{"id":3581,"date":"2005-11-23T10:23:37","date_gmt":"2005-11-23T18:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/11\/23\/bush-targets-al-jazeera-for-bombing\/"},"modified":"2019-12-19T15:07:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T23:07:09","slug":"bush-targets-al-jazeera-for-bombing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/11\/23\/bush-targets-al-jazeera-for-bombing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush targets Al-Jazeera for bombing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:7459,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.mirror.co.uk\\\/news\\\/tm_objectid=16397937&amp;method=full&amp;siteid=94762&amp;headline=exclusive--bush-plot-to-bomb-his-arab-ally-name_page.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20090427013824\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.mirror.co.uk:80\\\/news\\\/tm_objectid=16397937&amp;method=full&amp;siteid=94762&amp;headline=exclusive--bush-plot-to-bomb-his-arab-ally-name_page.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-09 20:52:41&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-31 07:22:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 19:13:09&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 19:13:09&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The man is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/tm_objectid=16397937&amp;method=full&amp;siteid=94762&amp;headline=exclusive--bush-plot-to-bomb-his-arab-ally-name_page.html\" title=\"Mirror: Exclusive: Bush Plot to Bomb his Arab Ally\">certifiably batshit insane<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a &#8220;Top Secret&#8221; No 10 memo reveals.<\/p>\n<p>  But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.<\/p>\n<p>  A source said: &#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn&#8217;t want him to do it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>  Al-Jazeera&#8217;s HQ is in the business district of Qatar&#8217;s capital, Doha.<\/p>\n<p>  Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US&#8217;s desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of &#8220;collateral damage&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>  Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.<\/p>\n<p>  To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.<\/p>\n<p>  The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a &#8216;Top Secret&#8217; No 10 memo reveals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}