Did Bush Really Suggest Bombing Al-Jazeera?

Last week the British tabloid the Daily Mirror--citing a top secret Downing Street memo--reported that President Bush had been seriously contemplating bombing the Qatar headquarters of the Arab news organization Al-Jazeera. According to the story, Bush had to be talked out of the idea by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The conversation described in the memo supposedly took place during a face-to-face meeting between the two leaders on April 16, 2004, during the bloody assault on Falluja.

Given the Mirror's reputation for sensationalism and its questionable track-record, my initial instinct was to dismiss the story outright. It just struck me as so absurd. I don't have a whole lot of respect for the strategic judgment of Bush or his top advisors, but I found it hard to believe that anyone could have seriously entertained such a disastrously stupid idea. After all, it's pretty hard to imagine any single move that could have done more to hasten our defeat in the war of ideas we're currently waging. Besides the fact that such a plan would have involved targeting noncombatants in an allied country, it would have been obvious who was behind the attacks. The political and strategic fallout would have been staggering. The battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world would have been lost in an instant, our moral highground utterly relinquished. Imagine, a country that celebrates the freedom of speech and the press more than any other choosing to bomb a news organization. Needless to say, I was reassured when Scott McClellan said "[a]ny such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd."

Unfortunately, however, the story refuses to die. Today Newsweek breathes some new life into the Daily Mirror's claim. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report the following:

A British government crackdown on
government leaks may have backfired by
calling world attention to an ultrasensitive
secret memo whose alleged contents have
embarrassed President George W. Bush and
strained relations between London and
Washington. The document allegedly
recounts a threat last year by Bush to bomb
the head office of the Arabic TV news channel
Al-Jazeera.

U.K. authorities consider the memo, described
as minutes or a transcript of an April 16, 2004,
White House meeting between Bush and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, so diplomatically
sensitive that Blair's attorney general last week
warned U.K. media by e-mail that they could
face prosecution under the country's draconian
Official Secrets Act if they reported on its
contents. But all the legal threat appeared to do
was call more attention to the still-mysterious
document and, at a minimum, appear to
confirm its existence.

According to Newsweek. some U.S. officials have suggested that "if Bush did talk with Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera, the president was only joking." I would hope so. But then there's this:

[A] senior official at 10 Downing Street,
Blair's official residence, who insisted on
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
subject, recently seemed to give credence to
the Al-Jazeera threat. The official told
NEWSWEEK London Bureau chief Stryker
McGuire: "I don't think Tony Blair thought
it was a joke."

Stryker McGuire? Anyway, I sincerely hope that Bush was joking, or that this whole story is a fabrication. The alternative is just so scary. If our President really has to be talked out of catastrophically stupid plans like bombing Al-Jazeera, God help us all.