Saturday, January 21, 2006

Cover Up or Not?

Blairwatch has an excellent summary of the current status of the al Jazeera memo. It appears that either the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minster's Official Spokesman is being economic with the actuality.

They have issued contradictory statements about the existence of "any memos or notes that record President Bush's discussions with the Prime Minister about the bombing of the al-Jazeera television station in Qatar". The Cabinet office said it "holds information which is relevant". The PMOS says the memo "doesn't refer to bombing the al-Jazeera television station in Qatar."

Even in that strange world of half truths, meaningless denials and deliberate misdirections which politicians inhabit, it's hard to see how both statements can be true. It seems to me that the PMOS's denial removes the possibility that Blair can milk this for political purposes.* He's on record. He is offically not a restraining influence on President Bush.

If the memo is released and that denial was untrue, well, it's always the cover-up that gets you in the end.

* Subject to a caveat I left in a comment to the Blairwatch post.


Tags: ,

No comments: