11/30/05 "Salon" -- -- Last week, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror
reported that George W. Bush had told U.K. Prime Minister Tony
Blair in April 2004 that he was planning to bomb the Al-Jazeera
offices in Qatar. The report, based on a leaked top-secret
government memo, claimed that Blair dissuaded Bush from bombing the
Arab cable news channel's offices. An anonymous source told the
Mirror, "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair
didn't want him to do it." The Mirror quoted a government
spokesperson, also anonymous, as suggesting that Bush's threat had
been "humorous, not serious." But the newspaper quoted another
source who said, "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much
is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan brushed off the
report, telling the Associated Press in an e-mail, "We are not
interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable
with a response." In a response to a question asked in Parliament,
Tony Blair denied that Bush had told him he planned to take action
against Al-Jazeera. The two men involved in the leak have been
charged with violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.
The report kicked off a furor in Europe and the Middle East. It
was, predictably, virtually ignored by the American press. It would
be premature to claim that the Mirror's report, based on anonymous
sources and a document that has not been made public, proves that
Bush intended to bomb Al-Jazeera. But the frightening truth is that
it is only too possible that the Mirror's report is accurate. Bush
and his inner circle, in particular Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, had long demonized the channel as "vicious," "inexcusably
biased" and abetting terrorists. Considering the administration's
no-holds-barred approach to the "war on terror," the closed circle
of ideologues that surround Bush, and his own messianic certainty
about his divine mission to rid the world of "evil," the idea that
he seriously considered bombing what he perceived as a nest of
terrorist sympathizers simply cannot be ruled out. Add in the fact
that the U.S. military had previously bombed Al-Jazeera's Kabul,
Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq, offices (the U.S. pleaded ignorance
in the Kabul case, and claimed the Baghdad bombing was a mistake),
and the case becomes stronger still.
Skeptics have argued that it is inconceivable that even Bush
would consider bombing an office containing 400 journalists, located
in the friendly Gulf nation of Qatar. But again, it is more than
conceivable that Bush decided that it was essential to neutralize an
enemy outpost, and left the tactical question of execution to spooks
and generals. Certainly there is strong evidence that Bush and his
advisors, in particular Rumsfeld, were thinking along these lines.
Ironically, Rumsfeld himself had telegraphed the strategy during
an interview in 2001 on ... Al-Jazeera! On Oct. 16, 2001, Rumsfeld
talked to the channel's Washington anchor Hafez Mirazi (who once
worked for the Voice of America but left in disgust at the level of
censorship he faced there). Although most such interviews are
archived at the Department of Defense, this one appears to be
absent. Mirazi showed it again on Monday, and it contained a segment
in which Rumsfeld defended the targeting of radio stations that
supported the Taliban. He made it clear right then that he believed
in total war, and made no distinction between civilian and military
targets. The radio stations, he said, were part of the Taliban war
effort.
In fact, Al-Jazeera bears no resemblance to the pro-Taliban radio
stations that Rumsfeld defended attacking.
Despite the extensive censorship regimes in the Middle East, Arab
intellectuals joke, it is possible to get news about everything from
only two sources. The Al-Jazeera television channel will report
frankly on every Arab government save that of Qatar, its host and
benefactor. On the other hand, Saudi pan-Arab newspapers published
in London will report fully on all Arab governments save Saudi
Arabia's own. Put them together, and you have complete coverage.
Al-Jazeera was founded in the 1990s by disgruntled Arab
journalists, many of whom had worked for the BBC Arabic service,
though a few came from the Voice of America. The station was a
breath of fresh air in the stultified world of Arab news
broadcasting, where news producers' idea of an exciting segment is a
stationary camera on two Arab leaders sitting ceremonially on a
Louis XIV sofa while martial music plays for several minutes. In
contrast, Al-Jazeera anchors host live debates that often turn
heated, and do not hesitate to ask sharp questions.
Despite the false stereotypes that circulate in the United States
among pundits and politicians who have never watched the station,
most of Al-Jazeera's programming is not Muslim fundamentalist in
orientation. The rhetoric is that of Arab nationalism, and the
reporters are only interested in fundamentalism to the extent that
it is anti-imperialist in tone. This slant gives many of the
programs the musty, antiquated feel of an old Gamal Abdul Nasser
speech from the 1960s. In the Arab world, clothes speak to politics.
The male anchors and reporters usually sport business suits, and the
mostly unveiled women might as well be on the runway of a European
fashion show. The station does carry a program with the Egyptian
cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim brother who fled Abdul Nasser's
regime. But even al-Qaradawi gave a fatwa (ruling) allowing Muslims
to fight in the U.S. military against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Al-Jazeera broadcasts videotapes by Muslim radicals such as Osama
bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, angering Bush
administration officials. But broadcasting their tapes does not
constitute an endorsement, and it seems clear what the al-Qaida
leaders would do to the modern, non-theocratic journalists of
Al-Jazeera if they took over Qatar. The sensibilities about such
matters, in any case, differ from country to country. There was a
time when an Irish Republican Army figure such as Gerry Adams could
not be shown speaking on British television, on the grounds that he
was a terrorist. But the U.S. was notoriously unhelpful in
boycotting the IRA, whose cause was popular among many
Irish-Americans. Rumsfeld has complained bitterly about other news
servicing, calling the German press, for example, "worse than
al-Qaida."
Political scientist Marc Lynch, in his just-published "Voices of
the New Arab Public," notes that despite their tilt toward Arab
nationalism, the station's anchors often ask sharp questions of
state spokesmen. For example, one quizzed Iraq Foreign Minister
Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf (later notorious as "Baghdad Bob") in 1998,
inquiring why, if Iraq had no forbidden weapons, it did not simply
allow the inspectors into the country.
Among the chief criticisms launched by Bush administration
figures such as Rumsfeld against Al-Jazeera was that it showed
graphic images of the dead and wounded from both the Afghanistan and
Iraq wars. The Bush administration had learned the lesson of
Vietnam, that
images of actual warfare generally appall the American public,
which seems less bothered by words describing the horrors than it
does by pictures. Reporters were forbidden to photograph the caskets
of dead American soldiers coming into Dover Air Force base. U.S.
newspaper editors exercised a rigorous self-censorship, routinely
declining the more graphic images of war on offer from the wire
services, apparently on the belief that they would not be acceptable
to an American public.
Al-Jazeera was the prime source of pictures of warfare, including
dead and wounded, for the Afghanistan war. On Nov. 11, 2001, the New
York Times quoted Auberi Edler, a foreign news editor at France 2,
as complaining about the Pentagon policy of embargoing images from
the war: "Our greatest pressure is that we have no images ... The
only interesting images we get are from Al-Jazeera. It's bad for
everybody."
The U.S. tactic of using smart bombs to target foreign fighters
holing up in urban areas proved a challenge to Western news
photographers, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. If they were not
embedded with U.S. troops in areas where such bombing was taking
place, they were in extreme danger. If they were with the troops,
they could say little more than that they had heard bombing in the
distance. The horror sometimes inflicted on civilians, despite the
best efforts of military targeters, remained off camera for American
audiences. Al-Jazeera, however, developed stringers who could
provide that footage.
Rumsfeld became increasingly exasperated with the channel as the
Iraq adventure went bad. In early 2004, according to Fox News,
he began equating its news coverage of Iraq with murder: "'We
are being hurt by Al-Jazeera in the Arab world,' he said. 'There is
no question about it. The quality of the journalism is outrageous --
inexcusably biased -- and there is nothing you can do about it
except try to counteract it.' He said it was turning Arabs against
the United States. 'You could say it causes the loss of life,' he
added. 'It's causing Iraqi people to be killed' by inflaming
anti-American passions and encouraging attacks against Iraqis who
assist the Americans, he added."
The notion that reporting on the guerrilla war in Iraq abets
terrorism is typical of the logic of any extreme right-wing
political movement. All censorship by all military regimes in the
Middle East has been imposed on the grounds that journalists' speech
is dangerous to society and could cause public turmoil (fitna).
Rumsfeld's reasoning in this regard would be instantly recognizable
to any Arab journalist from their experience with their own
governments.
Of course, Rumsfeld did not consider how many lives -- tens of
thousands -- have been lost because of his own inaccurate statements
to the American public about Iraq, which he maintained had dangerous
weapons of mass destructions and even more dangerous weapons
programs. He and Vice President Dick Cheney also alleged an
operational connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
that did not exist, implying repeatedly that Saddam was involved in
Sept. 11. If speech really is murder, Rumsfeld is the Ted Bundy of
governmental officials.
Rumsfeld, then, considered Al-Jazeera an accessory to terror, and
there is no reason to suppose that Bush did not share this view.
Seen in this light, Bush's plan to bomb its central offices makes
perfect sense. Bush has often boasted about his harshness toward
murderers, and during his debate with Al Gore in 2000, he positively
scared some in his audience by the macho swagger with which he
described executing criminals while he was governor of Texas.
The secretary's rage grew in intensity thereafter. At the height
of the first U.S. attack on Fallujah, which was ordered by Bush in a
fit of pique over the killing and desecration of four private
security guards (three of them Americans, one South African),
Rumsfeld exploded at a Pentagon briefing on April 15:
If I could follow up, Monday General Abizaid chastised
Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyah for their coverage of Fallujah and saying
that hundreds of civilians were being killed. Is there an estimate
on how many civilians have been killed in that fighting? And can you
definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent
civilians have not been killed?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what al-Jazeera is
doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.
Do you have a civilian casualty count?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Of course not, we're not in the city. But you know
what our forces do; they don't go around killing hundreds of
civilians. That's just outrageous nonsense! It's disgraceful what
that station is doing.
In fact, local medical authorities put the number of dead at
Fallujah, most of them women, children and noncombatants, at around
600.
As the London Times pointed out on Sunday, Bush's conference with
Blair, at which he announced his plan to bomb the channel's Doha
offices, occurred the very next day.
The outrage of the Bush administration had to do in part with
what it saw as inaccuracies in Al-Jazeera reporting (as when it
incorrectly alleged that spring that a U.S. helicopter had been
downed, based on local eyewitnesses or Iraqi guerrilla sources). In
the fog of war, however, most news outlets commit such errors. The
real source of Rumsfeld's volcanic ire, and Bush's alleged turn as
would-be mafia don and war criminal, was the graphic images of the
warfare in Iraq that Al-Jazeera was willing to display at a time
when no major U.S. news source would do so. Enraged, Rumsfeld began
accusing the station of sins it never committed. In summer of 2005,
in Singapore,
the secretary of defense said, "If anyone lived in the Middle
East and watched a network like the Al-Jazeera day after day after
day, even if he was an American, he would start waking up and asking
what's wrong. But America is not wrong. It's the people who are
going on television chopping off people's heads, that is wrong. And
television networks that carry it and promote it and jump on the
spark every time there is a terrorist act are promoting the acts."
In fact, according to its media spokesman Jihad Ballout, Al-Jazeera
"has never, ever shown a beheading of any hostage." Nor had its
anchors come on the screen and urged beheadings in the manic way
that Rumsfeld suggested. Al-Jazeera reporters may not like U.S.
imperialism very much, but they are not fundamentalist murderers.
Despite the smokescreens that politicians and diplomats are
attempting to throw up by suggesting that Bush was just joking,
there is every reason to suspect that he was deadly serious and that
Blair barely managed to argue him out of this parlous course of
action. First, the Kabul and Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera had
already been bombed by the U.S. military. In each case the action
was called a mistake. One such bombing might indeed have been an
error, but two arouses suspicion. And now we know there was talk of
a third.
The reaction in the Arab world to the Daily Mirror report has
been a firestorm of outrage. Some Qataris are calling for the
government to end U.S. basing rights in that country. Others are
lamenting the hypocrisy of a superpower that represents itself as
the leading edge of liberty in the Middle East but has so little
respect for press freedom that its leader would cavalierly speak of
wiping out hundreds of civilian journalists. If the British
documents surface and the story's seriousness is borne out, whatever
shreds of credibility Bush still has in the Middle East will be
completely gone. After all, the current phase of U.S. involvement in
the Middle East, and the two wars Americans have fought in the
region, came in response to the terrorist bombing of innocent
civilians in downtown office buildings.
