Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
We're probably not supposed to talk about this. So here goes.
But there is obviously some fire beneath all that smoke. Several MPs took it seriously indeed, including Blair's former defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, who called for the document to be made public. Then late yesterday [Tuesday], the Blair government unleashed Britain's draconian Official Secrets Act – which is far in excess of anything in the US – threatening to prosecute any paper that published the actual contents of the memo. (The Mirror story was a paraphrase.)
This is highly unusual, given the fact that the Blair camp did not invoke the Secrets Act to stop the extremely embarrassing "Downing Street Memos" which revealed the cynical pre-invasion machinations by Bush and Blair to "fix the intelligence around the policy" of aggressive war. In fact, as the Guardian points out today, "the [Blair] government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents." The invocation of the Secrets Act in this case essentially confirms the substance of the Mirror's allegations; if it was all fluff, just a "joke," why try to quash it in such a heavy-handed fashion?
It seems likely then that the story is true: Bush seriously contemplated launching an attack on Al-Jazeera's headquarters – in the business district of Doha, Qatar's capital – and had to be dissuaded from this madness by Blair.
As you can probably see, Chris explains things much better than I can. To tell you the truth, the whole affair leaves me practically speechless. But you can follow the story as it has developed so far, using the links and quotes below: