Did Bush Want To Bomb Al Jazeera?
Toward the end of 2005 , it was big news in the liberal U.S. media that George W. Bush may have suggested bombing the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera in 2004 because of its unvarnished reporting on the war in Iraq. Because of the rapid news cycle—including the December revelations over domestic spying—the story was soon buried. It also lost steam because the British government blocked news outlets from publishing a copy of of the top-secret British memo leaked by a British official that allegedly documents Bush’s bomb threat. But it’s back in the news because, today in London, two men were formally charged with violating the Official Secrets Act for leaking the top-secret memo. To recap: Last November, the British tabloid, The Daily Mirror , reported on the memo which allegedly records a conversation between Tony Blair and Bush that took place at the White House in 2004. The memo allegedly shows that Blair talked Bush out of attacking Al Jazeera. As The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill points
