I'll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera
- From: "Faris Jawad" <ana_faris_bila_jawad@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 09:25:04 -0500
I'll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera
It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of
us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq. There were those
who believed the Government's rubbish about Saddam's Weapons of Mass
Destruction. Then the WMD made their historic no-show.
Some of us were so innocent as to suppose that the Pentagon had a
well-thought-out plan for the removal of the dictator and the introduction
of peace. Then we had the insurgency, in which tens of thousands have died.
Some of us thought it was about ensuring that chemical weapons could never
again be used on Iraqi soil. Then we heard about the white phosphorus
deployed by the Pentagon. Some people believed that the American liberation
would mean the end of torture in Iraqi jails. Then we had Abu Ghraib.
Some of us thought it was all about the dissemination of the institutions of
a civil society - above all a free press, in which journalists could work
without fear of being murdered. Then we heard about the Bush plan to blow up
al-Jazeera.
Some of us feel that we have an abusive relationship with this war. Every
time we get our hopes up, we get punched by some piece of bad news. We yearn
to be told that we're wrong, that things are going to get better, that the
glass is half full. That's why I would love to think that Dubya was just
having one of his little frat-house wisecracks, when he talked of destroying
the Qatar-based satellite TV station. Maybe he was only horsing around.
Maybe it was a flippant one-liner, of the kind that he delivers before
making one of his dramatic exits into the broom-closet. Perhaps it was a
kind of Henry II moment: you know, who will rid me of this turbulent TV
station? Maybe he had a burst of spacy Reagan-esque surrealism, like the
time the old boy forgot that the mikes were switched on, and startled a
press conference with the announcement that he was going to start bombing
Russia in five minutes. Maybe Bush thought he was Kenny Everett. Perhaps he
was playing Basil Brush. Boom boom.
Who knows? But if his remarks were just an innocent piece of cretinism, then
why in the name of holy thunder has the British state decreed that anyone
printing those remarks will be sent to prison?
We all hope and pray that the American President was engaging in nothing
more than neo-con Tourette-style babble about blowing things up. We are
quite prepared to believe that the Daily Mirror is wrong. We are ready to
accept that the two British civil servants who have leaked the account are
either malicious or mistaken. But if there is one thing that would seem to
confirm the essential accuracy of the story, it is that the Attorney General
has announced that he will prosecute anyone printing the exact facts.
What are we supposed to think? The meeting between Bush and Blair took place
on April 16, 2004, at the height of the US assault on Fallujah, and there is
circumstantial evidence for believing that Bush may indeed have said what he
is alleged to have said.
We know that the administration was infuriated with the al-Jazeera coverage
of the battle, and the way the station focused on the deaths of hundreds of
people, including civilians, rather than the necessity of ridding the town
of dangerous terrorists. We remember how Cheney and Rumsfeld both launched
vehement attacks on the station, and accused it of aiding the rebels. We are
told by the New York Times that there were shouty-crackers arguments within
the administration, with some officials yelling that the channel should be
shut down, and others saying that it would be better to work with the
journalists in the hope of producing better coverage.
We also recall that the Americans have form when it comes to the mass media
outlets of regimes they dislike. They blew up the Kabul bureau of al-Jazeera
in 2002, and they pulverised the Baghdad bureau in April 2003, killing one
of the reporters. In 1999 they managed to blow up the Serb TV station,
killing two make-up girls, in circumstances that were never satisfactorily
explained.
To be fair to the Americans, we must also accept that they had good grounds
for resenting al-Jazeera. The station is hugely respected in the Arab world,
has about 35 million viewers, and yet it gives what can only be described as
a thoroughly Arab perspective of current affairs. It assists in the
glorification of suicide bombers; it publishes the rambling tapes of Bin
Laden and others among the world's leading creeps and whackos; it is
overwhelmingly hostile to America and sceptical about the neo-con project of
imposing western values and political systems in the Middle East.
And yet however wrong you may think al-Jazeera is in its slant and its
views, you must accept that what it is providing is recognisably journalism.
It is not always helpful to the American cause in Iraq, but then nor is the
BBC; and would anybody in London or Washington suggest sending a Tomahawk
into White City? Well, they might, but only as a joke. Exhausted Western
leaders, living in the nightmare of a media-dominated democracy, are allowed
to make jokes about blowing up journalists. I seem to remember that when I
was sent to Belgrade to cover the Nato attacks, Tony Blair told the then
proprietor of The Daily Telegraph that he would "tell Nato to step up the
bombing!" Ho ho ho.
But if there is an ounce of truth in the notion that George Bush seriously
proposed the destruction of al-Jazeera, and was only dissuaded by the Prime
Minister, then we need to know, and we need to know urgently. We need to
know what we have been fighting for, and there is only one way to find out.
The Attorney General's ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt.
I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act, and, as it happens,
I would not object to the continued prosecution of those who are alleged to
have broken it. But we now have allegations of such severity, against the US
President and his motives, that we need to clear them up.
If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very
happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. The public
need to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we
suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important
respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies.
telegraph.co.uk
2005-11-25 16:26:47
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/11/25/4252.shtml
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