"So Tony, wanna bomb that A-rab TV station? heh heh"

So, did the George Dubbya Bush and Tony Blair administrations decide to intentionally bomb AlJazeera's headquarters or was it just some kind of weird inside joke?

For those saying "Al Who?": AlJazeera is the Middle East's version of CNN (or Fox News depending on how bias you think they are). They have just launched an English version of their news site.

This is an objective overview of the recent "Al Jazeera bombing memo" from the ever-wonderful wikipedia:

"The Al Jazeera bombing memo is an unpublished memorandum made within the British government which purports to be the minutes of a discussion between United States President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Daily Mirror published a story on its front page on 22 November 2005 claiming that the memo quotes Bush speculating about a U.S. bombing raid on Al Jazeera world headquarters in the Qatari capital Doha and other locations. The story claims that Blair persuaded Bush to take no action."

This leeked memo has all ready put two British gents (David Keogh, a civil servant at the Cabinet Office, and Leo O'Connor, a research assistant to former Labour MP Tony Clarke) in jail for exposing the memo.

So what is going on here? Was it an accident or was Bush just so pissed that AlJazeera was showing images of civilians being killed in the assault on Fallujah he wanted to bomb it to shut them up.

Anyway, there is a huge gag order in Britian warning news organizations from leeking any more info on this, though many bloggers have posted icons like this one, pledging to publish the document:


And I will do so too. Because Bush hasn't done much to make me think he wouldn't bomb someone and lie about it.

Of course, the Daily Mirror doesn't add much credibility to the report when it shares the front page with "Posh And The Dwarf".

AlJazeera may not exactly be the most "Fair and Balanced" News source. That said, they are a "news organization" none-the-less, and as such, should have the right to blow crappy half-true news out their asses all they want without getting bombed... FOX News' ass is blowing 24/7/365, and no one bombed them yet. Hey I have an idea, maybe Bush should bomb FOX News too, just to make it even? Fox could even use that "FOX ALERT" screen graphic to tell everyone about the bunker busters heading for them.

The Washington Post's Take on this is HERE.
Tried to find a link on the AlJazeera site about the topic, but surprisingly, couldn't find a mention.