We Bombed in Baghdad

Controversy continues to swell around the London Daily Mirror’s report on a government memo in which President Bush appeared to broach the idea of bombing the Arab TV network Al Jazeera with Tony Blair. White House officials brush off the whole tale as “outlandish” and something they “won’t dignify with a response,” where the Daily Mirror’s original sources give somewhat conflicting accounts of the exchange, according to Kevin Sullivan and Walter Pincus in today’s WaPo:

One source is quoted as saying Bush’s alleged remark concerning the network’s headquarters in Qatar was “humorous, not serious,” while the other said, “Bush was deadly serious.”

And for good measure an unnamed official weighed in on the not-so-serious side of the question: “In Washington, a senior diplomat said the remark as recounted in the newspaper ‘sounds like one of the president’s one-liners meant as a joke.”

Yeah, we can totally see that. It’s like that time Bush was doing that whole mushroom-cloud uranium-tube riff about Iraq. Man, remind us to tell you sometime the highjinks that ensued then. —HOLLY MARTINS

Paper Says Bush Talked of Bombing Arab TV Network [WaPo]

U.S. Missile Hits Al Jazeera Office [AFP]

READ MORE: al jazeera, georege w. bush, jokes that aren’t really all that funny, london daily mail, tony blair, top