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Jeremy ScahillWed Nov 23, 5:49 PM ET The Nation -- On November 22, Britain's Daily Mirror published a startlin g allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Mi nister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network A l 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? Until a news organization or British official defie s 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 s iege 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 an d innocent civilians have not been killed? RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious , inaccurate and inexcusable. What Al Jazeera was doing in Falluja is exactly what it was doing when th e United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when US fo rces killed Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reportin g on events Washington did not want the world to see. The Falluja offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupat ion of Iraq. On April 5, 2004, US forces laid siege to the city after th e killing of four Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the US force s, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Falluj a on April 7, they faced fierce guerrilla resistance. A US helicopter at tacked 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 child ren. By April 9, some thirty Marines had been killed and Falluja had bec ome a symbol of resistance against the occupation. What was more devastating than the direct resistance US forces encountere d in Falluja was the effect the story of the local defense of the city a nd the US killing of civilians was having on the broader Iraqi populatio n A handful of unembedded journalists, most prominently from Al Jazeera , were providing the world with independent, eyewitness accounts. Al Jaz eera's camera crew was also uploading video of the devastation for all t he world, including Iraqis, to see. Inspired by the defense of Falluja a nd outraged by the US onslaught, smaller uprisings broke out across Iraq , as members of the Iraqi police and army abandoned their posts, some jo ining the resistance. Faced with a public relations disaster, US officials did what they do bes t--they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporte rs exposing the reality of the siege of Falluja, senior military spokesp erson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans in tentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. A few days later, on April 15, Ru msfeld echoed those remarks calling Al Jazeera "vicious." It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told B lair of his plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar a nd elsewhere," a source told the Mirror. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do--and no doubt Bl air 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 h as activated its Official Secrets Act, threatening news organizations th at publish any portion of the five-page memo. Already, one British offic ial 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 acti ons," 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 fir st siege on Falluja and fueling Iraqi public opinion and resistance agai nst the US occupation. Given Washington's record of attacking Al Jazeera both militarily and verbally, it is not outside the realm of possibilit y that the Bush Administration could have simply decided that it was tim e 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 f ace legal action, they should be backed up by every major media organiza tion 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.
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