Qatar, Al Jazeera and the Middle East http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6472

ACHCAR: This is a very peculiar kind of political behavior for this statelet, this emirate of Qatar, which basically is hedging its bets, its funds, in, you know, investing everywhere. And--but, of course, the most solid kind of connection that they have is with the United States, through the fact that they host one of the most important air bases in the region, and the forward headquarters of CENTCOM, the central command of the US Armed Forces, in the Udeid base in Qatar. And they even fund to a great extent--they contribute to funding this US military presence over their territory. And this base is--I mean, this forward command is decisive in monitoring US military action over the whole region.

On the other hand, the state of Qatar has diplomatic relations with one of the few Arab states in this category, and it has been very proud, recently, getting the green light for organizing the [inaudible] which aside from the crazy aspect that it means in terms of expenditure, in terms of building insane number of stadiums and the rest in the country, aside from all that, is politically meaningful in the way that they would be hosting an Israeli team. And that would be a premiere in the Arab world, of having such games with an Israeli team in an Arab country.JAY: When I watch reports by some of the Al Jazeera journalists, it verges on cheerleaders for the Western intervention, which reflects the Qatari government's position.

ACHCAR: Well, you're certainly speaking about Al Jazeera the English channel. So they have also to convince. I mean, the fact that even the secretary general of the League of Arab States, Amr Moussa, had to come out criticizing the killing of civilians by Western strikes, I mean, is telling. So of course they have to equal that. They can't completely ignore that.JAY: At some point, people are going to say, if you're supporting these democracy movements almost everywhere else, you've got to start supporting them in Bahrain. You've got to start supporting them in Saudi Arabia. And then eventually people are going to say, what about Qatar?