BUSH DENIES HE PLANNED TO BOMB AL-JAZEERA. POLL SHOWS 63% OF AMERICANS THINK HE'S LYING AGAIN

If you're buying into the Bush spin-machine on this story, please keep in mind that a British civil servant, David Keogh, has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking a top secret government memo about Tony Blair talking Bush out of bombing Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, capital of U.S. client state Qatar. (The British memo, a 5-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and Blair, didn't mention whether or not Blair talked Bush out of bombing the NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, CBS or any other establishments which dare to use the inconvenient freedom of the press guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution-- and for which Bush claims young American men and women are dying in Iraq and other godforsaken faraway places.)

Although the White House is frantically doing all it can to tamp down this story in the U.S., it is the top international story everywhere else on the globe. London's DAILY MIRROR cites a "Top Secret" Downing Street memo that indicates on April 16, 2004 Blair convinced Bush that bombing Al-Jazeera would be counterproductive. The Bush Regime doesn't like media that veers away from the official propaganda line exemplified by Fox "News."

Bush and Blair are trying to keep a united front on this, claiming it was all a jokey-jokey and no one meant anything serious. The DAILY MIRROR quotes a source saying "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair." Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister in Blair's government, says that "If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces... It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were architects of the war." Bush and Rumsfeld did order deadly precision bombing attacks on Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan-- which I believe is a war crime. The leaked memo indicates that Bush had decided to bomb several Al-Jazeera offices and that Blair was able to talk him out of hitting the headquarters in downtown Doha, but, apparently, not the offices in Baghdad or Kabul. The Bush Regime claims the bombings in both cities were accidents and coincidences.

An AOL poll today asks Americans if they find the report credible. 63% said they do. I don't understand why AOL hasn't started polling on impeachment and war crimes trials for these monsters.


WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE

Although the U.S. corporate media is still keeping this story from surfacing, Juan Cole has a great piece on Bush's unbelievable attempt to murder journalists whose message diverged from his own propaganda. Oh-- and Blair isn't allowing the U.K. press to talk about it anymore. Now why are we fighting in Iraq again?


WEDNESDAY NIGHT UPDATE

RAW STORY'S ace reporter Larisa Alexandrovna has great follow-up on Blair talking Bush out of bombing Al-Jezeera headquarters in Doha, the capital of U.S. client state Qatar. Although Blair has barred all further mention of the memo from the U.K. press, invoking the Official Secrets Act to protect Bush from another potential war crimes indictment, Alexandrovna has gotten to the bottom of Bush's plans to bomb Al-Jazeera (above and beyond him not liking them and how far afield they wandered from the official U.S. propaganda line clearly demonstrated 24/7 on Fox "News"). Turns out Bush was desperate to keep them from telling the truth about the brutality of the U.S. assault on Fallujah.

Since U.S. corporate media is steering clear of a story this dangerous for the Bush Regime, if you would like to read today's editorial in the MIRROR, here it is. Basically the editors explain how censorship is working in this story. "The Daily Mirror," it starts, "was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that President Bush wanted to bomb an Arab TV station. The gag by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith came nearly 24 hours after the Mirror informed Downing Street of its intention to reveal how Tony Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera's HQ in friendly Qatar." The photo above, by the way, was the one the MIRROR used, captioned "WARMONGER: Bush."