Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera's studios

[Ted Striker]

[OzzyKP]

No way is this real. Or serious.

[Ted Striker]

This past 5 years has been surreal...

[child of Thor]

.......but not unexpected, or over yet.

We've all seen those cyber-horror movies(escape from LA, minority report etc) ok.
Well thats the world that the guys(and people like them) in my sig want to create for us all.
So you come up with a simple plan as you'll need to convince people that the changes needed to create such a world are neccesary.
So you help create an unifing enemy of the people - 'terrorists'. You can do this in many ways. for example:

Use your power in the world to create a breeding ground for people who have a high chance of enacting terrorist acts against your nation.
Promote the imbalance of the worlds few rich and massive poor.
Support dictators and brutal regimes where it suits you, provide military training, personel, arms to help them terrorise their own people etc.
Hope that by these actions the seeds of terrorism can be planted.

The next step is to hope that these angry people get organised. Provide some with training + assitence(Saddam+ Osama for the current topic).

Next you need a war(Afghanistan+Iraq for the curent topic), where you will obviously get lots of civilian casualties to help further foster that resentment and hate against you. These things will keep the hatred strong for generations.

Next you need a disaster like 911. with this you can point to the terrorists and say - look they are evil and we need to kill them, give me support to do so. So we do.

next you need steps to bring in measures to protect our freedoms in this dark uncertain world, so slowly our brave new police state starts to evolve.

Keep at the wars and killings, which will keep the hatred burning. And every now and then you need another terrorist atrocitiy to keep the public(us) in check and on side.

So you end up fighting a battle you can never truely win(and dont want to). All the time consolidating wealth and power for the few by creating a completely government controlled society at home while breeding the discontent in the poor countries(and taking their resources) to keep it all ticking along nicely.

I'm not surprised by this latest saga of the Neo agenda, not surprised at all. In fact if you think its been surreal so far - just keep voting them into power.


edit: and no i dont hate freedom

[Pekka]

but then again, while I'm saying blowing up AJ would be extremely troublesome, I should also defend Dubya, because well, he's human too. ANd while trying to be pragmatic, and saying well, what news station doesn't show bodies, but sure it'll get a person to be wound up and.. who knows, AJ is the terrorist choice of the year for who they send their footage so..

You could easily, in a situation where you get pissed off, you could easily say things like that. If I was the president, there wouldn't be AJ anymore. Then again, I'd bee too hot tempered to be the president, because there wouldn't be ME anymore if I was the president after one hard night out with the boys and booze .

[child of Thor]

apparantly all the initial footage of Osama went through american networks first - AJ later became the recipients.(it was talked about on an interesting Newsnight on the BBC lastnight).

[MrFun]

Originally posted by child of Thor
.......but not unexpected, or over yet.

We've all seen those cyber-horror movies(escape from LA, minority report etc) ok.
Well thats the world that the guys(and people like them) in my sig want to create for us all.
So you come up with a simple plan as you'll need to convince people that the changes needed to create such a world are neccesary.
So you help create an unifing enemy of the people - 'terrorists'. You can do this in many ways. for example:

Use your power in the world to create a breeding ground for people who have a high chance of enacting terrorist acts against your nation.
Promote the imbalance of the worlds few rich and massive poor.
Support dictators and brutal regimes where it suits you, provide military training, personel, arms to help them terrorise their own people etc.
Hope that by these actions the seeds of terrorism can be planted.

The next step is to hope that these angry people get organised. Provide some with training + assitence(Saddam+ Osama for the current topic).

Next you need a war(Afghanistan+Iraq for the curent topic), where you will obviously get lots of civilian casualties to help further foster that resentment and hate against you. These things will keep the hatred strong for generations.

Next you need a disaster like 911. with this you can point to the terrorists and say - look they are evil and we need to kill them, give me support to do so. So we do.

next you need steps to bring in measures to protect our freedoms in this dark uncertain world, so slowly our brave new police state starts to evolve.

Keep at the wars and killings, which will keep the hatred burning. And every now and then you need another terrorist atrocitiy to keep the public(us) in check and on side.

So you end up fighting a battle you can never truely win(and dont want to). All the time consolidating wealth and power for the few by creating a completely government controlled society at home while breeding the discontent in the poor countries(and taking their resources) to keep it all ticking along nicely.

I'm not surprised by this latest saga of the Neo agenda, not surprised at all. In fact if you think its been surreal so far - just keep voting them into power.


edit: and no i dont hate freedom

[Patroklos]

Didn't you know Escape from LA was a White House training video leaked to the press?

[child of Thor]

i thought it was just a dumbass film with a dude with a bad 80's hairstyle in it?

but ok point the 'crazy' finger if you like and if it makes you feel better, i can handle it

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
No way is this real. Or serious.

I'd like to agree with you... but Blair has openly threatened any media that would publish further information about the memo. Isn't that frightening?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by MrFun



Yeah -- I mean, that must explain why I have such a respectful avatar of our president now.

Bush caught with a funny expression... EDGY!

[DRoseDARs]

Well, the UK government has basically just confirmed the memo exists and its content is legitimate. They've charged someone for leaking the memo under their Official Secrets act.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10153489

U.K. charges official with leaking Blair memo
Document allegedly says PM dissuaded Bush push for attack on Al-Jazeera

NBC News and news services
Updated: 2:37 p.m. ET Nov. 22, 2005

LONDON - A civil servant has been charged under Britain’s Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking a government memo that a newspaper said Tuesday suggested that Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush not to bomb the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.

The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke of targeting Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, when he met Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004. The Bush administration has regularly accused Al-Jazeera of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for anti-American sentiments.

The Daily Mirror attributed its information to unidentified sources. One source, said to be in the government, was quoted as saying that the alleged threat was “humorous, not serious,” but the newspaper quoted another source as saying that “Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair.”

“We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

Blair’s office declined to comment on the report, stressing it never discussed leaked documents.

Al-Jazeera said in a statement that it was investigating the report. “If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Al-Jazeera but to media organizations across the world,” it said.

In Qatar, Al-Jazeera said it was aware of the report, but did not wish to comment. The U.S. Embassy in London said it was making no comment.

The document was described as a transcript of a conversation between the two leaders.

Court appearance next week
Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing it to Leo O’Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O’Connor are scheduled to appear at London’s Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Keogh was charged with an offense under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act relating to “a damaging disclosure” by a servant of the Crown of information relating to international relations or information obtained from a state other than the United Kingdom.

O’Connor was charged under Section 5, which relates to receiving and disclosing illegally disclosed information.

According to the newspaper, Clarke returned the memo to Blair’s office. Clarke did not respond to calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Press Association, the British news agency, said Clarke refused to discuss the contents of the document. PA quoted Clarke as saying his priority was to support O’Connor who did “exactly the right thing” in bringing it to his attention.

Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister in Blair’s government, called for the document to be made public.

“I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion,” he said. “If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn’t embedded with coalition forces,” the newspaper quoted Kilfoyle as saying.

Worrying memo?
Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, said Tuesday that, if true, the memo was worrying.

“If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control,” he said. “On this occasion, the prime minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been.”

Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hit by U.S. bombs or missiles, but each time the U.S. military said they were not intentionally targeting the broadcaster.

In April 2003, an Al-Jazeera journalist was killed when its Baghdad office was struck during a U.S. bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike was a mistake.

In November 2002, Al-Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a U.S. missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. U.S. officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Al-Jazeera’s office.

Meantime, NBC News analyst Bill Arkin says that while there is no military order to bomb any media outlet, the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha has been given responsibility for exploiting and disrupting the communications and computer systems of news media outlets worldwide.

Arkin says the center of this effort is the Network Attack Support Staff, which while assigned to Stratcom, is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Md.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

[realpolitic]

I'm shocked! This is almost impossible to believe, I think we should careful to verify the authenticity. Who would believe that someone would talk Bush out of murdering innocent civilians?

[KrazyHorse]

Bush is a ****ing whack job.

This is possibly the craziest thing I've heard of him saying that wasn't complete rumour.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by realpolitic
I'm shocked! This is almost impossible to believe, I think we should careful to verify the authenticity.

Erm, the British government just did that. If the memo were nothing more than tabloid rumor and wasn't real, they wouldn't have bothered invoking the Official Secrets Act.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Bush honestly meant it as a joke.