And when it's made public with some luck we can see the Downing Street memo as well.

Oy!

Thanks for posting it; I hope it receives wide coverage.

Steve--

Interestng developments on this story here:

http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/612

and here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/29/8348/2458

Chris Anderson

What "high price"? Last I checked, they will be in office until January 20, 2009. They control both houses of Congress -- and are likely to continue to -- and they are in the process of stacking the Supreme Court with right-wingers.

Only now are they beginning to get a fraction of the negative coverage that most administrations get.

Most Americans haven't even heard of this memo and aren't likely to. And even if it became an issue over here, most Americans would probably agree with bombing them.

Up in Canada, the government just fell. Even if we had a parliamentary democracy, I can't see things getting bad enough that the so-called moderates in the GOP would abandon Bush.

Bush and Rove and Cheney are only paying any "price" at all because they had a cakewalk for over four years. And now times admittedly aren't as much fun as they once were. But paying a "high price"? I don't think so.

Should the UK Attorney General relent and release the memo Bush can just bomb him for good measure too..........

I wish Bush & Co were paying a high price. I agree that practically nobody knows about this. Several days ago, I posted a comment to the effect that I doubted it the Al Jazeera bombings in Kabul and Baghdad were probably not a coincidence that the two men--Keogh and O'Connor--who had leaked the memo now criminal defendants in a case that benefited all of us. Nothing. I think that the American public is being overwhelmed by Bush's conduct. This is one in a stream of at least one zillion items that he has done that are outside the mainstream of acceptable behavior, but they have become our norm. Horrifying.

FYI the 2 bureaucrats were in court today. One is charged not with leaking the memo, but with having possession of it (it was sent to him, he passed it onto his boss who was an MP. It's this passing that's being proseucted, if you can believe such a thing).

You can bet a D-Notice has also been served in this case, and many many times un recent years. I have spoken to several UK journalists who have confirmed this, albeit nudge-wink style. A D-Notice directs newspaper editors to not publish something on the basis that it will damage national interests, and also stipulates that the existence of both the story and D-Notice are verboten. Our laws suck sometimes.

'finest': I'm not going to dignify such transparent stupidity and belligerence with a factual response. Take your ignorance and lack of compassion for the deaths Bush has caused somewhere it will be appreciated rather than seen as the childish crap that it is.

Just a side note--was perusing the summer 2000 issue of Middle East Journal, an entire issue devoted to the "new media" of the Middle East. Back then, Al-Jazeera was being lionized as the harbinger of liberalization across the region. Talk shows with Israelis, debates on Islam, etc.

The irony, of course, is that the ferment across the region today about democratization is in part due to AJ and the other satellite networks and their coverage of elections and voting not only in the Middle East but also of events like the Orange Revolution, etc.

History will judge this president, but let us all hope that the congress and senate will get the first shot at it. Otherwise yet another criminal slipped through the cracks.

Is there a political crisis in Britain yet? "It would be good to get some help from our allies..."

Al Jazeera is largely staffed by ex BBC types, and a lot of talent went there when the BBC regional department was seriously cut back.

The US obsession with AJ is puzzling. Remember that the DHS thought Al Queda were passing sekrit messages in the news crawl? Led to the Tappahannock and BA223 kerfuffles. In reality, of course, AJ is trial blazing and offers the most liberal of most non-UK-based middle east news orgs (places like Al Arabiya are based in London rather than down the road from CentCom).

Imagine the repercussions if AJ in Qatar had been hit by a truck bomb months ago, and then this memo turned up?

Wouldn't surprise me in the least if at least one AJ employee had more than one paymaster. Ex-BBC types? Hmmm.

How do you prosecute people for disclosing a memo about a conversation that you claim never took place? Maybe some UK lawyer could explain that.

Any journalist with that abject a disregard for the difference between an objective pronoun and a reflexive one SHOULD be bombed.

BlairWatch has done an amazing job, and the story is getting traction now. A comment there said TV News was mentioning it.

Y'know, there are just so many scandals and investigations now, it's hard to keep up! Starting to feel like Watergate, yes it is.

Everyone said, no, Nixon could never fall. But he did. I predict Bush will too.

I'm focusing on the al-Jazeera story and Abramoff on my blog, polizeros.com. The Abramoff corruption apeears so pervasive that I think it'll sink many a Congressmember, lobbyist, etc.

No one can be surprised at the cowardice of the chattering class insulated from their share of heavy lifting in Iraq as they bray about "cutting and running". But are they really SO BLINDLY and COLLECTIVELY STUPID that they can't see the bullseyes painted on THEIR foreheads whenever creodonts like Frank Gaffney or this president even "jokingly" refer to the targeting of journalists with whom they disagree?

Have we, in 5 short years, DEVOLVED SO MUCH that it's now "OK" for "bad guys" OR "good guys" to "take out" anyone not provably against them but questionably or arguably not with them?

Or do Gaffney and Bush intend to build Green Zones all over the world? Has Murdoch ordered body armour for Fox journalists in Berlin? London? Paris? Beirut? Since journalists from Al Jazeera, Reuters etc. are fair game to "us," so too then, CNN, NBC, CBS, FNC, ABC, the Washington Post, New York Times, Washington Times, Wall St. Journal, to "them," i.e., "the terrorists?"

And, extending Gaffney's illogic, why stop with journalists? If the targeting of "unsympathetic" media outlets can be rationalized as "justifiable homicide" to EITHER side -- what of transnational brand names, subsidiaries across the globe? Did CEOs at McDonald's, Burger King, Hilton, Sheraton, Four Seasons, United Airlines, American Airlines, GM, Ford etc., for example, GET Gaffney's message?

Good points, H.E. One also could point to the torture issues, as well. These sorts of things do nothing but exacerbate the existing ill will towards the United States, its citizens and its business interests. Is that really what we need to be doing?

Then again...maybe that's been the plan all along. A sure-fire way to ensure that the neo-con agenda gets carried out is to demonstrably show that there are people in the world who want to hurt/maim/kill Americans. It sets forth a permanent militaristic approach to international relations...i.e. the neverending "War on Terror". It's "Us Against the World" in perpetuity.

Food for thought.

Great reporting as usual, Mr. Clemons.

“The irony, of course, is that the ferment across the region today about democratization is in part due to AJ and the other satellite networks and their coverage of elections and voting not only in the Middle East but also of events like the Orange Revolution, etc.”

Posted by: Nikolas Gvosdev

Nikolas, why is it an “irony”? I suspect that if you had a close encounter with Al-Jazeera, you might not have considered it an irony.

I’m working on a paper on media “framing” of the war and this morning ran into a piece by Alastair Campbell about his visit to Al-Jazeera’s Qatar headquarters. As Tony Blair’s communications guru, Campbell “had run-ins with the station” and “thought they would be cocky and brash because they had made themselves into the media story of the last decade.” But he was surprised.

“In fact,” he writes in the Guardian, “I found them worried about the way they were perceived, and genuinely perplexed by what they saw as a one-dimensional American view of their output. They see themselves as agents of change, but condemned as part of a dangerous status quo. They report anti-Americanism, but deny anti-Americanism is part of their ethos. There is widespread coverage of anti-Americanism in South America and Asia, even in Japan, says [managing director Wadah] Khanfar. But it goes unnoticed. ‘We are unfairly treated in the way we are singled out.’”

"’The Americans call for reform,” Khanfar complained to Campbell, “’They call for freedom of expression. For democratisation, liberalisation. We have been part of that process, helping create real and lasting change in society, give people a voice. We are part of the march towards reform in the Middle East. They cannot see it.’"

Campbell apparently had expected see Al-Jazeera operating from a grand building like Bush House, the BBC’s London headquarters. Instead, he found it “a tiny operation … The newsroom is about a third the size of the newsroom at BBC Bristol. The canteen is minuscule…There was a hand-to-mouth feel to activity inside the studio…

“I left the small dusty compound wishing I had found time to go there … when I had been in Downing Street. I wish we had done more to persuade the Americans that like them or not, al-Jazeera represents an opportunity as well as a potential threat. It is why I argued that the ability to communicate on pan-Arab media should be an important consideration in ambassadorial appointments to the region.” Here’s the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1304622,00.html

Another little tidbit surfaced last night on a Newsnight report: Colin Powell was present at the meeting.

Not only was Colin Powell present, but the discussions included redeployment of British troops to cover the US manpower needed for the Fallujah assault, which ultimately happened 7 months later.

Not sure about the implications of this, but it would seem there's some genuinely interesting content here.

I'm still amazed that given the number of people professing to have either seen the contents of the memo or (good trick this) had them paraphrased by someone who has that it hasn't leaked out properly yet.

Colin Powell? You don't say. Sounds like what we have here is pushback over said Mr. Powell's intense efforts to burnish his image.