The circumstantial evidence that Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera is overwhelming.
Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of 'The Spectator' magazine, says he will go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera:
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. The public need to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies.Johnson, previously a strong advocate for the war, says he would like to believe that Bush was just joking:
Maybe Bush thought he was Kenny Everett. Perhaps he was playing Basil Brush. Boom boomMeanwhile at the HuffPost, RJ Eskrow points out that the White House dismissal of the latest memo is not actually a denial, is it?
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?
Step right up, folks, and count the war crimes that you're paying for with every deduction. Torture? Check. Murder of civilians with incendiary devices? Check. Illegal detentions of non-combatants? Check. Deliberate targeting of journalists? Check.And Jeremy Scahill at the Nation digs up the following quotes from Rumsfeld just the day before the memo was written:
REPORTER: Can you definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed?And here's another quote:
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.
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."In other words, don't believe your own lying eyes, folks.
And then there is this from Stephen Soldz:
As the US launched its “shock and awe” Iraq invasion, it also launched a propaganda attack on Al-Jazeera. In July 2003, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz accused Al-Jazeera of “endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq, while in November 2003, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Al-Jazeera of cooperating with Iraqi insurgents. [When the American press do this, it’s called “embedding.”] In September 2003, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council banned Al-Jazeera [and the Al-Arabiyah station] for two weeks, and in February 2004 they were banned for a month. Later in 2004, the US/UN appointed Iyad Allawi banned Al-Jazeera from working in Iraq.Gulf Daily News reports that Arab journalists are staging protests, demand inquiries into the new leaked memo as well as the previous attacks on al-Jazeera offices in Kabul and Baghdad.
Click here for some videos from Falluja, if you can stomach it and feel a need to see for yourself. A few samples:
Toshikuni Doi, a Japanese independent journalist, created a DVD a few days after the assault:
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The Guardian provides more backgrount context:
The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. The government was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq at a time when it was feared they would be endangered by what a separately leaked Foreign Office memo called "heavy-handed" US military tactics.
There were UK anxieties that US bombing in civilian areas in Falluja would unite Sunnis and Shias against British forces. The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair's most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, said while British troops had to fight with the Americans, "that does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans".
Raw Story suggests that Bush was considering an attack on al-Jazeera because he was scared their reporters would reveal the war crimes that were occurring during the massacre.
Did you see the new blog about it?
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