Bombing Al-Jazeera

last updated 8 January 2015

London

President Bush wanted to bomb the Qatar headquarters of Al-Jazeera, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair convinced him not to, London’s Daily Mirror reported this week. The newspaper cited a top-secret memo leaked from the prime minister’s office detailing a conversation Bush and Blair had in April 2004, when the assault on Fallujah was under way. The Arab satellite network angered Bush by broadcasting from the insurgent-held areas, beaming images of dead U.S. soldiers and dead Iraqi civilians to the Arab world. But Blair, the memo says, pointed out that Qatar was an ally, that Al-Jazeera’s journalists were civilians, and that such an attack would enrage the Middle East. The prime minister’s office refused to comment on the report. Said a White House official: “We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response.”