Robert Fisk Article

Always hard hitting

Why don't the occupation authorities realise that Iraq cannot be "spun"? This country is living a tragedy of epic proportions, and now - after its descent into hell under Saddam - we are doomed to suffer its contagion. By our hubris and by our lies and our fantasies we are descending into the pit.

For the people of Iraq, the next stage in their long suffering is under way. For us, a new colonial humiliation, the like of which may well end the careers of Bush and Blair, is coming. Of far more consequence is that it is likely to end many innocent lives as well.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3515705&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue

Not sure I'm up to reading the rest.

Thanks for the link.

Eloriel

Of course, we hear about this on CNN, don't we?

we don't live in a free country after all.

One of the pillars of our republic has died and fallen and nobody seems to have noticed.

The free press that is

He sometimes does a marginally good job of showing the other side of issues in the Middle East, but Fisk is too much of an alarmist and to be honest I get the impression that he believes everything wrong with the world is the fault of the West (more particularly, the fault of Israel and America). Infact, I am pretty much sure he thinks that - and I totally disagree.

This guy gets beaten up in Pakistan and he blames that on America too. Fisk could get a parking ticket and find a way to blame that on the the US and Israel as well. I really think he has wandered down the path of such utter hatred for the Western world that he is no longer rational.

I still remember his article about how formidable Baghdad's defenses were. It was an utterly laughable piece which demonstrated that he didn't know anything at all about modern warfare. Why he thought himself qualified to tell us how impregnable the Iraqi capitals defenses were I'll never know, but the end result of that war showed him to be more or less ignorant of anything to do with military tactics and strategy.

Imajika

Seems to me that we never found out what their defenses were, as we paid off their generals and lesser officers to "drop ship, and leave town", evidenced by all that American cash found in and around Baghdad. I have not found Fiske to be anything but very informative.

Also, the problems we are having now seem to me to be what many predicted and, possibly, what was planned at the beginning, that is, to "duke" it out in the alleys of Baghdad and other Iraq cities and to eventually make American casualties unbearable to the American people. IMHO, we do not know the true number of casualties. Too many indications of our govt. hiding true facts of this war from us to keep us complacent.

This piece on the hapless colonizer Bremer, which starts like a passage from Catch-22 and soon becomes an Orwell-like dissection of the viciousness lurking just behind our official lies, is vintage Fisk.

Standing well outside of the new American model of journalism on bended knee, Fisk represents something old fashioned. No "embed" he, along for a joyride to romanticize the invaders. He has lived many years in the region from which he reports; knows history; understands his subjects; has a point of view skeptical of power. Were his penetrating analyses and fearless reporting not enough to recommend him, he also commands a prose style with a rich eye for irony.

For all of the above he's reviled by the American right and the sheepish center. Suckled on Fox and CNN or the inventions of Judy Miller as they are, it's little wonder. His chief offense is to humanize Arabs for Western audiences when what is expected of our reporters is to demonize and depersonalize, the better for empire to get on with its looting and killing.

It's hard to get hold of Fisk's work in the US--harder still now that the Independent is charging for content online--but pop over to Zmag.org and Commondreams.org where it frequently turns up.