After reading the latest from Raw Story about the fracas over Bush’s desire to bomb al-Jazeera, I just want to say a few things.
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. According to Raw Story:
This is truly insane. To understand just how insane it is, you have to understand the critical nature of our unique relationship with Qatar, where al-Jazeera has its headquarters.
A July 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor exposed Qatar’s centrality to our military operations in the region.
If President Bush were to order airstrikes on Iraq, this base, about 20 miles from the capital, Doha, would be a critical hub for US warplanes and their aerial pipeline of bombs and supplies.
In the past months, the US military quietly has moved munitions, equipment and communications gear to the base from Saudi Arabia, the control center for American air operations in the Gulf for more than a decade.
About 3,300 American troops are in Qatar, mostly at Al Udeid, where the signs of an American military buildup are unmistakable:
• A tent city has sprouted, with warehouses and miles of security barriers, attesting to the US military’s focus on protecting troops against terrorist attack.
• Freshly paved runways and aircraft parking ramps stretch deep into the desert.
• Newly built hangars for fighter aircraft are hardened to withstand aerial attack. Within view from the main 15,000-foot runway are hardened bunkers, presumably for munitions and supply storage.
“It is likely the most capable base in the Gulf region,” says William Arkin, a private military analyst.
Soon after Sept. 11, Qatar granted permission for the US to send warplanes to Al Udeid. They flew attack missions over Afghanistan.
Al Udeid also is host to Air Force Red Horse squadrons, rapid-response teams of civil engineers that can repair and build structures such as runways and roads in remote areas.
US officials will not discuss specifics, saying the Qatari government strictly limits what can be said about the American presence. There has been speculation that Al Udeid is being built up as an alternative to, or replacement for, the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
That is exactly what happened. As Global Security reported:
To understand why we moved our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar it is helpful to review Bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States that forms the principle reasoning behind the 9/11 attacks.
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.
The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So now they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.
When Bin-Laden issued this fatwa it seemed as though he was paranoid. Bill Clinton was not intent on annihilating Iraqis. In fact, he had done a number of things to help Muslims (in Bosnia, Somalia, and through his efforts vis-a-vis Israel/Palestine). If bin-Laden’s assessment of our intentions seems prescient today, it is because of how the Bush administration reacted to 9/11.
However, the one thing the Bush administation did to appease Bin-Laden was to move our airbase from Saudi Arabia to Qatar where, presumably, it would cause less resentment and violent resistance. Whatever the merits of that decision, they have been pretty well wiped out by the decision to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, our airbase in Qatar is absolutely critical for supporting our operations in Iraq, and is used for missions over Afghanistan as well.
If we had used the airbase in Qatar to bomb the capital of Qatar, where al-Jazeera’s headquarters are located, it stands to reason that we would no longer be welcome to use that airbase for other purposes. And since we could not simply move our airbase back to Prince Sultan or negotiate a new location and build a new airbase overnight, it would have necessitated a complete takeover of the country to keep our air force operating over Iraq.
If Bush had ordered such a mission it would have been just cause for mutiny, or even a palace coup to prevent tremendous harm to our country and our military’s operations. The idea that Tony Blair had to argue against this mission is truly frightening. It should have been dismissed by any number of Americans before it could be discussed with Blair. Andy Card, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and several others should have pointed out the lunacy of such a plan as soon as they heard of it.
It stands to reason that any attempt to blow up al-Jazeera would have to be done with plausible deniability. That means a truck bomb or something would need to be used. You can’t use bomber aircraft launched from 20 miles away. Such a plan is triply insane.
It’s insane because it would be an international outrage and a crime against humanity. It’s insane because we couldn’t deny having done it. And it’s insane because it would totally disrupt our military operations and endanger our troops in Iraq.
No wonder the Brits are prosecuting the leakers of this memo and forbidding the press from any further reporting on this incident.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t immediately investigate whether the charges are true and remove the President from office if they are.
