The Spectator

Produce the memo

If The Mirror's story is true, then this magazine would abandon its struggle to find anything to support in US policy towards the Middle East

issue 26 November 2005

A front-page exclusive in the Daily Mirror is normally something to be treated with great scepticism. Until, that is, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, offers his full stamp of approval by invoking the Official Secrets Act. Fantasies and hoaxes — unless they are fantasies and hoaxes propagated by HM government — by definition lie outside the scope of the Official Secrets Act. All of which convinces us that there must be some truth in the Mirror’s claim that in April last year President Bush, in the company of Tony Blair, discussed bombing the headquarters of the Arab television station al-Jazeera, in Doha, Qatar, and that the Prime Minister talked him out of such an attack.

It may be that President Bush was making a feeble joke, in the manner of Ronald Reagan’s declaration of hostilities against Russia to what he thought was a switched-off microphone. Or perhaps Bush was speaking rhetorically, in the manner of Henry II: ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome TV station?’

The Mirror’s unnamed sources appear to be divided on these possibilities.

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