The Pentagon has referred to White Phosphorus as a chemical weapon. The context? Saddam Hussein used it against the Kurds. Full reporting here on ThinkProgress.
Other news:
Bush planned to bomb Al-Jazeera's offices. Regardless of its politics, Al-Jazeera is not a military target. No news station is, at least without proof that it is undeniably harboring or facilitating enemy activities and even then, there are lots more options to eliminating that activity than destroying the entire news center. Also, the targeted center was in Qatar.
Jean Schmidt's Marine--the one she "quoted" when attacking Rep. Murtha--Colonel Danny Bubp denies that he specifically mentioned John Murtha and states that he would never call a fellow Marine a coward.
6,644 people are still missing in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina.
Today is the anniversary of JFK's assassination.
This Al-Jazeera thing should be big and reminds me of the video of an F-16 firing on an Al-Jazeera journalist from the film Control Room.
ReplyDeleteProbably no one will care, though, because Republicans think it's okay to kill those whose politics they disagree with.
If they actually believed this, Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy would be an unrecognizable pile of charred flesh right now.
ReplyDeleteal-Qaeda, like any other organization trying to push an ideology, depends heavily on PR. Osama can recruit followers more effectively if he has an outlet to play his propaganda tapes. The people beheading contractors in Iraq are more likely to accomplish their goals if they have an outlet to play their beheading tapes. Et cetera. al-Jazeera provides this outlet. It's not entirely irrational to think that foreign policy objectives would be better served if al-Jazeera was a pile of rubble instead of an operating news station.
Tony Blair probably helpfully pointed out the downside of bombing a news station in a country that cooperates with the United States. It's hard to say that you support freedom if you're killing news reporters for the news they report, and I imagine that the Qatar chapter of al-Qaeda would probably get a huge boost in membership shortly after the bombing.
Horrible judgment for Bush to want to do this. I hope that the memo story turns out to be overblown, but I suspect that it isn't.