Ex-Minister Says British Spies Bugged Kofi Annan's Office

"A former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet asserted today that British intelligence services conducted electronic surveillance of the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in the run-up to the Iraq war. "

This "breaking story" just goes to show you how much the journalism scene has changed these days with respect to Bubba Bush.

BubbaLogic posted the origins of this story pre-war when a British newspaper, the Guardian, obtained secret information about a request issued by the NSA to foreign intelligence affiliates for any information pertaining to the leanings of the "swing members" of the Security Council. The leak was poo-pooed in the Drudge Report, mentioned on MSN Slate, but otherwise received no attention whatsoever in the US press. A short time later, the person who leaked the request, Ms. Gun, was prosecuted in Britain, and this still received no press in the US.

There are a lot of ways of looking at this non-reporting, but I don't think that you should consider the story as being unimportant. On the contrary, to those who heard about it, it was a devastating blow to the remnants of American pre-Iraq political image.

Well, now we see the story coming up again. What's amazing is that it's seen as a blow to Blair but no problem for Bubba Bush. Blair is fighting to keep the estime of his party members and he's trying to defend his actions. But Bush has yet to explain why his government is soliciting espionnage on UN council members. Perhaps it's just a question of diminished expectations on Bush's behalf.

A story that broke a year ago in the UK but went unnoticed in the US has now resurfaced on the front page of the New York Times. Isn't that a message about the changing Times?