A senior al-Jazeera executive is in the UK to demand publication of a memo in which George Bush allegedly discusses bombing the TV station’s HQ.
Aha, the memo may contain yet even more info damaging to Bush and Blair. This may explain why Blair is threatening prosecution to any paper that prints it.
Labour MP and former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle has tabled a Commons motion calling for it to be made public.
Mr Kilfoyle said he believed that plans for a further assault on Falluja may have been discussed at the meeting, and his motion voices concern at Mr Blair’s failure to restrain the attack, which eventually took place in November last year.
Mr Kilfoyle said: “I am calling for the publication of the record, which we know exists, of a meeting in April 2004 in which George Bush allegedly called for the bombing of the al-Jazeera HQ in Qatar and which also discussed the launch of the assault on Falluja, which I find a very important issue, particularly related to the British attempts at restraint.
The White House continues to pretend the memo doesn’t exist, a clumsy ploy that no one believes. Because, if it doesn’t exist, why is the UK invoking the Official Secrets Act to keep it from being printed?
That’s a good catch.
I’ll bet it’s the language in that memo/transcript that they’re afraid of. It wouldn’t be good to have it confirmed that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera, but at this point, I’m sure that most of the “hearts and minds” already believe that anyhow.
So, I would guess that the language in this thing is unusually harsh, discriminatory, or vulgar. Or that there’s a reference to something that has not yet been publicly confirmed.