Guardian Unlimited
Fears that fresh revelations about disputes between Tony Blair and George Bush on the Iraq conflict could damage Downing Street's intimate relationship with the White House prompted this week's unprecedented threat by the attorney general to use the Official Secrets Act against national newspapers.
Senior MPs, Whitehall officials and lawyers were agreed yesterday that Lord Goldsmith had "read the riot act" to the media because of political embarrassment caused by a sensitive leak of face-to-face exchanges between the prime minister and the US president in the White House in April 2004. He acted after the Daily Mirror said a memo recorded a threat by Mr Bush to take "military action" against the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. Mr Blair replied that that would cause a big problem, reported the Mirror. David Keogh, a former Cabinet Office official, has been charged under the secrets act with sending the memo on the Blair-Bush conversation to Leo O 'Connor, researcher to the former Labour MP Tony Clarke. Mr Keogh and Mr O'Connor will appear before Bow Street magistrates next week.
The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. The government was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq at a time when it was feared they would be endangered by what a separately leaked Foreign Office memo called "heavy-handed" US military tactics.
There were UK anxieties that US bombing in civilian areas in Falluja would unite Sunnis and Shias against British forces. The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair's most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, said while British troops had to fight with the Americans, "that does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans".
While some have argued Bush was joking, it's also very possible that he was speak whimsically about what he'd like to do. Afterall, Al-Jazeera has regularly given world media coverage to the shadiest enemies of the US. Of course, most of the media companies in the world would jump at the chance. What concerns me the most is that the US has had two "accident" involving bombing well known field offices of Al Jazeera. The Daily Mirror said Bush told Blair on April 16, 2004> that he wanted to target Al Jazeera.
In 2001, the station's Kabul office was hit by a US missle.
BBC News
The Kabul offices of the Arab satellite al-Jazeera channel have been destroyed by a US missile. "This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there," said Al-Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali. The Qatar-based satellite channel, which gained global fame for its exclusive access to Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban, announced that none of its staff had been wounded.
Then in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a U.S. air strike on Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office. The United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.
The Hindu
Reporters Without Borders expressed outrage at the U.S. bombing of the Baghdad office of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera that killed one of its journalists, cameraman Tarek Ayoub, and wounded another. The nearby premises of Abu Dhabi TV were also damaged. ``We strongly condemn this attack on a neighbourhood known to include the offices of several TV stations,'' said the secretary-general, Robert Manard, in a letter to Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. military operations in Iraq. ``To ensure the safety of its journalists, Al-Jazeera's management has been careful to inform the Americans of the exact location of its crews right from the start of the war. The U.S. army cannot therefore claim it did not know where the Baghdad offices were. ``Did it at least warn the journalists about an imminent bombing? The outcome was predictable: yet another journalist was killed covering this very deadly war for the media,'' Mr. Manard said. He called on Gen. Franks to make a serious and thorough investigation of who was responsible for the attack and why it was carried out. An Al-Jazeera journalist who was in Baghdad until a few days ago told Reporters Without Borders that "it couldn't've been a mistake. "We've told the Pentagon where all our offices are in Iraq and hung giant banners outside them saying `TV.'''Ayoub, a Jordanian who was the station's permanent correspondent in Amman, was sent to strengthen the team in Iraq when the war broke out. He was seriously wounded in the attack and died soon afterwards.
I find it hard to believe that a huge banner visible from the air wouldn't have deterred a precision airstrike of a building surrounded by friendly and civilian buildings. Some people might agree with the Administration targetting a "propaganda" instrument of the enemy. I'd call it an immoral act, even a war crime. And it clearly violates international law.
No comments:
Post a Comment