This story has been floating around for awhile now. It finaly gets the treatment it deserves from a SUPPORTER of the War.

Tomorrow morning, in a court in London, two men will appear to face charges under Britain's Official Secrets Act. The first man, David Keogh, a former employee of the Cabinet Office, is accused of unlawfully handing a confidential memorandum to the second man, Leo O'Connor, a researcher for a former Labor member of Parliament, Tony Clarke.

The memorandum is actually a five-page transcript stamped "Top Secret." It describes a meeting at the White House on April 16, 2004, between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. At that meeting, which took place while desperately hard fighting was in progress in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, Bush mooted the idea of taking out the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. The network's correspondents inside the city had been transmitting lurid footage of extreme violence. The exchange apparently puts Blair in a good light, in that he dissuaded the president from any such course of action and was assisted in this by Colin Powell, who was then secretary of state.

For me, this story points out two things...

The absolute ineffectiveness of the American Press, and the insanity of the current administration.

The bombshells related to the Iraq War have almost all come from the British Press, The Downing Street Memo, one of the most significant pieces of reporting in recent times, was effectively pooh poohed by the Administration and by the Conservative Blogsphere, and now this...

If Bush seriously proposed bombing the headquarters of a foreign press organization, no matter how odious their reporting has been at times, it is scandalous and even criminal. The fact that the American Press allows these stories to die without proper investigation is shameful. The fact that the Left Wing Blogsphere is left to carry the ball on these issues, ensures that they are more effectively dismissed as pure partisan politics. That Bush has managed to survive scandal after scandal, without proper vetting by the mainstream press, renders claims by the Right of a Liberal Media Bias, ridiculous and hollow.

The fact is that this administration has mastered the art of intimidation, with the aid of the Right Blogsphere, paid hacks and pseudo journalist like Armstrong Williams and Advocate Man of the Year Jeff Guckert. Rathergate acted as a Hammer which beat legitimate journalist into submission. I will NEVER forgive CBS for allowing that to happen. The dampening effect of that event and the RISE of the Conservative Blogsphere to successfully intimidate and shut off discourse, has done massive damage to our Republic and to the idea of a Free Press. ANY of the current scandals of the Bush Administration, are 10 times more damaging to our nation than Clinton's infidelities, and yet this White House manages to spin its way out of scandal after scandal.

If the British Press manages to expose a plot as insidious as this one, and proves it true, it will be a lasting embarrassment for our National Press Corp, and a stain on our honor world wide, not to mention further proof to the Islamic World that America simply does not care about Muslims.

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