However, the far-right radicals in the George W. Bush administration described Al Jazeera as a “rogue channel,” even as they were glued to our screens. Later, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret, that the US president had planned to bomb Al Jazeera. The Bush administration took the events of 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003, but Al Jazeera refused to have its journalists embedded with an invading force, saying: “We shall be where the rockets and bombs fall, not where they are fired.” Al Jazeera was the only news station telling the story of the Iraq war from a non-Western perspective, deploying its journalists across the major cities in Iraq. Other international media reported only what they were told by the US army spokesmen. The US forces bombed Al Jazeera’s bureau in Baghdad in April of the same year, killing our colleague Tariq Ayoub. It was pinpoint targeting; especially considering Al Jazeera had in advance provided the US command with the coordinates of our offices. Before that and particularly in November 2001, our office in the Afghan capital, Kabul, came under a barrage of US shells.
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