Attack Qatar? Ridiculous!

Of course, Aljazeera is all over the Daily Mirror story in which President Bush is reported to have said he'd like to attack the Arab news networks headquarters in Qatar. They're saying that if the statement's true -- a monumentally big if -- then they're willing to accept that two inadvertent hits on Aljazeera facilities in Iraq were deliberate.

But as they say in Crawford, whoa up!

I'm sure there are days when our military strategists muse about taking out the mouthpiece for the jihadists. After all, the presence of Aljazeera reporters next to our troops in Iraq is akin to having a reporter from der Spiegel alongside Ernie Pyle in a foxhole in Italy.

And, after seeing the latest beheading, or the latest jihad-rant, or the latest gross misreporting of American policy broadcast to the entire world via the network, it doesn't surprise me that W might have joked -- even half-seriously joked -- with his friend and ally Tony about taking the network out.

But rational minds -- unlike the Daily Mirror, WaPo, Aljazeera and the entire left wing of the blogosphere -- would stop right there for the simple reason that Aljazeera broadcasts from Qatar.

Let's make it really, really simple. Here US military facilities in Qatar, provided by Global Security.org:

# Al Udeid AB, QA
# Camp Snoopy, QA
# Camp As Sayliyah QA
# Doha, QA
# Doha IAP, QA
# Umm Said, QA
# Falcon-78 ASP, QA
# Mesaieed, QA

Hot links are provided to each of these facilities here. Here's how Global Security describes our relations with Qatar:

Bilateral relations are cordial and expanding. The U.S. embassy was opened in March 1973. The first resident U.S. ambassador arrived in July 1974. Ties between the U.S. and Qatar are excellent and marked by frequent senior-level consultations in Doha and Washington. Qatar and the United States coordinate closely on regional diplomatic initiative, cooperate to increase security in the Gulf, and enjoy extensive economic links, especially in the hydrocarbons sector.

The chances that we'd jeopardize relations with so valuable an ally ... let alone the entire Arab world ... by taking out a troubling gnat are nil. Nil. But that won't stop MSM and the leftyblogs from accepting it as truth. And worse, it won't stop Aljazeera from telling the Arab world the US is a country that would do such a thing.