A secret memorandum leaked to a British tabloid from the office of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has disclosed that the United States president, George Bush, once toyed with the idea of bombing the headquarters of Al Jazeera TV network in Doha. This has caused much embarrassment to both 10 Downing Street and the White House. Attempts are now afoot by Mr Blair’s office to put the lid back on the issue. One line is that it was all a joke, that the memo is a hoax and at no time did Mr Bush even think of something as rash as bombing Al Jazeera HQ in the capital of Qatar, a state allied with the US.
It is difficult to accept it as a joke because the British attorney-general is also writing letters to British newspapers, warning them against publishing content that could violate the Official Secrets Act. Simultaneously, the British government has directed The Mirror, the tabloid which published parts of the memo, to refrain from publishing any more of the contents of the documents, failing which it could face charges under the Official Secrets Act. This raises the question: if there’s nothing to the leaked memo, why is 10 Downing Street feeling so edgy about it?
We know that the Bush administration does not like Al Jazeera; we also know that the dislike is a post-September 11 phenomenon. Prior to that date, Al Jazeera was praised as the channel in the Arab world, indicating the openness so essential for the progress of the region. However, openness cuts both ways. So when Mr Bush embarked on his project to cleanse the world of terrorists, a task given him, by his own admission, by God Almighty, among the many things that fell foul of him was Al Jazeera. The network’s openness conflicted with the cloak-and-dagger stuff the Bush administration was doing in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Consequently, Al Jazeera became Mr Bush’s bete noire instead of a beacon of light.
The first violent indication of this came when US pilots bombed the Al Jazeera building in Kabul. We were told that it was an accident. Then US troops rocketed and killed two Al Jazeera staffers in Baghdad even though the coordinates of the Al Jazeera studio had been provided to US troops. Once again it was an accident. Of course, there has been no independent inquiry into these incidents. Now, a leaked memo tells us that Mr Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera HQ but Mr Blair talked him out of that madness.
It would be fitting for the British government to give out the facts in the matter instead of hiding them. An Al Jazeera team is already in London to meet with Mr Blair. If the whole thing is a joke, surely Mr Blair has the means to prove it. If otherwise, the world would want to know how far Mr Bush’s evangelicalism is likely to go and whether we are caught between the extremism of Osama bin Laden and George W Bush.
