Busch *literally* went to war on an ally's TV news channel & killed one of their reporters. Obama and his spokespersons have simply spoken a few words of truth about Faux's agenda. The American MSM & public sure do have a short term memory problem!
Detailed below is how Bushco literally went to war on a TV news channel and murdered one reporter in the process. This story makes any media outlet who jumps to Faux's defense as being a "sister" organization who's being unfairly treated by the White House truly pathetic...
The Obama White House pulls the curtain a little bit to shine the light on Faux's real agenda and the MSM go into a frenzy. Bushco bomb two of an Arab ally's TV news stations' foreign offices - which in the process kills one of their reporters - and planned to bomb their head office and there was hardly a squeak from the MSM about it. In fact, if you look at the Democracy Now! transcript below, the memo which details Busch's plans to bomb Al Jazeera's head office was even given to John Latham, a Democrat in San Francisco, who subsequently dropped it.
For a quick overview and for details on the bombings of Al Jazeera offices in Afghanistan and Iraq, Wikipedia has a well detailed account of all this with multiple follow up references here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_bombing_memoEXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY
By Kevin Maguire And Andy Lines 22/11/2005
Madness of war memo
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.
A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.
The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.
A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.
"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. 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."
Continues:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2005/11/22/exclusive-bush-plot-to-bomb-his-arab-ally-115875-16397937/ The next day, The Mirror published this...
LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK
By Kevin Maguire 23/11/2005
THE Daily Mirror was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that President Bush wanted to bomb an Arab TV station.
The gag by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith came nearly 24 hours after the Mirror informed Downing Street of its intention to reveal how Tony Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera's HQ in friendly Qatar.
No 10 did nothing to stop us publishing our front page exclusive yesterday.
But the Attorney General warned that publication of any further details from the document would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
He threatened an immediate High Court injunction unless the Mirror confirmed it would not publish further details. We have essentially agreed to comply.
The five-page memo - stamped "Top Secret" - records a threat by Bush to unleash "military action" against the TV station, which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments.
From:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/tm_objectid=16401707&method=full&siteid=115875&headline=law-chief-gags-the-mirror-on-bush-leak-name_page.htmlAmy Goodman's interview with Daniel Mason, co-founder of
http://www.BlairWatch.co.uk">Blair Watch about this memo....
Democracy Now! in Doha…The Story Behind the Other Downing Street Memo Where Bush Told Blair He Wanted to Bomb Al JazeeraFebruary 03, 2006
We broadcast from the headquarters of Arabic TV network Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar–the place President Bush allegedly told Tony Blair he wanted to bomb. The report came out last November in Britain’s Daily Mirror, citing a secret British memo revealing that Bush told Blair in April 2004 of his desire to bomb the news outlet. Bloggers have pledged to publish the memo if it is leaked. We speak with British blogger Daniel Mason, who has been tracking the story of the Downing Street Memo.
After the story broke, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith activated the Official Secrets Act, threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo. Though never actually denying it, the Bush administration described the Daily Mirror’s report as “outlandish.”
Days later, Al Jazeera’s managing director, Wadah Khanfar, arrived in London to petition for a meeting with Blair to discuss the leaked memo. He then published an article in the Guardian newspaper called "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/dec/01/iraq.usa">Why Did You Want to Bomb Me Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair?"
Daniel Mason, Co-founder of Blair Watch, a British weblog tracking the story of the Downing Street Memo.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Daniel Mason. He’s co-founder of Blair Watch, a British blog tracking the story of this latest Downing Street memo. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Dan.
DANIEL MASON: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don’t you tell us the history of this memo?
DANIEL MASON: Well, as you say, the story first appeared in the Mirror newspaper in November last year, suggesting that there was a conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, where Mr. Bush said he wanted to bomb Al Jazeera television station, reportedly because the American government was so unhappy with Al Jazeera’s reporting of the siege in Fallujah. At the same time we learned that two civil servants were to be prosecuted over the leak of the document. David Keogh worked at the Cabinet Office, and Leo O’Connor was a researcher for Labour M.P. Tony Clarke.
AMY GOODMAN: How did they get this memo?
DANIEL MASON: Nobody knows. The Mirror have never revealed their source, but David Keogh, we can only assume, picked it up as part of his work within the Cabinet Office, and he passed it to Leo O’Connor, who then probably passed it to his employer, Tony Clarke, because he didn’t know what to do with it. Tony Clarke then shared the memo with Labour M.P. Peter Kilfoyle, on the basis that he was an ex-Defense Minister and might have some understanding of the context of the memo and to seek his advice about what to do with it next.
AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened?
DANIEL MASON: Then the prosecution—the prosecution was announced, and nothing more came from the government. The Official Secrets Act was threatened, and Lord Goldsmith essentially told the media that if there was any further discussion or if any more of the memo’s contents were revealed, then editors would be prosecuted.
AMY GOODMAN: So none of the British papers have published this memo?
DANIEL MASON: No. Nobody’s published anything since the original Mirror story. There’s been a little bit of comment in the press, but essentially the mainstream press have been kept quiet about it.
AMY GOODMAN: And what have the two civil servants been charged with?
DANIEL MASON: David Keogh has been charged with passing a secret document, and Leo O’Connor has been charged with receiving a secret document. And apart from that, we know very little else. There’s been a committal hearing in which both the civil servants have pleaded not guilty. And since then, virtually nothing has come out about it, with the exception of a Freedom of Information Act request, which was made by another British blogger, Steve Wood.
Now, he asked the Cabinet Office, under the British Freedom of Information regulations, if they would reveal the contents of the conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. The Cabinet Office refused to reveal any details, but they did say they held information relevant to the request. So that, we see, is the first confirmation that the story actually exists. Mr. Blair, of course, has described it as a conspiracy theory, and Mr. Bush, as you say, has described it as a joke, and the White House has said the claims are outlandish, or at press conferences Scott McClellan has said he has no idea what people are asking him about.
AMY GOODMAN: So, no one has actually denied this.
DANIEL MASON: Yes, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman last month, when Al Jazeera made a Freedom of Information request, said he had no idea what has been talked about and to the best of his knowledge there was never a conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the bombing of the Al Jazeera television station in Qatar.
AMY GOODMAN: To the best of his knowledge?
DANIEL MASON: To the best of his knowledge.
AMY GOODMAN:
Now where do bloggers fit into this story?DANIEL MASON:
Essentially the mainstream media has appears to have abided by the Official Secrets Act threat, and they have not covered the story in any great detail since. A couple of news organizations, the Spectator magazine, which is a rightwing magazine that’s edited by Boris Johnson, a conservative M.P., he said that he would publish the memo if he could get hold of it, defy the Official Secrets Act and face jail. That was backed up by Private Eye, which is a more leftwing publication in Britain. Their editor, in his
said that he would do the same. What we did was say, if any media organization receives this and publishes it, we would do the same on the internet. And we called on other bloggers to do the same, and the response was overwhelming. It became an internet story, in the absence of any real mainstream media coverage.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you, Daniel Mason, bumped into Labour M.P. Kilfoyle, Peter Kilfoyle?
DANIEL MASON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain again. He saw this memo?
DANIEL MASON: Right. Peter Kilfoyle saw the memo and was so outraged by it, he wanted to leak it straightaway to the press.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he see the memo or a summary of the memo?
DANIEL MASON: We think he saw a transcript of the memo. We don’t think he saw the actual memo itself, but he hasn’t been clear on that. But what he did with the memo was he passed it to a guy called John Latham, a Democrat in San Francisco. He hoped that this would be released to the press in the States, and that would influence the American election. His intention was that it would cause problems for Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Latham and possibly the Democratic Party—we don’t know what level of discussion was had—decided not to release it, because they thought, perversely, that if the news came out that President Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera, that would actually be a vote-winner for the Republicans in the election. So, to date, we have heard nothing from the Americans since then.
We bumped into Mr. Kilfoyle actually at a local supermarket. He’s an M.P. for the constituency next to mine. And he said that Colin Powell was at the meeting where this was discussed, which nobody was aware of before. And he also said that he would be going public after Christmas, and saying that he’d pass the document along.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait one sec. Colin Powell was Secretary of State at the time.
DANIEL MASON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: This was in the midst of April 2004, which was just at the time of the siege of Fallujah, where Al Jazeera was threatened for broadcasting video images of the siege, the only news organization inside Fallujah.
DANIEL MASON: That’s true.
AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. forces said they wouldn’t call a ceasefire unless Al Jazeera left, and tremendous threats against Ahmed Mansur, who we had on our program yesterday, the Al Jazeera correspondent who was in Fallujah at that time. So there’s tremendous rage, I think. At the time Rumsfeld called Al Jazeera evil and said that they were lying, as they were sending out these video images of casualties, civilian casualties.
DANIEL MASON: Yes. As the only news organization on the ground, if Al Jazeera were taken out of the equation, then there would be no coverage of what it was like to be on the receiving end of the siege of Fallujah. They talked about ceasefires during the siege, but according to Dahr Jamail, who went to Fallujah during the siege, there was no ceasefire. And when the American media was saying we’re having a ceasefire to allow the civilians that are left to leave, there was still fighter planes bombing, there was still action on the ground. So, without Al Jazeera’s reports, nobody would be any the wiser.
AMY GOODMAN: So, explain again what this Labour M.P. Kilfoyle did, although you said Tony Clarke did not want to leak this, reportedly?
DANIEL MASON: Tony Clarke didn’t want to be publicly associated with the leak. His researcher Leo O’Connor was the guy who received the document. When he received the document, he was so scared by the magnitude of what he had that he passed it straight to his boss to hand back to the government.
AMY GOODMAN: So he didn’t want it.
DANIEL MASON: No.
AMY GOODMAN: He wanted to give it back.
DANIEL MASON: He wanted to give it back, but he is still being charged under the Official Secrets Act, with receiving the document.
AMY GOODMAN: His assistant. Tony Clarke’s assistant.
DANIEL MASON: Yes. Tony Clarke has not been charged with anything, although he received the document in the same manner Leo O’Connor did. And Peter Kilfoyle has not been charged with anything, but we have subsequently learned that he passed it to John Latham in the United States, in the hope of prejudicing the outcome of the election. So there’s the real hypocrisy between who has been charged with what. The two civil servants are feeling the full force of the law; the two Labour M.P.s, on the other hand, have had no communication from the government at all, as far as we’re aware.
AMY GOODMAN: And Kilfoyle, the Labour M.P., said that Colin Powell was at this meeting where Bush made this suggestion to Tony Blair?
DANIEL MASON: That’s correct. He said Colin Powell was also talking Mr. Bush—also helped to talk Mr. Bush out of his plan. But as far as we’re aware, there has been very limited questioning of Mr. Powell about this in the States. The only comments he has made was to say he doesn’t remember the meeting, he can’t be expected to remember every meeting. We find this hard to believe, bearing in mind the context of the discussion.
AMY GOODMAN: What has been the response in Britain?
DANIEL MASON: In Britain, the story hasn’t run in the mainstream media. The only real coverage since the Mirror story was earlier this year in early January. Peter Kilfoyle went public on the eve of the committal hearings for Leo O’Connor and David Keogh.
AMY GOODMAN: Is that another word—in U.S. we say “arraignment”?
DANIEL MASON: Yes, the same thing. It went to trial, and they both pled not guilty. On the eve of that, Peter Kilfoyle went public in the Guardian and said, “I’ve seen the document. I agree with the Mirror story.” He backed it up, and he said, “I’ve leaked it. I passed it to people in the United States. Come and arrest me. Come and charge me.” And to date, there has been nothing since. What we don’t know is why Mr. Kilfoyle didn’t leak it in the U.K. or why he didn’t pass it to somebody who would be more inclined to leak it.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Gunn is a woman who worked in national intelligence in Britain.
DANIEL MASON: Katherine Gunn.
AMY GOODMAN: Katherine Gunn. And she ultimately was acquitted, but she was also charged. This was around information that the U.S. government was spying on the U.N. Security Council members. Is this a way that the British government cracks down, by arresting one or two people? In the end, they’re ultimately freed under the British Official Secrets Act, but it is very frightening. It has a chilling effect on all.
DANIEL MASON: It must be absolutely terrifying, because under the Official Secrets Act, if the document is considered to be a threat to national security, you don’t have a public interest defense. And the Katherine Gunn case collapsed, because essentially the government realized if it went to court, if they had been bugging the United Nations as Katherine Gunn alleged, that would come out in court, so it was easier for them to just drop the prosecution than to follow it through.
With David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, it’s a bit of mystery as to why they have taken it to this stage. The committal arraignment hearings have happened, and they are due back in court in April this year, where the trial is to take place. So we don’t know why the government is so keen to essentially keep this issue alive. There’s been suggestions that because Mr. Blair apparently talked Mr. Bush out of the plan, it would reflect quite well on Mr. Blair. I find that quite difficult to believe, because the associated publicity around it can only draw attention to the relationship between the two men. And in the U.K., President Bush is not the most popular character, and Prime Minister Blair’s association with him is one of the biggest problems Mr. Blair has got at the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: And you are willing to go to jail if you got somehow hold of this memo?
DANIEL MASON: We would hope that if we got hold of the memo, we’ve got a list of 400 bloggers who have signed up to a list and said they will publish if the memo surfaces. Alongside that, if that happens, it would instantly be spread around the internet so fast, it would be impossible really to pin down one particular person to prosecute. The theory is if enough people publish it, then the Official Secrets Act is useless, because where do they start?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Daniel Mason, I want to thank you very much for being with us, co-founder of Blair Watch, a British blog tracking the story of the Downing Street memo. If people want to see your blog, what information you have on the memo, where can they go online?
DANIEL MASON: It’s www.BlairWatch.co.uk.
AMY GOODMAN: And of course we will post it at DemocracyNow.org and all other relevant information.
Jeremey Scahill wrote an excellent piece at the time that puts some meat on the bones about why this war on an ally's news organization came about.
Beyond That Memo: Bush Wanted al Jazeera GonePublished in the December 12, 2005 issue of the Nation
by Jeremy Scahill
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.
From:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1124-22.htm After reading all that, the real reason for Rumsfeld's comments about Al Jazeera are plain to see.
Irony of all ironies, here's Faux themselves reporting on it...
Rumsfeld: Al-Jazeera Is Causing DeathsFriday, February 06, 2004
In the interview with the European journalists, Rumsfeld also blasted the Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera (search).
"We are being hurt by al-Jazeera in the Arab world," he said. "There is no question about it. The quality of the journalism is outrageous - inexcusably biased - and there is nothing you can do about it except try to counteract it." He said it was turning Arabs against the United States.
"You could say it causes the loss of life," he added. "It's causing Iraqi people to be killed" by enflaming anti-American passions and encouraging attacks against Iraqis who assist the Americans, he added.
From:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110643,00.html Now, let's see who really is "enflaming anti-American passions"...
Could the White House's pulling the curtain on Faux be partly directed at a wider audience than just viewers in the US?
Check out the point I made at the end of
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x392974">this OP to see where I'm going with this. (BTW Faux is also broadcast across Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world)
I could be wrong and something completely different is motivating them but, even if I am wrong, the fact that they are defining Faux as an opinion channel can't be doing any harm to Obama's image in the outside world and is hopefully neutralizing some of the hatred towards America that Faux must surely be generating. Anti-Americanism is still rampant across the Muslim world and Faux aren't doing our image any favors.
Faux news is America-centric and exists within its own fascist Islamaphobic bubble and does not have an International version. Can you imagine what people's image of Americans must be if the only American news they see is from Faux?
As JDPriestly posted in
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4103324&mesg_id=4103359">another thread about this...
"This is why President Obama is publicly distancing himself from Fox News.
Broadcasting Fox News in Pakistan is like broadcasting Taliban News in the US.
....
I hate to think that Glenn Beck and Bill O-Reilly and all those barely clothed women are the Pakistanis' image of Americans. Horrors!!"
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