Born To Quash

It has emerged that, in alleged recognition of information that was featured in an article in British newspaper The Daily Mirror being potentially detrimental to international relations, the British government has threatened to take court action against the media if any further information regarding the sensitive issue in question is leaked. As was probably to be expected, the memo containing the information reached a number of publications throughout the United Kingdom, meaning that it is now located in a variety of organisations' hands; organisations that could possibly all choose to utilise it in different ways.

The memo was leaked from the British attorney general and is said to highlight that United States President George W. Bush expressed the intention to order the bombing of the headquarters of Al Jazeera, the Arabic television network that was relatively unknown to the Western world until it rose to prominence as a significant media outlet following the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September, 2001. Apparently, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had to "talk Bush out of bombing the broadcaster in April last year." Bush's alleged intent is obviously in light of the fact that his administration, as its past actions could be strongly taken to support, solidly suspects Al Jazeera of being a "pro-insurgent" media source in the Middle East that is opposed to the so-called Coalition of the Willing's war in Iraq.

The article in The Daily Mirror that initially broke the news is swift to point out that Qatar, where Al Jazeera is located, is actually on the side of the United States, thus rendering the fact that Bush raised this suggestion as even more unethical and, as a consequence, decidedly disagreeable. It has certainly not been made a secret throughout the years since the "war on terror" first began that the Bush administration feels distinctly unfavourably towards the Arabic network. What with the office in Kabul, Saudi Arabia having been bombed in 2001, and a reporter named Tareq Ayyoub having been murdered in 2003 when United States forces conducted a raid upon Al Jazeera's office in Baghdad, it could be confidently assumed that Bush's intentions expressed earlier this year are certainly not intended to be "humourous," as a British government official apparently suggested. How such a morbid statement could be taken as humourous anyway is beyond me.

One of the most disheartening aspects of this scenario is that all but the most casual observer could be forgiven for perceiving that Tony Blair is something of a hypocrit. It was evident that, in the performance of the act of talking Bush out of bombing Al Jazeera, Blair was showing a far more pacifistic and libertine-prone stance than his United States partner-in-arms. The effect was that he was standing up for the right of media services to express the sort of opinion that they see fit. By the proponents of democracy, he could be looked upon almost favourably in light of this. However, the British government's action that it is taking now -- threatening British media publications with legal repurcussions under the Official Secrets Act if they are to give air to what they may wish to -- is a distinct contradiction to the compassion that Blair could be taken to have shown before.