Blair / Bush - bombing the Press, silencing dissent

Keep your Diary free for next Tuesday July 18th 2006.The case returns to court (Horseferry Road presumably now Bow Street has closed from today) of the "alleged" leaked memo of a conversation between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush .The memo was an account of a meeting on April 16, 2004 - at the time of the at the height of Operation Vigilant resolve, the bloody assault on Fallujah by US Marines and a few "Iraqi security forces".

David Keogh, 50, civil servant, is accused of violating Sections 2 and 3 of the Official Secrets Act, which prohibit government employees from disclosing damaging information about defense or international matters without prior approval.

Leo O’Connor, 43, Parliamnetary reseracher to , Tony Clarke (then an MP) is charged with violating Section 5, which prohibits anyone who receives such information from disclosing it.

The report "allegedly" says that ( and was reported by the Daily Mirror ) that during the Bush-Blair conversation, the President,had suggested that allied forces should bomb the Arab television network of Al Jazeera in Qatar, only to be discouraged by our Dear Leader.

A White House official told CNN "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response," and a Pentagon official called the Daily Mirror report "absolutely absurd." A Downing Street spokesman said: "I'm not aware of any suggestion of bombing any Al Jazeera television station."

By coincidence (?) The widow of Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub ( Dima Taboub who lives in Jordan and Manchester with her daughter Fatima) is bringing a lawsuit against the Bush administration for her husband's death - He was the first journalist to be killed in Iraq just hours before U.S. forces seized the capital.

On April 8 2003, Ayyoub was reporting from Al-Jazeera's offices in Baghdad when he was killed by a U.S. missile. The U.S. military had previously bombed Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan - nobody was killed but their offices were destroyed.Nik Gowing from the BBC reported that (4/8/02), Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary for public affairs, claimed that the compound was being used by Al Qaeda-- a charge strongly denied-- and that this made it a "legitimate target."

Journalists will not soon or easily forget the day, soon after the US forces in Iraq arrived in Baghdad that a U.S. Abrams tank fired an explosive shell at the Palestine Hotel, where most non-embedded international reporters in Baghdad were based. Taras Protsyuk a Ukrainian journalist with Reuters and Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecino, were killed and 3 other journalists were injured. The tank, parked by a perimeter concrete barrir was seen to carefully select its target,precisely raise and aiming its gun turret some two minutes before firing a single shell.Both news outlelts had informed the Pentagon of their exact location.

A little earlier, the U.S. had launched a separate but near-simultaneous attacks on the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera (resulting in Aayoub's death) and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks that had been broadcasting graphic footage of the human cost of the war.

Dima Taboub's Attorney, Hamdi Rifai, said their case is being launched in part because of the disclosure last year in London's Daily Mirror that President Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair of his desire to bomb Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. The Daily Mirror had cited a secret memo leaked from the British government.Qataris were naturally unhappy.

In his disgustingly inaccurate, and very partial book, "The One Percent Doctrine" Ron Suskind wrote, “On November 13, 2001, a hectic day when Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance and there were celebrations in the streets of the city, a U.S. missile obliterated Al Jazeera's office. Inside the CIA and White House, there was satisfaction that a message had been sent to Al Jazeera.” .. probably one of the few truths in the book.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING

All news organizations in the United Kingdom have been warned by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith (no les) against further publication of information from the leaked memo; Goldsmith has mentioned the possibility of prosecution under section five of the Official Secrets Act, 1989 if published details from the memorandum are considered to damage interests of the United Kingdom abroad. Boris Johnson MP, and Ian Hislop Editor of Private Eye have both promised to publish it, if it becomes available as have many bloggers organised by Blairwatch.

TEXT OF MEMO AVAILABLE HERE

Lord Patel received a text of the ";eaked" memo which he published last November and is available here.