“It is only too plausible that Bush wanted to wipe out what he saw as a nest of terrorists.”

More on the “Did Bush really want to bomb al-Jazeera?” question from someone who knows what he’s talking about, Juan Cole, who also provides some much-needed perspective on what al-Jazeera really is. It’s worth the ad you’ll have to watch if you’re not a subscriber. Here’s a snippet:

Rumsfeld became increasingly exasperated with the channel as the Iraq adventure went bad. In early 2004, according to Fox News, he began equating its news coverage of Iraq with murder: "'We are being hurt by Al-Jazeera in the Arab world,' he said. 'There is no question about it. The quality of the journalism is outrageous -- inexcusably biased -- and there is nothing you can do about it except try to counteract it.' He said it was turning Arabs against the United States. 'You could say it causes the loss of life,' he added. 'It's causing Iraqi people to be killed' by inflaming anti-American passions and encouraging attacks against Iraqis who assist the Americans, he added."

The notion that reporting on the guerrilla war in Iraq abets terrorism is typical of the logic of any extreme right-wing political movement. All censorship by all military regimes in the Middle East has been imposed on the grounds that journalists' speech is dangerous to society and could cause public turmoil (fitna). Rumsfeld's reasoning in this regard would be instantly recognizable to any Arab journalist from their experience with their own governments…

Rumsfeld, then, considered Al-Jazeera an accessory to terror, and there is no reason to suppose that Bush did not share this view.

Thanks to Shaker Stark for the pointer.