by Hasan Abu Nimah

Ever since Al Jazeera burst onto the scene nine years ago, with its frank and fearless reporting, there has been plenty of wild speculation too about who stands behind it, where its money comes from and what its hidden agenda could be.

Al Jazeera introduced a new style of professional news reporting accompanied by unprecedented openness in debating Arab and international issues. It broke through the boundaries observed by the region's government-controlled media. It took on all the issues that had been kept off the air, but which millions of ordinary people across the Arab world desperately wanted to discuss.

Until the appearance of Al Jazeera, elites had to rely on foreign media, such as CNN and the BBC, as well as other Western satellite channels and radio stations which provided an alternative but decidedly Western-oriented view of the region. Confidence in state-controlled journalism had already eroded across the Arab world when Al Jazeera appeared to fill a mounting need.

All of this did not come without a price. Many Arab regimes were offended by Al Jazeera's programmes and several ordered its offices shut for extended periods. They were used to such tactics cowing critical voices, but Al Jazeera just surged on boldly.

Al Jazeera, already well-known in the Arab world, became prominent in the West with its coverage of the war in Afghanistan, as news organisations like CNN became dependent on Al Jazeera's information from inside the country. At the time, while Al Jazeera's audience was growing (into the tens of millions), so were its enemies.

We only learned of the novel term "embedded journalists" during the present Iraq war. But without being certain about the usage of this particular term, the idea of licensing certain journalists to cover war and to report only what an official spokesperson would release about the war in the operations newsroom was not entirely new. The Pentagon had already sought to carefully control what journalists saw and reported in the 1991 Gulf War, as well as in Afghanistan.

It has been said that the 1991 Iraq war made the CNN. If that is the case, the Afghanistan war made Al Jazeera. What made Al Jazeera such compelling and necessary viewing during the Afghanistan war was its exposure of the enormous gap between what official, "embedded" journalism revealed and what was actually being experienced on the ground.

When Al Jazeera exposed the vast amount of damage to civilian life and property in Afghanistan, in contradiction to the official reporting of a clean war, its offices were bombed, but few people believed at the time that that was deliberate retaliation. Nor did people believe that the many attacks on journalists during the Iraq war, such as the US bombing of Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, the attack on Palestine Hotel, which killed and injured many journalists, the closure of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya offices permanently in Iraq, and the numerous reported attacks on other journalists were deliberately intended to either punish or curtail "stray" journalism.

People still believed that the sanctity of journalism and media would be somehow respected, no matter how far any disagreement had reached.

Last week's revelation in the Daily Mirror of the existence of a UK government memo recording an April 2004 conversation between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush, in which Bush reportedly proposed to bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar, only to be talked out of it by Blair, has caused universal shock. The Daily Mirror report was not denied by the White House which simply called it "outlandish", nor by 10 Downing Street which resorted to activating the Official Secrets Act to threaten news organisations against making any further disclosures about the matter.

In a striking analysis of events leading to that horrifying development, Jeremy Scahill (Antiwar, Nov. 24, 2005, reprinted from The Nation) links Al Jazeera bombing proposal to unfolding tragic events in Fallujah, where hundreds of Iraqi civilians were being killed and the city of 300,000 was being totally depopulated and levelled by the American onslaught.

We now know that the US forces attacking Fallujah bombarded the city with white phosphorous, which is legal for military purposes if used strictly for illumination. But using the chemical properties of white phosphorous to burn and incinerate human beings, as apparently it was used in Fallujah, is tantamount to using it as a chemical weapon, which is illegal under international law.

Scahill refers to an encounter with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a day before that meeting between Bush and Blair. A reporter asked Rumsfeld: "Can you definitely say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed [in Fallujah]?". Rumsfeld replied: "I can definitely say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable." He added, in response to another question, that "it's disgraceful what that station [Al Jazeera] is doing."

Scahill, even in the absence of proof of the authenticity of the Mirror report, does not rule out the possibility that "the Bush administration could have possibly decided that it was time to take the (Al Jazeera) network out".

It is no wonder that the Bush administration is so keen to hide as much as it can from public view. Every day the picture becomes ever more clear and horrifying. A war that was supposedly launched to rid Iraq of banned chemical weapons (which did not exist) ended up introducing their use (which the US initially denied and then was forced to admit). A war that was later justified on the grounds of excising the evil of Saddam's rule ended up creating a human rights situation which, according to Iyad Allawi, the first post-Saddam Iraqi prime minister, is as bad or even worse than under Saddam. The war that was supposed to prevent the spread of terrorism ended up multiplying it beyond even the most pessimistic predictions.

For anyone who was watching Al Jazeera along with the mainstream US media in the months and years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it was clear that much was successfully hidden from the American public. Ironically, the US media are only now starting to catch up in reporting on all the deceptions and lies that they failed to challenge before the war. Al Jazeera was there all along.

The latest revelations only strengthen the cause of a free media in the Arab world and underscore the risks taken and sacrifices offered by many courageous journalists who continue to fight to reveal the truth.

It is not at all unusual for the truth to be so viciously targeted when it turns ugly. That was a specific trait, though, of dictatorial and oppressive regimes whose main tool for maintaining power was deception, lying to their people, and bombarding them with cheap and nasty propaganda. That was what Saddam was accused of doing and for that reason he "deserved" to be toppled by war. That is the antithesis of free press, the power of the true word, the absolute right of the people to know, and the right of the truth to be respected and exposed without any form of restriction. That is democracy and its principal components of freedom, justice, honesty, correct principles and clean governance, the democracy which distinguished the "liberal West" from the "totalitarian east" during the cold war, the democracy which many oppressed people worldwide aspired one day to achieve and enjoy. It is the democracy of which the United States has all along been a champion, and which Bush is currently bent on introducing in the "Greater Middle East".

The gap is getting wider by the day between the acclaimed principle and the horrifying practice. One may not be pleased or may rightly disagree with what Al Jazeera or, for that matter, any news organisation would say or do. But it is the ultimate betrayal of any form of democracy to shoot the messenger when disagreeing with the message.

What happened in Fallujah was truly horrifying, but it was not only Al Jazeera which revealed the horror. Recently, the Italian TV, RAI, has aired a film, "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre" whose contents are paralysing. And that is not the only revelation. Click on Google for the "Fallujah Massacre" and you will instantly be served with an endless number of sites on that specific subject. How many messengers can one shoot to get rid of the pressing and the cruel realities of a war getting bloodier and uglier by the hour; and for how long can the truth be disguised?

This is indeed a grave consequence. It is a clear indication that those who pushed America to this terrible war are bankruptly facing the wall and are desperately fighting for their political life, but with the most incorrect and counterproductive means. Every attempt so far to disguise an atrocity ends up with a scandal. Has the time not come to save American and Iraqi lives admitting that this war is wrong and unwinnable.

______________________________________________

This article was published in the Wednesday, November 30, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.