Bush's Bombing Plans

Juan Cole has a fascinating article in Salon today describing the Bush Administration's hatred for Al Jazeera and the plausibility of the Daily Mirror's report that Blair had to talk Bush out of bombing the station's headquarters in Qatar. One particularly revealing quotation is from a press conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on April 15, 2004:

If I could follow up, Monday General Abizaid chastised Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyah for their coverage of Fallujah and saying that hundreds of civilians were being killed. Is there an estimate on how many civilians have been killed in that fighting? And can you definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.

Do you have a civilian casualty count?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Of course not, we're not in the city. But you know what our forces do; they don't go around killing hundreds of civilians. That's just outrageous nonsense! It's disgraceful what that station is doing.

On April 16, 2004, according to leaked top secret memos from 10 Downing Street used in the Daily mirror story, Blair had to talk Bush out of bombing Al Jazeera (which is located in Qatar, an ally). While the story seems unbelievable, there have already been "accidental" bombings of Al Jazeera stations in Iraq and Afghanistan.