play short, carefully selected and clearly newsworthy clips, and they are followed by analytical discussion, frequently including American commentators.

Al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul and Baghdad were bombed; we were told at the time that both bombings were mistakes. We pushed for an official investigation, but thus far have received neither the findings of any investigation nor any official apology. The al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was arrested in Afghanistan and has for the past four years been detained in Guantánamo. We have repeatedly asked for an explanation, but none has been given to us.

We believe that all this harassment has been a worthwhile price for our professional commitment to reporting the truth. However, the story in the Daily Mirror, which published a leaked document it claimed was a transcript of a meeting in April 2004 between George Bush and Tony Blair, points to a level of threat to our very existence that had never occurred to us or to our viewers before. If it is true that Bush had indeed thought of bombing the al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, this will undoubtedly constitute a watershed in the relationship between government authorities and the free media.