The leak that revealed Bush's deep obsession with al-Jazeera

[cal04]

The US president planned to bomb the Qatar-based channel - that was the remarkable claim made in a top-secret memo. Why is the world's most powerful man so worried about a TV station? It was an ambush. As Britain woke up yesterday morning to snowstorms and arctic temperatures, the Attorney General was preparing to be questioned on Radio Four's Today programme over government plans to scrap jury trials in complex fraud cases.

(snip)
As they attempted damage limitation last week, government officials suggested Bush's comments were nothing more than a joke. It was preposterous to suggest Bush would countenance such an idea, the officials said. The White House described the allegations as 'unfathomable' although according to those who have seen the memo 'there is no question Bush was serious.' But whether said in jest or not, the memo reveals Bush's profound obsession with Al Jazeera, an obsession that stretches from stucco-clad government offices in Washington to the tin huts located behind the razor wire in Guantanamo Bay. Why is the most powerful man in the world worried about a 24-hour news organisation? Salah Hassan, an Al Jazeera camerman, was arrested by US forces in November 2003, while filming the aftermath of an attack on a US convoy near the city of Baquba. Following his arrest he was surprised to discover he had been trailed by US troops for weeks and had been secretly photographed at the scene of other attacks. When he was interrogated, he was accused of having prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces.

At the heart of the accusation is the fundamental tension between journalists - largely Arab reporters catering for an Arab audience - who say they are anxious to cover the story from both sides, and a United States that regards reporting on some aspects of the insurgency as tantamount to collaboration with terrorism. None of which would matter much were into not for the ferocious tenacity and professionalism of Al Jazeera, factors which have made the station an international phenomenon. Most gallingly for the US, its reporters have told a story that Washington either disagrees with or would rather remain untold: that the kind of war America is prosecuting in Iraq is messy and heavy handed; that civilians are too often the victims, and that the insurgents are not shadowy sinister figures but ordinary men with more support than politicians would like to acknowledge.



(snip)
According to Sami Muhyideen al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera camerman arrested in Afgahnistan in 2001 and detained in Guantanamo Bay, US interrogators are obsessed with the idea of Al Qaeda infiltration of the channel and asked about Mansour over 100 times. On separate occasions the reporter and producer has been accused of membership of the radical Muslim Brotherhood (which he denies) and forming 'improper' relationships with mujahedeen leaders when he covered the Russian wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. 'I don't know why they would ask about me over a hundred times,' Mansour told The Observer last week. 'But the American authorities did not hide their extreme annoyance and fury as a result of my coverage of the first Fallujah campaign in April of 2004. My sole crime was broadcasting the reality of a war I was witnessing.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1651765,00.html

[stepnw1f]

1. Imagine How This Freak Feels About AAR...

Hmmmmmm..... FUCK you, George!!!! AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

[Dying Eagle]

2. al-Jazeera and BBC

The only media he can't try to control....must eat him fucking alive!!!

[thebigidea]

3. a real President would realize what a boon something like Al-Jazeera is

They should've been helped, courted, and played fair with. A Clinton would've handled it masterfully, giving tons of interviews with them and reaching out to the Muslim world using the biggest megaphone they've got.

Instead we've got these boneheads demonizing and attacking the very thing essential to MidEast democracies: a free press.

Then again, when were these fuckers ever actually interested in Democracy?

[Neil Lisst]

4. I think this will remain a big story this week.

Bush has been hiding out in Crawford over the holiday. He has not had to answer for this, but will have to this week.

This is an outrage, and no amount of diminishing by Bush and his media shills will drown the story out.

It's my lead topic for this week's Neil Lisst political cartoon, the topic that comes online at midnight tonight. All about Bush and his obsession with Al-jazerra.

He's obsessive, and it shows in things like this.

[IndianaGreen]

5. US has an Al-Jazeera cameraman in Guantanamo

I am sure that if Bush had his way, we would all be rotting away in one of the prisons in Bush's Gulag.

Salah Hassan, an Al Jazeera camerman, was arrested by US forces in November 2003, while filming the aftermath of an attack on a US convoy near the city of Baquba. Following his arrest he was surprised to discover he had been trailed by US troops for weeks and had been secretly photographed at the scene of other attacks. When he was interrogated, he was accused of having prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces.

<snip>

Most gallingly for the US, its reporters have told a story that Washington either disagrees with or would rather remain untold: that the kind of war America is prosecuting in Iraq is messy and heavy handed; that civilians are too often the victims, and that the insurgents are not shadowy sinister figures but ordinary men with more support than politicians would like to acknowledge.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1651882,00.html