Square peg, round hole
I wonder if this question couldn’t have been phrased a little better:
Adam Price (Carmarthen East & Dinefwr, PC): To ask the Prime Minister what information he received on action that the United States Administration proposed to take against the Al-Jazeera television channel.
Tony Blair (Prime Minister, HM Treasury): None.
Scaryduck went to the Kevin Maguire/Wadah Khanfar pow wow last night at which Maguire was pretty unequivocal:
* A source (which Maguire will not name) approached the Mirror with details of a top secret memo, which had “accidentally” found its way into the papers of a certain MP. Noting that the memo contained, amongst other things, details of UK and US troop movements in Iraq, said MP turned it back to Downing Street.
* The memo also contains details of a conversation between George W Bush, and his London spokesman Tony Blair, in which the Leader of the Free World reveals plans to attack Al Jazeera TV, a civilian broadcaster financed by the government of Qatar. Mr Blair, for all his faults, tells him that this may not be a particularly good idea, and other, unnamed officials tend to concur with Tony’s line of thinking.
* The Mirror, out of courtesy, informs Downing Street that they will be publishing details of this memo. Downing Street has a hissy fit, and the White House, according to Maguire “went beserk”, leading to threats of the Official Secrets Act against anybody who is even considering publishing the document.
* Of course,” said Maguire, “the government wouldn’t be using the Official Secrets Act if the reports weren’t true. This government will go to great lengths to keep this memo secret.”
So how to parse Price’s question so that it leaves a get out for Blair, assuming what Maguire says is true? I can’t spot one - the two positions won’t square for me - but then my mind doesn’t work like a Number 10 press officer’s.
Posted on November 29th, 2005 at 8:54 am
| See also • The Guardian: MPs leaked Bush plan to hit al-Jazeera • Bombing the messenger • …but at least he’s *our* bastard |
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Very simple. Sociopaths will, faced with a problem simply lie.
I was present when the Flying pigs , Fagin posters broke on Jan 30th 2005, pre election. The Editor of the Manchester Evening News asked him about them , TB simply said he hadn’t seen them and moved on.
Yeah ! Like !
But with the posters it’s a classic case of plausible deniability. Unless somebody produces a photo of Blair pointing at one of the posters, laughing, how do you prove he’s lying?
If/when this memo comes out and it flatly contradicts Blair’s answer to Price, how would he “nuance” that?
And after reading Marcel Berlins yesterday, I wonder why some editor hasn’t gone, “Sod it, let’s go…”
Did Mr Tony receive information on action that the United States Administration proposed to take? Certainly not. He was party to a number of informal conversations with President Bush, in the course of which certain possible courses of action on the part of the US and its allies were discussed, some more favourably than others. As I’m sure we all realise, this kind of discussion takes place all the time between heads of government, and it would be neither practical nor appropriate to publish details of all such discussions.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and wash my mouth out.
Further, you can’t bomb a “television channel” — it’s an abstract entity (same way you can’t have a war against “terror”). Perhaps he should have asked “any targets in Qatar”, though presumably he’d have ducked that a slightly different way.