Amy Goodman interviews ROBERT FISK

POSTED BY: Howard
UPDATED: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 18:43
VIEWED: 2315
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HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 3:02 AM

AMY GOODMAN: I asked him his assessment of the current situation there and what needs to be done.

ROBERT FISK: Three days after the Americans came to Baghdad, I said the real story is about to begin and that is the story of war against American occupation. A lot of my colleagues thought that was very, very funny -- they hooted at me with laughter. But they're not anymore.

Look, apart from the Kurdistan area, Iraq is in a state of total anarchy and chaos. No roads are safe outside Baghdad. Much of Baghdad is in insurgents hands. Only the little green zones, the armored hotel areas where the westerners live and swim, and some cases don't even leave their rooms, and that applies to many journalists, only here are people allowed to have the illusion that things are getting better, things are improving. Outside in the streets where some journalists still go, including, for example, my colleague Patrick Cockburn of the Independent and myself and the Guardian Newspaper, not most Americans though one or two.

Out in the streets where few of us go is hell on Earth. I managed to get, a couple of weeks ago, to the mortuary in the city of Baghdad. As I often go in the past, counting the bodies of midday and midsummer out in the heat. There were 26 by midday. Nine had arrived by nine in the morning. I managed to get the official figures for July for the total number of violent deaths in Baghdad alone. The figure was 1,100 violent deaths, men, women and children. Shot, butchered, knifed, executed, death squad killings. A figure which, of course is not given out by the Iraqi Health Ministry and certainly not by the occupational authorities.

We now have a situation in Iraq where there is a full scale insurgency by both the Shiites and the Sunnis against western forces. Once an insurgency of that kind starts in a Muslim country, it is impossible to quench it. Sorry, you guys can we put the book back? Let's start again, we got it wrong at one point. You can’t do that. You can't do that. I was discussing with an Iraqi friend three weeks ago in Baghdad what he thought the answer was. He said, “There is no answer. You've got to go. You've got to go.” I wrote at the time that I thought it was a terrible equation in Iraq. It goes like this. The Americans must leave. And the Americans will leave but the Americans can't leave. And that's the equation that turns sand into blood.

Once you become an occupying power you take upon the responsibilities for the civilians which we have not done but you also have a responsibility to yourself. You have to keep justifying over and over and over again to your own populations. You were right to do it: ok, there were no weapons of mass destruction but we got rid of Saddam; ok, we haven't gotten the electricity yet but there will be a constitution. Well, we hope. And we did have elections. Remember them in January? And all the time people die in ever greater numbers. Remember that figure for July that’s just Baghdad. What does that mean for the whole country? 5,000 dead? In July? What does that mean in the whole of Iraq in a year? You see the problem? We're talking a 50,000, 60,000 dead a year now. The worst figure we've heard is 100,000 since 2003 yet still we don't get statistics. When individual journalists have to go to hospital mortuaries and count the bloated corpses on the floor, you have know you've got problems.

The last time I was in Baghdad I began to ask myself whether the dangers -- and I've never done this on any other war except for the Algerian war which was very similar in many ways, questioning whether the dangers of covering Iraq are any longer worth the story. I suppose I think they are. But I guess having looked at my face in the mirror occasionally and seeing the gray hairs, I wonder if I should keep going. I probably will, but I'm not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert, what about the number of journalists who have died? This weekend there's going to be a major anti-war protest in Washington, on the 24th, and all over the country. One of the people or two of the people

GEEZER

Monday, October 24, 2005 3:52 AM

Once again, perhaps you could provide links to these articles, or at least cites so we know where they come from?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 4:01 AM

http://www.democracynow.org/

SEVENPERCENT

Monday, October 24, 2005 4:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Once again, perhaps you could provide links to these articles, or at least cites so we know where they come from?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Geezer, if you have any criticisms of the article, lets see how you do in this thread. See if you can get him to stay on topic, have an original thought, or actually post things that back up his assertions. I sure as hell couldn't in the other thread.

I'm going to call an over/under of three more of his posts before you ask a pointed question that gets a total subject shift; I'll take under. And under 5 before he resorts to calling you either a deluded tool of the American media, or plain ignorant. So think of something good - I'll remember this if you softball ('cause you never do with anyone else).

Anyone else want in?

------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 5:16 AM

see:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=14247

HERO

Monday, October 24, 2005 1:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Howard:

http://www.democracynow.org

Might want to try something a bit more reasonable and unbiased. I suggest:

www.deathtoamerica.org
www.lyingtohelpterroristskillpeople.com
or my favorite, www.bangbus.com

All of these sites have everything you need and are more credible then the good folks at democracynow.

H

GEEZER

Monday, October 24, 2005 2:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SevenPercent:
Geezer, if you have any criticisms of the article, lets see how you do in this thread. See if you can get him to stay on topic, have an original thought, or actually post things that back up his assertions. I sure as hell couldn't in the other thread.

I'm going to call an over/under of three more of his posts before you ask a pointed question that gets a total subject shift; I'll take under. And under 5 before he resorts to calling you either a deluded tool of the American media, or plain ignorant. So think of something good - I'll remember this if you softball ('cause you never do with anyone else).

Anyone else want in?

First let's get the procedural stuff out of the way. A link to an article should bring up the article itself, not just the site it's on. i.e. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/20/1411211 If such a link is in place, you don't have to quote the entire article, just the lead paragraphs, saving FFF some bandwidth. It might also be worthwhile to provide a bit of your own commentary so we know where you stand on what's quoted.

It's hard to criticize most of this article because it's an opinion piece posing as an interview. I suppose I could post verbatim a Fox News analysis, and that would be an appropriate response.

I guess all I can do is pick at a couple of possible factual errors.

Quote:
I managed to get, a couple of weeks ago, to the mortuary in the city of Baghdad. As I often go in the past, counting the bodies of midday and midsummer out in the heat. There were 26 by midday. Nine had arrived by nine in the morning. I managed to get the official figures for July for the total number of violent deaths in Baghdad alone. The figure was 1,100 violent deaths, men, women and children. ... Remember that figure for July that’s just Baghdad. What does that mean for the whole country? 5,000 dead? In July? What does that mean in the whole of Iraq in a year? You see the problem? We're talking a 50,000, 60,000 dead a year now. The worst figure we've heard is 100,000 since 2003 yet still we don't get statistics.

Iraqbodycount.net, no friend of the government, has a max count of about 30,000 civilian deaths. In their latest report: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php they note that Bagdhad accounts for almost half the deaths. These are still grim figures, but nowhere near Mr. Fisk's 5000 a month or 50-60 thousand a year.

Quote:
AMY GOODMAN: We've just returned from New Orleans...One of the first things president Bush did when he started getting involved was say that the bodies of corpses, the corpses were not to be photographed.

We discussed this back in the Katrina thread, but it was the local emergency management people who made this request, not Bush.

Like I say, most of this article is Mr Fisk's opinion. I assume it's also HOWARD's opinion, although he might just be posting this for a laugh. He doesn't say. Other sources have differing opinions about the Shia getting on board with the government, the development of a useful Iraqi army, the new constitution, etc. Hard to refute opinion. You can just agree or disagree. We see that here all the time.

Next.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 7:25 PM

There is plenty of eye witness facts
as well as interpretation.

It is amazing how ignorant and conceted some
people can be when they think that their
account of the situation in Iraq based upon
b.s. US media is more accurate than from a man
who has spent months there and has covered
every war of the past 40 years.

Fisk explains how US reporters do not even
venture out of their compounds which he Fisk
does.

For the record Fisk's persona does sometimes
annoy me but that does NOT take away from the
substance and integrity of his work and his
eye witness account. I do not feel I have to
be in love with someone to acknowledge their
credibility.

HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 7:27 PM

SEE ALSO

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=14247

plus the many links at bottom of page

HOWARD

Monday, October 24, 2005 7:38 PM

plus also check out this thread

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=14217

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