{"id":626,"date":"2005-11-23T11:48:53","date_gmt":"2005-11-23T16:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=626"},"modified":"2005-11-23T11:48:53","modified_gmt":"2005-11-23T16:48:53","slug":"on-bushs-stupid-remark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=626","title":{"rendered":"On Bush's Stupid Remark"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, from the Daily Mirror<\/a>:<\/p>\n

President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a “Top Secret” No 10 memo reveals.<\/p>\n

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.<\/p>\n

A source said: “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.” Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.<\/p>\n

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could Bush have been joking? It’s certainly possible–Bush’s bizarre glee at inflicting death has been well-documented in the past. But there are reasons to think Bush may not<\/i> have been joking, as Josh Marshall explains at Talking Points Memo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With my very limited sense of how George W. Bush operates in private, I think it does sound the like the sort of thing the president might joke about or say merely for effect, though I wouldn’t say that shows him in such a great light either.<\/p>\n

The only thing that strikes me as odd is that a diplomatic aide would memorialize this exchange between if it were merely a joking aside. Did the aide either think Bush was serious or perhaps found the discussion so disturbing that he chose to note it down?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everyone has their moments of gallows humor, and perhaps the President should be allowed that. But Marshall’s right–if he were joking, why would an aide make a note of it in a secret memo? Now that the comment–serious or not–has become public, this could have serious repercussions in the Arab world and feed into their worst fears of American intentions.<\/p>\n

Mr. President, even jokes<\/i> can be dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, from the Daily Mirror: President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a “Top Secret” No 10 memo reveals. But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash. A source said: “There’s no doubt what BushContinue reading “On Bush's Stupid Remark”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[1029,273,387,4105,4108],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-al-jazeera","tag-george-bush","tag-iraq","tag-news","tag-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}