After reading the latest from Raw Story about the fracas over Bush’s desire to bomb al-Jazeera, I just want to say a few things.
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. According to Raw Story:
This is truly insane. To understand just how insane it is, you have to understand the critical nature of our unique relationship with Qatar, where al-Jazeera has its headquarters.
A July 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor exposed Qatar’s centrality to our military operations in the region.
If President Bush were to order airstrikes on Iraq, this base, about 20 miles from the capital, Doha, would be a critical hub for US warplanes and their aerial pipeline of bombs and supplies.
In the past months, the US military quietly has moved munitions, equipment and communications gear to the base from Saudi Arabia, the control center for American air operations in the Gulf for more than a decade.
About 3,300 American troops are in Qatar, mostly at Al Udeid, where the signs of an American military buildup are unmistakable:
• A tent city has sprouted, with warehouses and miles of security barriers, attesting to the US military’s focus on protecting troops against terrorist attack.
• Freshly paved runways and aircraft parking ramps stretch deep into the desert.
• Newly built hangars for fighter aircraft are hardened to withstand aerial attack. Within view from the main 15,000-foot runway are hardened bunkers, presumably for munitions and supply storage.
“It is likely the most capable base in the Gulf region,” says William Arkin, a private military analyst.
Soon after Sept. 11, Qatar granted permission for the US to send warplanes to Al Udeid. They flew attack missions over Afghanistan.
Al Udeid also is host to Air Force Red Horse squadrons, rapid-response teams of civil engineers that can repair and build structures such as runways and roads in remote areas.
US officials will not discuss specifics, saying the Qatari government strictly limits what can be said about the American presence. There has been speculation that Al Udeid is being built up as an alternative to, or replacement for, the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
That is exactly what happened. As Global Security reported:
To understand why we moved our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar it is helpful to review Bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States that forms the principle reasoning behind the 9/11 attacks.
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.
The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.
When Bin-Laden issued this fatwa it seemed as though he was paranoid. Bill Clinton was not intent on annihilating Iraqis. In fact, he had done a number of things to help Muslims (in Bosnia, Somalia, and through his efforts vis-a-vis Israel/Palestine). If bin-Laden’s assessment of our intentions seems prescient today, it is because of how the Bush administration reacted to 9/11.
However, the one thing the Bush administation did to appease Bin-Laden was to move our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar where, presumably, it would cause less resentment and violent resistance. Whatever the merits of that decision, they have been pretty well wiped out by the decision to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, our airbase in Qatar is absolutely critical for supporting our operations in Iraq, and is used for missions over Afghanistan as well.
If we had used the airbase in Qatar to bomb the capital of Qatar, where al-Jazeera’s headquarters are located, it stands to reason that we would no longer be welcome to use that airbase for other purposes. And since we could not simply move our airbase back to Prince Sultan or negotiate a new location and build a new airbase overnight, it would have necessitated a complete takeover of the country to keep our air force operating over Iraq.
If Bush had ordered such a mission it would have been just cause for mutiny, or even a palace coup to prevent tremendous harm to our country and our military’s operations. The idea that Tony Blair had to argue against this mission is truly frightening. It should have been dismissed by any number of Americans before it could be discussed with Blair. Andy Card, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and several others should have pointed out the lunacy of such a plan as soon as they heard of it.
It stands to reason that any attempt to blow up al-Jazeera would have to be done with plausible deniability. That means a truck bomb or something would need to be used. You can’t use bomber aircraft launched from 20 miles away. Such a plan is triply insane.
It’s insane because it would be an international outrage and a crime against humanity. It’s insane because we couldn’t deny having done it. And it’s insane because it would totally disrupt our military operations and endanger our troops in Iraq.
No wonder the Brits are prosecuting the leakers of this memo and forbidding the press from any further reporting on this incident.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t immediately investigate whether the charges are true and remove the President from office if they are.
We’re just bombing al-Jazeera’s offices, not your country. Duh!
/snark.
Bombs will set your press free. Dan Rather is one lucky SOB.
Now we see another reason for them to be so compliant.
Actually, they should be careful with Qatar – that country represented more than 90% of ExxonMobil’s new booked reserves of oil & gas in 2004 – which means essentially that this was THE ONLY PLACE IN THE WORLD WHERE IT FOUND OIL&GAS.
Don’t piss them off too much, you know?
This whole endeavor is a crime against humanity and breaking International law.
What is becoming more and more insane to me is the fact that Bush survives while creating so many enemies for himself, foreign and domestic if you know what I mean.
That’s why Americans in general aren’t looked at with favor, abroad. People just can’t look Bush without thinking it should not be possible for him to be in power for so long without our support.
True. But what I was trying to say, without actually saying it was that it seems insane to me at this point that Bush is able to maintain a viable heartbeat. You know? I’m sure there are those looking to this country and it’s citizens asking that question too.
It does raise some serious questions. Of course, the reasons are probably numerous and debatable but I personally think that certain business interests recognise bush as “their man” and they are turning blind eyes so their involvement doesn’t become too public. That would explain why the media has been so silent. It’s because those at the top, forming policy, don’t want to reveal exactly how many cookies have been pilfered from the white house’s cookie jar.
For example; lately the press has been reporting Bush’s negatives but they haven’t been doing any real investigation of their own. Why? Dunno.. but we’ve all seen what’s been happening with Woodward lately. Bought access. The price? Woodward’s integrity.
The media is made up of huge corporations. The media is supposed to be the watchdog of the government. The government is lining the pockets of those dogs. The dogs are encouraging governmental officials to line their pockets by rewarding those officials with nifty kickbacks (ahem Tom Delay) ..now why haven’t more people seen the truth? Well, we all know where their not going to get their info from.
When looked at in that light, it’s sadly not insane that he’s still in power. Not as long as one is a cynic. 🙁
OK, what I was talking about was someone pulling a JFK on him. Not a corporate interest or even a large criminal entity. They love the guy. He’s feeding them lots of beans. I’m talking about someone more or less a regular citizen. Now I think I’ve said enough ;o)
Bush has countless enemies, but who would be insane enough to do him in? He would be far more effective as a martyr than he ever was as a leader.
Bush and his administration are the biggest group of unindicted war criminals since the Nixon era.
Nixon seems like a run of the mill pacifist next to Bush though both share that little insanity gene.
IMO, bushco could be worse than Hitler and his gang, assuming that there is worse stuff that hasn’t come out yet!
That wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption anymore would it?
Hell no!
Scary thing is wondering wtf else has been going on that no one is aware of yet….
What’s even scarier is wondering about what is yet to come.
LeMonde has dared to mention this.
juan cole shares his insights into the lastest ugly revelation about our president…
so, it’s not like there weren’t precedents that tend to substantiate the charge that the administration has labeled “outlandish…” just add it to the lengthy list of exhibits…
my husband told me that Arab news would be present at certain insurgent attacks, like they had been tipped off to be at a certain place. At first it seemed to cause outrage among the American soldiers who spoke of attacking the news vehicles until several soldiers discussed openly that this was a war and we have our imbedded reporters who report on our “attacks”……they will likely have theirs too
I’ll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera by Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of ‘The Spectator.’
From Fran’s European Breakfast thread over at EuroTrib last night. (Well, it was night over here.)
can you imagine ANY American pol making a public statement like this? At least they still have a few real heroes Over There. Great find, Janet.
AG
P.S. Note well that Boris Johnson is a Conservative MP. Thus a political enemy of Labour’s Blair.
This WILL get bigger.
The discussion of bombing Al-Jazeera may well, as some in the UK adminitration have tried to characterised it in off the record briefings, a jocular aside at the end of the talks.
The allegation is damaging but you have to remember that this was the first item to be published by the Mirror and it was on Monday. Often the second will be publihsed later so that the publicity from the first increases sales. It is the second or further extracts from the memo that have been suppressed. As these were likely to be even more damaging, the question has to be asked what is being concealed by the threat to prosecute?
Speculation is that this surrounds the US conduct of the war. This discontent has been openly expresed by senior officers in the British Army, one of who remarked that “just because we are fighting with the Americans, does not mean we have to fight like Americans”. The connectin may well be the revalation of the use of white phospohoros and possible use of thermobaric airburst weapons during the assault on Fallujah. Their use in occupied civilian areas is againt the rules of war under the Geneva Conventions which the US has signed. To avoid the allegations of war crimes, the US announced that the city had been evacuated apart from the “insurgents”. This is likely to be false. We know men of fighting age were turned back by checkpoints later in the evacuation. There have already been disputes about whether a group shown by a helicopter’s cameras being blown apart were “insurgents” in the open or were in fact civilians trying to avoid the fighting.
It seems likely that the minutes would reveal that there was a rift between tbe two leaders over the tactics and possibly that Blair warned that the tactics could be considered War Crimes. That would make further involvement by UK forces difficult.
How can ANYBODY be idiotic enough to believe a statement like this? If they already knew who was an “insurgent” and how to separate and evacuate the reg’lar folks, they wouldn’t have needed the WP in the first place. This is one more smoking gun. Impeachment is no longer appropriate for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest. The only way to satisfy the requirements of basic justice is arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment as war criminals and traitors.
Send in the WP, anyone whose flesh melted must have been an insurgent.
You’re right, of course. I’d momentarily forgotten about faith-based strategy.
Unfortunately, the “Let God sort ’em out” is a fairly commonly held belief. Of course, as long as the sorting happens among other people’s loved ones.
I cannot believe that such a stupid announcement was actually made!
If you want to see the pattern, read jpol’s excellent diary. There’s no doubt.
Perhaps these extracts from the transcript of conversations explains more ?
http://www.postmanpatel.blogspot.com
The transcripts of that meeting would tell the tale. Looks like the British may make it tough to obtain a copy for awhile. These fuckers in the administration think they are above any laws or rational thought.
Boo, what makes you think Bush cares about any of that? Do you think the Bush Gang ever cared about international outrage or whether their acts were criminal? Do you recall any time that they felt a need to deny their crimes when they could celebrate them instead? Do you really think they ever cared even a little about protecting the troops? Really?
The answer lies in your own observation: NOBODY in this administration even bothered to try and shut the idiot up, much less obstruct the plan. It took Blair, for gods’ sake, to speak out from his nest up Bush’s ass and bring this particular bit of insanity to ground. Nobody around Bush cared about any of the goals you list. If any of them did (yes, including the sainted Powell), the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq never would have happened in the first place.
You got that one right! They don’t give a damn about anyone or anything unless it directly effects them or their wallets! Fuck everyone else–under the guise of personal responsibility and being God’s will and all that other crap!
George hid out for how long coasting around Asia pissed off about this whole Scooter mess and having no more popularity? He has finally come limping home to Thanksgiving thinking that the “worst” is over for awhile, and he can stop throwing temper tantrums in private while his handlers can calm down about him losing it and going public with them, and now this? All these Scotty press conferences from hell AGAIN? I wonder where the next road trip is going to be to? He’s already flipped the press off, is he going to moon them next?
Tony Blair might slip out of his ass.
I wonder if he knows that Cindy is back on his doorstep?
Much of the world would take issue with this assertion. Clinton pursued a policy of regime change through sanctions & bombings that killed, in some estimates, up to 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. Many have charged that these policies were a crime against humanity. That’s what BL references when he says: “despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million.”
So, yea, we were supporting the same terrorists in Bosnia as Bin Laden. We moved the base to Qatar (though US troops remain in Saudia Arabia) for strategic reasons, not in response to BIn Laden’s demands. Afterall, we’re not about to ‘give in to the terrorists’ demands.’ Sounds more like a realist’s assesment, than that of a paranoid. Let’s just say that US efforts for an Israeli/Palestinian accord have played much better in US/Israeli circles than among the Arab population of the Middle East, where we are seen as an unfair, manipulative broker.
None of which makes the notion of bombing Al Jazeera any less insane.
Once you open up that can of worms it can go on forever. It leads back to the strongest argument for regime change in Iraq, which was that the status quo was not acceptable or sustainable, and it was of dubious morality.
But I don’t believe that the sanctions were responsible for killing a million Iraqis. In effect, that argument relies on things like an increase in infant mortality that can be attributed to a decline in water quality and the availability of formula, and a general decline in the quality of medical care. But, it ignores the staggering misallocation of funds by the Iraqi government.
Sure, they had trouble getting water filtration equipment. But they could have dealt with that problem if they hadn’t been so busy building palaces and monuments to Saddam. It takes a certain gall to place all those lives on America’s plate when the sanctions were a UN act and Saddam did so little to mitigate the humanitarian repercussions of the sanctions.
Maybe that is exactly what needs to be done. Woulda, shoulda, coulda, Not directed at you, Booman, but who the hell knows where all this will lead?
Wow, this is almost like debating religion. I guess I “believe” the figures from the reports of the human rights groups. Arguing the numbers is obscene. I simply can’t do the moral calculus to absolve the US of repsonsibility & shift it all to SH. There are no innocent actors in this sorry tale.
I am thinking Blair decided to stab Bush in the back here while creating plausible deniability. In contrast to the earlier leaked memos, this leak has Blair playing the hero and telling Bush he can’t do this. Downing Street has certainly played this so as to arouse maximum suspicion:
The Mirror told them in advance they were going to publish the story. Downing Street lets the story run, with Blair in the role of strong leader. Scott McClelland says the whole thing is outlandish and they won’t dignify it with a response. Then Downing Street invokes the Official Secrets Act and shuts down the entire British media on this story. Now people are thinking, “Blimey, if it was just a joke, then why invoke the Secrets Act? What’s the “Secret” then?” The karmic ribbon on the package, though, is when the official spokesman says, “We are unable to comment on this because it involves a criminal investigation.” The effect is to say, “There is nothing to this. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And if you dare breathe a word of this to anybody, we’ll throw your ass so far in jail you’ll never get out!”
AG
.
However, the one thing the Bush administation did to appease Bin-Laden was to move our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar where, presumably, it would cause less resentment and violent resistance.
Saudi Arabia refused to have U.S. Forces operate from Saudi Base to launch attack and invasion on Iraq in March 2003. The Command Center in Saudi Arabia was moved to Qatar, where the Press Center was ready from the start of the war. The Iraq attack was morst likely coordinated from U.S. Command in Florida and in a next phase of the war, the Command was taken over in Qatar.
Faced with Saudi Arabia’s possible refusal to be a launchpad for strikes on Iraq, the United States has poured $1.4 billion into expanding Qatar’s Al Udeid facility into a major air base and military staging ground.
Washington has several Gulf bases, mainly in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and Qatar is increasingly becoming a key base for U.S. military operations in the region. The United States used the Udeid base last year after Saudi Arabia refused to let U.S. planes and troops heading to Afghanistan use its Prince Sultan base.
Contrary to official Saudi position, U.S. Special Forces and covert operations pre-Iraq war were launched from smaller secret bases in the Saudi Arabia desert.
Attack base to be moved into Qatar to bypass Saudi objections
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
There’s a “hidden history” to the al-Udeid airbase in Qatar that I did a story on here
(the Booman version is full of now-broken links that I can’t get into to fix)
I am psoting here a response I made on a similar diary on Kos. I hope it provides some more information or context for the discussion here.
First, let’s deal with the question of whether the document exists. The answer is certainly. A record of the meeting would have been kept by the British. This leaves open the question whether the information and the 5 page document allegedly seen by the Mirror is that record.
Let’s go back to the timeline. This is supposedly a record of the meeting in April 2004. In May 2004 a document was passed to the office of an MP. It is that action that is the subject of the prosecution of a civil servant and an aide to the MP. They are due to appear at Bow Magistrates Court next week. The document was passed back to the Government so we have to ask how it has re-appeared after some 18 months later. I would suggest the most likely answer is that is was included in the evidence pack for the prosecution’s case in the hearing next week. That leaves open whether the leak this time was from the Crown Prosecution Service, an independent lawyer who employed by them or the defence side. An individual in any of those could be responsible.
The Mirror claims to have advised the British Government that they intended publication. This is what they printed on Wednesday, the day after the original article.
So why did they not get an injunction (restraining order) before the first article? The suggestion is that pressure was applied from Washington. But the story was already out so what are they trying to gag? Well the original article from Tuesday gives a hint:
Now clearly discussions of troop deployments would be hightly irresponsible to reveal at the time but what exactly was discussed and why is that discussion so sensitive that Washington/Blair still want it covered up? Maybe we should not look at what was going on immediately before the meeting but a highly unusual troop re-deployement the following October, just after the summer hiatus when the country gets too hot for effective operations.
A detachment of about 800 British troops were sent north to Hilla from the British area of responsibility in the South. As the Guardian reported at the time,
At the time of the Bush/Blair meeting in April, US forces were engaged in the much discussed assault on Falluja. Did Bush ask for British forces to assist the then current operation? Any such request was obviously refused at the time but was it Blair’s response that the US wanted covered up? It is probably unlikely that the request related to the October deployment as the Government would have tried to suppress the first article quoting from the minutes. Senior commanders in the British Army were certainly expressing concerns over the US tactics in Falluja and elsewhere around the time the meeting took place. Did Blair tell Bush that they refused to take part in the ongoing operation because they feared war crimes charges?
I hope this is logical speculation arising from what we know was going on. Obviously we will not know what will happen until the whole of the 5 pages are released or become available and published.
The memo alleges that President Bush expressed his frustration with al-Jazeera, which is the equivalent of a large broadcast news company such as CNN and has a viewership of 50 million, and wanted to bomb their headquarters using US bombers stationed nearby.
I really don’t think it even occurs to Bush that al-Jazeera is a huge media company. He thinks of them simply as the people who broadcast messages from terrorists, for which they should be punished. Conservative bloggers around the net seem to see it the same way, even normally reasonable people like John Cole.