Another saucy Downing Street memo

The story is that Bush apparently suggested in a conversation with Tony Blair that he ought to bomb al-Jazeera, allegedly in reprisal for airing messages from al-Qaeda and other deeds deemed counter to the cause. Variously, it has been dismissed as a joke — "sounds like one of the president's one-liners" a senior Washington diplomat is quoted as saying to the Washington Post. Elsewhere in the story, the Post offers:

a senior U.S. intelligence official said that it was clear the White House saw al-Jazeera as a problem, but that although the CIA's clandestine service came up with plans to counteract it, such as planting people on its staff, it never received permission to proceed. 'Bombing in Qatar was never contemplated,' the former official said.

Weird deja vue, from a certain other seemingly endless and unwinnable war: bombing in Cambodia was also never contemplated — publicly. But it happened. Maybe that was just a joke too...

Side note: even though it's all just a romp, the Brits are moving to prosecute bureaucrats and journalists responsible for disseminating these official (and, apparently, 'hilarious') state secrets.

-Interlocutor