Roger Whittaker

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The Bush Blair Al-Jazeera story

Wednesday 23rd November 2005

The Government's reaction to yesterday's story in the Mirror is essentially an admission of its truth.

According to today's Guardian:

The attorney general last night threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of a document allegedly relating to a dispute between Tony Blair and George Bush over the conduct of military operations in Iraq.

It also seems that the two people who have been charged will be tried in camera.

Interestingly, the Guardian had a different story last night (found by Google News) which had already gone when I tried to access it, at this URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1648387,00.html.

Presumably this is the story they were going to run before "the attorney general last night threatened newspapers".

As Juan Cole points out, US forces deliberately attacked Al-Jazeera's offices both in Kabul and in Baghdad. Robert Fisk reported on the deliberate attack in Baghdad.

See:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/bush-as-press-assassinbaathist-in.html
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles217.htm
http://www.sfbg.com/wartime/fisk_journalists.html.

See also Robert Fisk's enormous book "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East".