I don't know, frankly, whether President Bush sought to bomb Qatar in order to destroy al-Jazeerah TV.

But the way this story has been reported, and not reported, makes me question just how freedom-loving the U.S. and Britain really are.

Let me summarize that:

• The story has been virtually ignored by the U.S. press. It has been left to political blogs to carry it forward.
  
• The British government is prosecuting those who leaked the story under its Official Secrets Act, and the BBC has given it no coverage, making it appear to be a government propaganda organ.
  

Clearly there is circumstantial evidence for the charge. The agency's offices in Afghanistan and Baghdad were bombed. Both times the U.S. claimed it was an accident. The U.S.-backed government in Baghdad later kicked Al-jazeerah out of the country. The U.S. said Iraq was acting on its own.

But the direct evidence of a 2004 memo on the subject of bombing Al-Jazeerah's main office in Doha, Qatar, if it's real, shows George W. Bush to be nothing more than Saddam Hussein in a business suit. Add the use of white phosphorous (it's a chemical weapon), the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the Cheney fight to maintain torture as an option, and impartial observers will draw their own conclusion.

The point is, simply, that this was an important story.

There is enormous collateral damage from the failure to follow up.

• Government subsidies of the BBC are predicated on its being independent. Turning it into a government poodle destroys the whole purpose of the subsidy.
  
• The U.S. press' silence on the story only increases the cynicism of American readers and viewers.
  

If there is evidence proving this story is untrue, then by all means bring it on. But the intimidation and destruction of media credibility engaged in by the U.S. and U.K. governments is doing incalculable damage to their own interests, everywhere. They make our enemies look far less evil, and enable those enemies to do untold horrors with impunity.

If Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, what will impartial justice say about us? We need to investigate that question, if not now then after this is over. Until we do, America and its worst enemies are equivalent in the eyes of the world.