British Should “Judge Alleged Leaked Downing Street Memo for Themselves”

By Lucy Jones

A furor erupted after an article in Britain’s Daily Mirror of Nov. 22 alleged that President George W. Bush planned to bomb the Arab TV station al-Jazeera but was talked out of the idea by Prime Minister Tony Blair. According to the newspaper, which quoted a “No. 10 memo,” Bush “made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere, [but] Blair replied that would cause a big problem.” Following publication of the story, the British government charged two men under the Official Secrets Act with leaking and receiving a document, and threatened to gag newspapers if they dared reveal the document’s contents.

But that didn’t put off Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator magazine, who declared he would be “very happy to publish it…and risk a jail sentence” As quoted by the Daily Telegraph of Nov. 24, Johnson added, “The public needs to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

“It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq,” he continued. “Some of us thought it was all about the dissemination of the institutions of a civil society—above all a free press, in which journalists could work without fear of being murdered. Then we heard about the Bush plan to blow up al-Jazeera.”

“If it were true that the prime minister had managed to stop the bombing of al-Jazeera’s Qatar HQ,” The Guardian editorialized the same day, “it would be a rare, perhaps unique, example of him winning an argument with the president. If so,” the paper argued, “that’s a compelling reason to publish this secret memo, reveal the truth of this extraordinary take and drop any ill-advised prosecution.”

“President’s Bush’s threat to bomb the headquarters of al-Jazeera, reportedly made during a conversation with Tony Blair last year, could have been dismissed as a tasteless joke were it not for the deep antagonism between Washington and the Qatar-based Arabic satellite news channel,” wrote Richard Beeston in The Times of Nov. 24. However, he added, al-Jazeera had some explaining to do “about its links with terrorist organizations.”

“Réalité for Non-White French Is Repression, Discrimination, Segregation,” Says UK’s Guardian

The European press has been consumed by the riots in France, which French papers have described as a “mini intifada” and “civil war.” The unrest began on Oct. 27, when two Muslim teenagers were electrocuted after climbing into an electrical sub-station in a Paris suburb, in what locals say was an attempt to escape from police, and then spread across the country throughout November.

“In full view of everyone, a country which regards itself as the birthplace of human rights and the sanctuary of a generous social model is proving to be unable to ensure decent living conditions for young French people, who are the descendants of immigrants,” lamented the Nov. 7 Le Monde. (The newspaper later noted on Nov. 24 that, of 700 ministerial civil servants in France, only 10 are of an ethnic background.)

The youths who took part in the riots did not just clash with police but also with firefighters and postal workers, pointed out France’s left-leaning Libération on Oct. 23. “This is a typical ethnic ghetto reaction,” the paper said, “and one which obliges us to ask how many black firefighters or post office workers of North African origin there are?”

In Britain, Melanie Phillips, writing in the right-wing Daily Mail on Nov. 7, described the riots as “an uprising by French Muslims against the state.

“Far from the claim that the disturbances have been caused by French policy of segregating Muslims into ghettoes, this is a war being waged for separate development,” she wrote.

Writing in the Nov. 13 Guardian, Jason Burke disagreed with that assumption, arguing that “the rioters were not seeking to destroy the French state but were demanding a greater stake in it.”

A Nov. 7 editorial in the same newspaper wondered how the French could think “that the incantation of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ would somehow mask the réalité of life for non-white French men and women: repression, discrimination, segregation.”

Opined Germany’s Der Tagesspiegel of Nov. 3, “The fact that these immigrants stand little chance on the labor market, despite the fact that almost all of them speak French fluently, shows how immeasurably difficult and protracted, perhaps even impossible, it will be to resolve this conflict.”

“If Hurricane Katrina exposed the marginalization of the black population abandoned in New Orleans,” said Spain’s El Pais on Nov. 8, “these riots have exposed the profound cracks in French society.”

Chirac Described as “Niggardly” in Assuming Responsibility for Riots

More than two weeks after the start of the unrest in France, President Jacques Chirac formally addressed the nation on Nov. 14, pledging to end the riots.

Françoise Fressoz, writing in Les Echos the following day, welcomed Chirac’s plan for a voluntary task force.

“Asking youngsters to dedicate a few months of their lives to service in the community would encourage better social integration,” she said. “It would start to answer the fundamental question: What does it mean to be French today?”

But the same day’s Libération thought the president had “showed himself niggardly in examining its causes, keeping himself from identifying any political responsibility, including his own.”

An earlier proposal by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to cut the minimum age for apprenticeships from 16 to 14 was also met with mixed response.

The Nov. 10 Le Monde thought that the prime minister had “opened a new Pandora’s box,” as the measure could end more than six decades of policies aimed at raising educational standards.

“What is more, the measure does not appear to enjoy unanimity among employers themselves, companies being ever fonder of diplomas,” the newspaper commented.

But the right-wing Le Figaro of the same day thought the younger apprenticeships “the most promising of the prime minister’s proposals,” even though they would not solve all problems.

“Peaceful Jordan a Prime Target for Extremists,” Says The Times

Newspapers expressed little surprise at the hotel bombs in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Nov. 10, which killed at least 57 people.

“Jordan, peaceful, moderate, pro-Western and committed to a peace settlement with Israel, has long been a prime target for nihilistic extremists,” wrote The Times the following day. “Jordan embodied everything the Islamists want to destroy. It is an oasis of calm and stability in a violent region, enforcing security through extremely efficient intelligence and tough policing.”

“The only surprise was that it took so long to happen,” wrote the Nov. 11 Guardian. “The bombings had a vicious, almost personal twist in that they were mounted by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, notorious leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and a Jordanian citizen with many reasons to hate his homeland,” it added.

The BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson, writing that day for the broadcaster’s Web site, said the bombings provided Jordan’s King Abdullah with a “melancholy victory—the kind he certainly did not want.”

“In 2002, during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of neighboring Iraq,” Simpson explained, Abdullah “warned the U.S. that Jordan might suffer from a wave of anger and violence if Saddam Hussain were overthrown.” The king’s views were not heeded, Simpson noted.

Failed UK Terror Legislation Called a “Draconian Tightening” of Law

British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered his first ever House of Commons defeat on Nov. 9 over a proposal to allow police to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 90 days, rather than the existing 14 days.

There was much discussion in Britain on what the defeat meant personally for Blair, with The Daily Telegraph of Nov. 11 describing it as “Blair’s blackest day.”

Elsewhere, newspapers welcomed the bill’s defeat, which Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau of the same day described as a “draconian tightening” of anti-terrorism laws.

“All respect for Britain,” exclaimed Hungary’s Nepszabadsag on Nov. 11. “The House of Commons decided the proposed 90-day period would give uncontrollable power to the authorities—that is scope for abuse.”

El Periodico Demands to Know if Spain Hosted Terror Suspects

There is growing concern in the European Union that some members—mentioned so far have been Spain, Denmark, Austria and Poland—hosted secret CIA prisons used to hold al-Qaeda suspects, or that CIA aircraft carrying the detainees have passed through their airspace.

Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau on Nov. 4 said that in light of the allegations, the EU must reconfirm its commitment to human rights, as the claims are becoming “more explosive.” “Europe still has a moral obligation to remind Washington emphatically that it is not prepared to dissociate itself from its human rights principles, even with regard to enemies of freedom,” the paper wrote.

“The fight against al-Qaeda is necessary,” acknowledged Austria’s Die Presse the same day, “but how are the Iraqis supposed to understand what the rule of law means if its defenders do not care about observing the most basic principles?”

In Spain, Barcelona’s El Periodico of Nov. 17 said the issue demands “transparency.” “We have a right to know if our country is on the list of those cooperating in this shameful business,” it continued.

The previous day, however, El Pais had editorialized that “the CIA has never officially acknowledged that it is involved in this kind of activity.”

“It would be a mistake to treat as certain what are, so far, suspicions,” the newspaper said.

Meyer’s Memoirs a “Devastating Exposure of Blair’s Folly

“Candid dispatches should never be delayed,” concluded The Guardian on Nov. 9, as it published excerpts from DC Confidential, the memoirs of the former British ambassador to the U.S., Sir Christopher Meyer.

“Sir Christopher’s book…covers the fateful period of the run-up to the war in Iraq in March 2003—an event which on many counts must now be judged a disastrous failure for British policy,” said the newspaper.

“From his unique vantage point on Massachusetts Avenue, the ambassador saw that although Britain’s reputation in a traumatized U.S. soared to ‘stratospheric new heights’ after the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks, the prime minister was unable to translate it into real influence on the Bush administration,” the newspaper said.

“Meyer says that Blair could have used more leverage to delay the beginning of the Iraq war by several months,” noted Charles Moore in the Nov. 27 Daily Telegraph. “Possibly he could have, though I doubt it, but he had perfectly cogent reasons for not wanting to. It is true that Mr. Blair, unlike Margaret Thatcher, pays too little attention to specifics, but we knew that already.”

The Daily Mail of Nov. 5 described the memoir as a “devastating exposé of Mr. Blair’s folly” from “the ultimate insider.”

According to Germany’s Nov. 14 Der Tagesspiegel, the writings were like “a magnifying glass which revealed the dirty pores of the Blair team.” But the newspaper said the fun poked at his team, or the “cabinet of pygmies” as Meyer described them, “drowned out with laughter” the more serious point that Blair was too quick to back the U.S. drive to attack Iraq.

Lucy Jones is a free-lance journalist based in London.