Top Secret: Bombs Away!

This story comes from UK's Daily Mirror, so not sure how reliable it is, but if it's true, then this is seriously fucked up. But there's got to be something to it if the Washington Post and BBC are taking it seriously:

Britain's attorney general yesterday told the Daily Mirror and other newspapers not to publish further details from a top-secret memo that detailed a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in which Bush expressed a desire to bomb an Arab TV station.

According to the Mirror, "the five-page memo -- stamped 'Top Secret' -- records a threat by Bush to unleash 'military action' against the TV station [al-Jazeera], which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments."

The White House has dismissed the story as "unworthy of comment."

Aljazeera says it is "going through a due diligence process of verifying the details." If the leaked memo is authentic, said Aljazeera, "it would cast serious doubts in regard to the US administration's version of previous incidents involving Aljazeera's journalists and offices."

In April 2003, an Aljazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. In November 2001, Aljazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile, although no staff were in the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a 'terrorist' site and did not know it was Aljazeera's office.

The Guardian said the action of Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was unprecedented. "It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq."

The Times of London reported that Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle "dismissed comments by Whitehall officials that any suggestion of an attack would have been in jest. 'This is a matter of great interest. There was an attack on the hotel in Baghdad used by al Jazeera journalists which caused great controversy. The US also attacked a Serbian TV station (during the Kosovo war). It is easy to dismiss this as a glib comment, but I don’t find it very funny at all,' he said."

However, the BBC's Website gave some credence to the "jest" explanation: "BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said: 'An attack on al Jazeera would also have been an attack on Qatar, where the US military has its Middle East headquarters. So the possibility has to be considered that Mr. Bush was in fact making some kind of joke and that this was not a serious proposition.'" (A joke?!)

Preemptive strike is one thing (which I whole heartedly disagree with) but this is murder! Read more about the origins of this story here.