By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
Posted on December 3, 2005, Printed on December 10, 2005
Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq
to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless
attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break
the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether
monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs.
The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra
hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq
correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al
Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were
tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government
banned the network from reporting in Iraq.
Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported
that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international
headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked "Top Secret" minutes
of the Bush-Blair summit.
British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has activated the Official Secrets Act,
threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo (he has
already brought charges against a former Cabinet staffer and a former
parliamentary aide). So while we don't yet know the contents of the memo, we do
know that at the time of Bush's meeting with Blair, the Administration was in the
throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The
meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first U.S. siege of Falluja, and Al
Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its
exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.
The Falluja offensive, one of the bloodiest assaults of the U.S. occupation, was a
turning point. In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local guerrillas
resisted U.S. attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died, many of them
women and children. Al Jazeera broadcast from inside the besieged city, beaming
images to the world. On live TV the network gave graphic documentary evidence
disproving U.S. denials that it was killing civilians. It was a public relations disaster,
and the United States responded by attacking the messenger.
Just a few days before Bush allegedly proposed bombing the network, Al Jazeera's
correspondent in Falluja, Ahmed Mansour, reported live on the air, "Last night we
were targeted by some tanks, twice ... but we escaped. The U.S. wants us out of
Falluja, but we will stay." On April 9 Washington demanded that Al Jazeera leave
the city as a condition for a cease-fire. The network refused.
Mansour wrote that the next day "American fighter jets fired around our new
location, and they bombed the house where we had spent the night before,
causing the death of the house owner Mr. Hussein Samir. Due to the serious
threats we had to stop broadcasting for few days because every time we tried to
broadcast the fighter jets spotted us we became under their fire."
On April 11 senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that
are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate
news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." On April 15 Donald Rumsfeld
echoed those remarks in distinctly undiplomatic terms, calling Al Jazeera's reporting
"vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable…. It's disgraceful what that station is doing." It
was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his
plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere," a
source told the Mirror. "There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do -- and no
doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."
Al Jazeera's real transgression during the "war on terror" is a simple one: being
there. While critical of the Bush Administration and U.S. policy, it is not anti-
American -- it is independent. In fact, it has angered almost every Arab
government at one point or another and has been kicked out of or sanctioned by
many Arab countries.
It holds the rare distinction of being shut down by both Saddam and the new US-
backed government. It was the first Arab station to broadcast interviews with
Israeli officials. It is hardly the Al Qaeda mouthpiece the Administration has wanted
us to believe it is. The real threat Al Jazeera poses is in its unembedded journalism
-- precisely what is needed now to uncover the truth about the Bush-Blair meeting.
Conservative British MP Boris Johnson, who is by trade a journalist and is editor of
The Spectator magazine, has offered to publish the memo if it is leaked to him. It
should be published, and if any journal is prosecuted for doing so, it should be
backed up by media organizations everywhere. The war against Al Jazeera and
other unembedded journalists has been conducted with far too little outcry from
the powerful media organizations of the world. It shouldn't take another bombing
for this to be a story.
Jeremy Scahill is a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy
Now!. He has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and the former Yugoslavia,
where he covered the 1999 NATO bombing.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/28975/
