ratitor's note: The following has been edited to remove the embolalia
[embolalia (m-bo-la'li-ya) n. the use of virtually meaningless filler words,
phrases, or stammerings in speech, whether as unconscious utterings while
arranging one's thoughts or as a vacuous inexpressive mannerism] and
minimally clean-up grammatical syntax to enhance readability.
The following is mirrored from its source at:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/fisk_interview_demnow22apr2003.htm
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Robert Fisk: Looking Beyond War
Interview By Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
22 April 2003
Amy Goodman, After spending a month in Iraq, could you describe
Democracy Now! your thoughts?
Host:
Robert Fisk, My assumption is that history has a way of repeating
The Independent: itself. I was talking to a very militaristic Shiite
Muslim from Nashas about only five days ago and a
journalist was saying to him "Do you realize how
historic these days are?" I said to him "Do you
realize how history is repeating itself?" and he
turned to me and said "Yes history is repeating
itself." I knew what he meant.
He was referring to the British invasion of Iraq in
1917 and Lt. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude, when we turned
up in Baghdad. Sir Stanley Maude issued a document
saying "we have come here not as conquerors but as
liberators to free you from generations of tyranny."
And within three years we were losing hundreds of men
every year in the guerilla war against the Iraqis who
wanted real liberation not by us from the Ottomans
but by them from us. I think that's what's going to
happen with the Americans in Iraq.
I think a war of liberation will begin quite soon.
Which of course will be first referred to as a war by
terrorists, by al Qaeda, by remnants of Saddam's
regime. Remnants (remember that word) but it will be
waged particularly by Shiite Muslims against the
Americans and the British to get us out of Iraq and
that will happen. Our dreams that we can liberate
these people will not be fulfilled in this scenario.
So what I've been writing about these past few days
is simply the following. We claim that we want to
preserve the national heritage of the Iraqi people.
Yet my own count of government buildings burning in
Baghdad before I left was 158, of which the only
buildings protected by the United States Army and the
Marines were the Ministry of Interior, which has the
intelligence corp of Iraq and the Ministry of Oil. I
needn't say anything else about that.
Every other ministry was burning. Even the Ministry
of Higher Education/Computer Science was burning. And
in some cases American marines were sitting on the
wall next to the ministries watching them burn. The
Computer Science Minister actually talked to the
marine, Corporal Tinaha. In fact, I actually called
his fiance to tell her he was safe and well.
So the Americans have allowed the entire core and
infrastructure of the next government of Iraq to be
destroyed, keeping only the Ministry of Interior and
the Ministry of Oil. That tells it's own story.
On top of that I was one of the first journalists to
walk into the National Archaeological Museum and the
National Library of Archives with all the Ottoman and
state archives and the Koranic Library of the
Ministry of Religious Endowment and all were burned.
Petrol was poured on these documentations over them
and they were all burned in 3000 degrees of heat.
With all that irony, I managed to rescue 26 pages of
the Ottoman documentation, the Ottoman library.
Documents of Ottoman armies, camel thieves, letters
from the sheriff Hussein of Mecca to Ali Pasha
(Ottoman ruler of Baghdad). When I got to the
Jordanian border the Jordanian customs authorities
stole these documents from me and refused to even
give me a receipt for them. A shattering comment I'm
afraid to say on the Arab world but particularly on
the American occupation of Baghdad.
After the Koranic Library was set on fire I raced to
the headquarters of the Third Marine Force Division
in Baghdad and I said there is this massive Koranic
Library on fire and what can you do? Under the Geneva
Conventions the US Occupation Forces have a moral --
whatever occupations forces there are, and they
happen to be American -- have a legal duty to protect
documents and various embassies. There was a young
officer who got on the radio and said there was some
kind of Biblical library on fire. Biblical for
heavens sake. I gave him a map of the exact
locations, the collaterals on the locations to the
Marines. Nobody went there. All the Korans were
burned. Korans going back to the 16th Century totally
burned.
Somebody has an interest in destroying the center of
a new government and the cultural identity of Iraq.
Now the American line is these are Saddamite
remnants, remnants of a Saddam regime. I don't
believe this. If I was a remnant of a Saddam regime
and say I was given $20,000 to destroy the library I
would say thank you very much and when the regime was
gone I would pocket the money. I wouldn't go and
destroy the library. I don't need to. I've got the
money.
Somebody or some institution or some organization
today now is actively setting out to destroy the
cultural identity of Iraq and the ministries that
form the core of a new Iraq government. Who would be
behind that and who would permit it to happen? Why is
it that the US military, so famed for its ability to
fight its way across the Tigris and the Euphrates
river and come into Baghdad will not act under the
Geneva Convention to protect these institutions? That
is the question. And I do not have the answer to it.
Amy Goodman: There was a report today that said that the US Army
ignored warnings from its own civilian advisors that
could have prevented the looting of Baghdad's
National Museum -- this is from the London Observer.
It said that the Office of the Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance set up to supervise
reconstruction identified the museum as a prime
target for looters in a memo to Army commanders a
month ago. The memo said it should be the second
priority for the Army after securing the National
Bank. General Jay Garner, who's taking over, is said
to be livid. One angry reconstruction official told
the Observer, we ask for just a few soldiers at each
building or if they feared snipers then at least one
or two tanks. The tanks were doing nothing once they
got inside the city, yet the generals refused to
deploy them.
Robert Fisk: The Observer is always quite a bit late on the story.
There was a website set up between American
archaeologists and the Pentagon many weeks ago
listing those areas of vital national heritage to
Iraq which might be looted, damaged, stormed, burned.
The museum was on that list. The museum, I have seen
physically marked on the satellite pictures which the
Marines have to move around in Baghdad. They know
it's there. They know what it is.
When I got to the museum, which is far more than a
week ago, there were gun battles going on between
rioters and looters, bullets skittering up the walls
of apartment blocks outside. It was quite clear when
I walked in that looting was quite clearly . . .
Someone had opened the doors, the huge safe doors of
the storeroom of the Museum with a key.
The looting was on a most detailed, precise and
coordinated scale. The people knew what the wanted to
go for. Those Grecian statues they didn't want they
decapitated and threw to the floor. Those earrings
and gold ornaments and bullring gods that they wanted
to take, they took. And within a few days those
priceless heritage items of Iraq's history were on
sale in Europe and in America. I don't believe that
that happened by chance.
Two of the interesting things: number one is the
looters knew exactly what they wanted and they got it
out of a country with a speed that we as journalists
cannot get our stories out of the country. Secondly,
and much more serious in the long term, the
arsonists, the men who were going around burning must
have had maps, they knew where to go. They knew what
would not be defended by the Americans.
In one case -- this is a city without electricity,
without water -- I recognized one of the men who was
burning things. He had a small beard, a goatee beard
and he had a red T-shirt. The second time I saw him,
I looked at him and he pointed a [inaudible] rifle at
me, he realized I recognized him. They were coming to
the scenes of arsonists in blue and white buses. God
knows where these buses were from. They weren't city
corporation buses although city corporation buses
were being used by looters.
But the arsonists were an army. They were calculated
and they knew where to go. They had maps. They were
told where to go. Who told them where to go? Who told
them where the Americans would not shoot at them or
would not harm them? This is a very, very important
question that still needs to be reconciled and
answered. And I do not have an answer.
None of my colleagues unfortunately have asked the
American military in Qatar, in Doha what the answer
is. Somebody told these people where to go. They had
the maps. They knew the places to go and burn. They
knew the American military would not be there and
they went there and they burned. Who gave them those
instructions. I don't know the answer. I really don't
know the answer. But there is an answer and we should
know what this [is].
Amy Goodman: Maguire Gibson, a leading Mesopotamian scholar from
the University of Chicago, said he has good reason to
believe that the looting or the stealing of the
artifacts from the Museum with men going in with
forklifts and even keys to vaults, he has good reason
to believe this was orchestrated from outside the
country.
Robert Fisk: There is certainly a reason to believe, Amy, that
there were keys involved because some of the vaults I
saw were opened with keys and not with hammers or
guns or explosives. Fork lift trucks? They had the
ability to move heavy statues into trucks. When I got
there they had just done that. But I don't know if
they used fork lift trucks. I think that might be a
little too Hollywood. There were men who were guards
to the museum in long gray beards who had taken
rifles, [inaudible] AK-47's, weapons to defend what
was left. But if you're saying to me Do I have
evidence of fork lift trucks? -- No.
Do I have evidence that they knew what they were
coming for? Yes! Do I have evidence that this was
premeditated? Yes! Do I believe that the arsonists
were trained and organized from outside, who knew
whether or not the Americans would be present or
whether the American military would defend certain
buildings? Yes!
They undoubtedly did know the Americans would not
confront them. And the Americans did not confront
them. I actually got to a point where I was going
around Baghdad a few days ago and every time I saw a
tongue of flame or smoke I'd race off in my car to
the area and the last place I went to what was
burning was the Department of Higher
Education/Computer Science. As I approached it I saw
a marine sitting on the wall.
I bounded out of the car and raced back and thought I
had better see this guy and I took his name down. His
name was Ted Nyhom and he was a member of the Third
Marine Fourth Regiment or Fourth Marine Third
Regiment. He gave me the number of his fiancé Jessica
in the states. I actually rang her up and said "Your
man loves you dearly" (he's a real person). And I
said, "How the hell is this happening next door?" He
said, "We're guarding a hospital." And I said,
"There's a fire next door, a whole bloody government
ministry is burning." He said, "We can't look
everywhere at the same time." I said, "Ted, what
happened?" And he said, "I don't know."
Now when you go to sit down . . . he was a nice guy.
I was happy to ring his fiancé up and tell her that
he was safe. But something happened there. There was
a fire, an entire government ministry was burning
down next to him and he did nothing. It didn't seem
strange to him that he wasn't asked to do anything.
Now there's something strange about that. It's not a
question of whether American academic said, Is there
something wrong with the moral property of an Army
that doesn't stop looting and arson? There's
something terribly wrong there.
My country's army in Basra was also remiss in this
way. Our Minister of Defense, Geoff Hoon, said, `oh
well they were liberating their own property' when
people were looting hospitals for god's sakes. So the
British don't get off on this either. But the
Americans were the most remiss. In the city of
Baghdad against all the international conventions,
particularly the Geneva Convention, which have a
specific reference to pillage . . . in fact pillage
appears as a crime against humanity in the Hague
Conventions in 1907 upon which the Geneva Conventions
of 1949 were based.
There is a whole reference to pillage and the
Americans did nothing. They did nothing to prevent
the pillage of the entire cultural history of Iraq,
of the Museum, or the documentary history of the
National Archives, or the Koranic Library of the
Ministry of Religious Endowment or of the 155 other
government locations around Baghdad. One has to ask
the question, Why was this permitted to happen? I
don't know the answer.
Amy Goodman: We're talking to Robert Fisk, correspondent for The
Independent newspaper in Britain. He has just come
out of Iraq where he has spent the last month. He is
back in Beirut where he is based. Robert, the
hospitals, you spent a good amount of time there. Can
you describe what you saw and perhaps what we're not
seeing. If you can follow our coverage at all here in
the United States.
Robert Fisk: As a matter of fact this afternoon, I took several
roles of film (real film, not digitized camera film)
into my film development shop here and was looking
again at the film of children who'd been hit by
American cluster bombs in Hilla and Babylon whom I
took photographs of. I'm rather shocked at myself for
taking pictures of people in such suffering. I would
have to say, and one must be fair as a correspondent,
that I think that the Iraqis did position military
tanks and missiles in civilian areas. They did so
deliberately; they did so in order to try and
preserve their military apparatus in the hope that
the Americans would not bomb civilian areas. The
Americans did bomb civilian areas. They may or may
not have destroyed the military targets. They
certainly destroyed human beings and innocent
civilians.
War is a disgusting, cruel, vicious affair. I say to
people over and over again: war is not about
primarily victory or defeat, it's primarily about
human suffering and death. If you look through the
pictures, which I have beside me now as I speak to
you, of little girls with huge wounds in the side of
their faces made by the pieces of metal from cluster
bombs, American cluster bombs, it's degoutant, as the
French say. Disgusting to even look at. But I have to
look at them. I took these pictures.
The Iraqi regime -- which was brutal and cruel, was
very happy in every sense of the word to use these
pictures as propaganda -- must also of course have
its own responsibility for this. But for me, the most
appalling admission came when the civil coalition,
which means the Americans, the British and a few
Australians, decided to bomb an area, a residential
area of Monsur, with four 2000-pound bombs.
I hate to use these childish phrases like
"bunker-busters," but these are the same bombs they
dropped on Tora Bora to try and get the caves where
Bin Laden was hiding in 2001 in Afghanistan. And
these huge bombs destroyed the lives of a minimum of
14 civilians [in Monsur]. The central command in
Doha, Qatar said they believed Saddam was there and
that they would send forensic experts.
But I went there a week after the Americans entered
Baghdad and no forensic experts had been sent there
indeed. The morning I turned up (I'm talking about 4
days ago) the decomposing, horribly smelling body of
a little baby was pulled out of the rubble and I can
promise you it wasn't Saddam Hussein. But the
Americans went on insisting their forensic scientists
were searching to see if Saddam Hussein had died
there. He did not and nor did their forensic
scientists bother. They didn't even care about going
there. Outrageous, I'm sorry to say. Outrageous. I
have to be a human being as well as a journalist.
Again, one needs to also say that Saddam Hussein was
. . . is -- I'm sure he's still alive -- a most
revolting man. He did use gas against the Iranians
and against the Kurds. I also have to say that when
he used it against the Iranians (and I wrote about it
in my own newspaper at the time, the Times) the
British Foreign Office told my editor the story was
not helpful because at that stage of course, Saddam
Hussein was our friend. We were supporting him. The
hypocrisy of war stinks almost as much as the
civilian casualties.
But let's go back to the hospitals. The Americans
used cluster bombs in civilian areas where they
believed there were military targets. Near Hilla I
think the Iraqis probably did put military vehicles.
That does not excuse the Americans. There are
specific references and paragraphs in the Geneva
Conventions to protect what are called `protected
persons' -- -- that is to say, civilians -- even if
they are in the presence of enemy combatants.
But I think the Iraqis did put military positions
amongst civilians. I can go so far as to say that at
the Museum, (which was looted to the great disgrace
of the Americans) prior to the American entry into
Baghdad, it was clear when I got to the Museum after
the American entry, that the Iraqi army had placed
gun positions and gun pits inside the Museum grounds,
at one point next to a beautiful 3000-year-old statue
of a winged bull. There were other occasions when I
could clearly see SAM-6 mobile tracked missiles
parked very close to civilian houses. The Iraqis did
use civilians as cover. And the Americans, knowing
they were there, bombed the civilians anyway. So who
is the war criminal? I think both of them are. There
you go. That's the story.
Amy Goodman: Robert Fisk, do you have any idea about casualty
numbers right now?
Robert Fisk: No, it's impossible Amy, it's impossible. I took my
notebook. I can tell you how many people in each ward
were wounded in particular wards, or in particular
hospitals. I can tell you which doctors told me how
many people died in A, B, and C hospitals on certain
dates. But when it comes to the overall figure the
losing side has no statistics. Because of course the
statistics die with the regime and the winning side
controls all the figures. Thousands of Iraqis must
have died.
There was one particularly terrible scene on what was
known as Highway 8. It was the main motorway
alongside the Tigris river, with some university of
Baghdad on the other side of the river, where for two
and a half days American soldiers of the 3rd Infantry
division were fighting off ambushes, most of them
members of the Republican Guard. They mounted there
and I talked to all sides here. I talked to
survivors. I talked to civilians. I talked to the
Americans on the tanks.
The ambush began at 7:30 on the last Monday of the
war in the morning. And the motorway was quite busy
with civilian traffic. The American 3rd Infantry
Division commander told me that he saw civilian
traffic and he ordered his men to fire warning shots,
which they did he said two or three times. After
which they fired at the cars. And he said "I had a
duty to protect my men." I have to be fair and quote
what he said. He said "I had a duty to protect my
men, to protect my soldiers and we didn't know if
they were carrying RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades)
or explosives." But cars which did not stop were
fired at by United States tanks of the 3rd Infantry
Division.
I walked down the line of cars which were torn apart
by American tank shells. There was a very young woman
burned black in the back of one car. Her husband or
father or brother beside her, dead. There was the leg
of a man beside another car which had been blown
clean in half by an American M1-A1 tank. There were
piles of blankets covering families with children who
had been blown to pieces by the Americans. It was a
real ambush. They were fired at by RPG-7's.
In one case, one tank I saw (the American commander
took me around) who'd received five hits, one of them
on the engine. And he had opened fire at a motorcycle
carrying two members of the Iraqi Republican Guard.
One had died instantly. I found his body beside the
road with his blood dribbling into the gutter. The
other was wounded and the American brought him back
to the tank, gave him first aid and sent him off to a
medical company.
The American commander -- the same commander who told
his tank crew to open fire on the civilian cars --
told me that he saved the life of the second
Republican Guard who was on the motorcycle and the
guy survived. I have to assume that's correct. I
didn't see him.
But three days later, the bodies were still,
including the young woman, were still lying in the
cars. And bits of human remains were lying around in
blankets. The stench was terrible. There were flies
everywhere. The American officer then told me that he
had asked the Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of
the Red Cross, to move the bodies and the cars . . .
But they were still there, along with the bodies the
next day. That's a fact. I saw.
Amy Goodman: What about the journalists? It looks like there is
the highest percentage of foreign journalists, as a
percentage of foreign casualties, that we have seen
in a long time. It looks like the number at this
point is 14 journalists killed as well as the
shelling of the Palestine Hotel.
Robert Fisk: I think that the number of journalists covering war
-- indeed, the number of journalists in general -- is
increasing all the time. And so I suppose it's not a
very romantic thing to say but I suppose that as the
number of journalists increase, the number of
casualties among journalists will increase as well.
There were a number of incidents which we seem to
have understood. The ITV reporter, who got north of
the American lines near Basra, was returning and got
shot by US Marines, along with his crew. Another
British reporter who may or may not have committed
suicide, I don't know, which has nothing to do with
the Americans or the Iraqis per se, if that's the
case.
We have the Palestine hotel, which is one of the more
serious cases of all. That particular day began with
the killing of the journalist from Al Jazeera, the
Qatari/Doha television chain, which of course became
famous in Afghanistan for producing tapes and airing
tapes of Osama bin Laden. I had by chance, four days
before Tariq[ Ayoub]'s death, on the roof of that
television station, been giving a broadcast myself
live to Doha.
While I was broadcasting, a cruise missile went
streaking by behind the building and literally moved
over the bridge on the right and carried on up the
river Tigris and there was an airstrike behind me.
And I said to Tariq afterwards, "I think this is the
most dangerous bloody newspaper office in the history
of the world, you know? You're in really great danger
here. There were gun pits on the right." And he
agreed with me.
Four days later, while he was on the roof preparing
to do a broadcast, an American jet came in so low
(according to his colleagues downstairs, they thought
it would land on the roof) and fired a single missile
at the generator beside him and killed him. About
three and a quarter hours later, an American M1-A1
Abrams tank on the Jumeirah River bridge (about three
quarters of a mile from the Palestine Hotel where the
journalists were staying) fired a single round, a
depleted uranium round as I understand, at the office
of Reuters where they were filming the same tanks on
the bridge.
I was actually between the tank and the hotel when
the round was fired. I was trying to get back from a
story, an assignment I'd been on, what I'd put myself
on. And the shell with an extraordinary noise
swooshed over my head and hit the hotel . . . bang!
Tremendous concussion. White Smoke.
When I got there, two of my colleagues, one from
Reuters and one from Spanish Television, both of whom
were to die within a few hours (the first one within
half an hour), were being brought out in blood-soaked
bed-sheeting. And a Lebanese colleague, a woman,
Samia, with a piece of metal in her brain. She
recovered. She had brain surgery. She's married to
the London Financial Times correspondent here in
Beirut. She survived.
The initial reaction was very interesting because the
BBC went on air saying it was an Iraqi
rocket-propelled grenade. Someone wanted to frighten
the press. Then it emerged, thanks be to God for the
attempt to get the truth, that TV3, a French channel,
had recorded the tanks' movements. I actually rushed
to their Bureau and they showed me the videotape. You
saw the American tanks for five minutes beforehand,
in complete silence -- there was nothing happening --
going onto the bridge, moving its turret, and then
firing at the hotel. The camera shakes and pieces of
plaster and paint fall in front of the camera.
Clearly, it's the same shot. Four or five minutes in
which nothing is happening.
Now I was in between the tank and the hotel and there
was complete silence. When initially the Americans
said they knew nothing about it, when it became clear
the French had a film, before the Americans realized
how long the film was running for prior to the
attack, they said that the tank was under persistent
sniper and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire which
is not true. I would have heard it because I was
close to the tank and the hotel and it would have
been picked up on the soundtrack, which it wasn't.
This statement was made by General Buford Blount, the
same 3rd Infantry Division commander who boasted that
he'd be using depleted uranium munitions during the
war in an interview with Le Monde in March, a month
ago. He then said that there had been sniper fire and
after the round was fired by the American tank, the
sniper fire had ceased. In other words, the clear
implication was that the gunfire had come from the
Reuters office, which was a most mendacious, vicious
lie by General Blount.
General Blount lied in order to cover up the death of
journalists. It was interesting that when indeed the
Americans actually arrived in central Baghdad within
a day no journalists were raising these issues with
the Americans who'd just arrived. They should have
done . . . I did actually. And in fact two days
later, I was on the Jumeirah bridge, and climbed onto
the second tank and asked the tank commander whether
he fired at the journalists and he said, "I don't
know anything about that, sir. I'm new here." Which
he may well have been. How do I know if he was there
before or not?
But that tank round was fired deliberately at the
hotel and General Blount's counterfeit -- the
commander of the 3rd Infantry Division -- was a lie.
A total lie. And it was a grotesque lie against my
colleagues. Samia Mahul had a piece of metal in her
brain, A young woman who's most bravely reported the
Lebanese civil war. And against the Ukrainian
cameraman for Reuters and against the Spanish
cameraman in the room upstairs. It was a most
disgusting lie. As a journalist, I have to say that.
And General Blount has not apologized for it. So far
he has gotten away with his lie I'm sorry to say.
Amy Goodman: Nouvelle Observatoure, the French Newspaper, is
reporting that a US Army captain named Captain
Wolford said unlike what the military reported, he
did not see sniper fire from the Palestine hotel. But
he did see what he thought was light glinting off of
binoculars from one of the hotel's balconies. He said
he had never been told the Palestine Hotel was the
home base for almost all the international
journalists in Baghdad and assumed the --
Robert Fisk: I've heard this story. I know this. If American
commanders in the field are not told the intelligence
information about where people are in what hotels, it
doesn't say much about the American military. I don't
think the American military people are inherently
wrong or awful or bad. I met lots of American
soldiers and Marines of course. Marines insist on
telling me they're not soldiers, which is an odd
thing for a Brit to hear. But I have to accept it.
They were decent people.
One young Marine came up to me. He wanted to use my
mobile phone to call his home and I let him, of
course. And he said, "I'm really sorry, sir, about
the death of your colleagues." Like he meant it. I
don't think these are intrinsically bad people. I
think the idea that there's some ghastly, evil moving
among the American military is not true. I don't
believe that. I think they're decent people and I
think they want to be decent people. When their
generals lie, it must be hard, as Buford Blount lied.
General Blount lied about the journalists. He lied.
He was a [inaudible] soldier.
But the ordinary soldiers I met, I think they were
quite sympathetic. I think they understood. And I
think that in some cases, they were very upset about
what had happened to our colleagues. But they were
also upset about civilian casualties whom they'd
caused.
When on Highway 8, I was interviewing the American
tank commander who'd given the order to fire at the
civilian cars on the road, I thought he was a decent
person. I have to say that when I read my notes
afterwards, and I reflected upon the fact that the
bodies of the innocents were still lying in the cars
three days later, I was less inclined to be kind to
him. I was less inclined to think he was a nice
person.
But I don't think that the American soldiers were bad
people. I think they believed in what they were
doing, up to the point that you can. I think that
they believed that their war was an honorable one,
even though I don't think it was. But I think that
they had been previously misled and I think something
has gone wrong with the leadership of the American
military when you can have a general like Blount
lying about the press. If to see a flash of what
appears to be a camera or some kind of reflecting
instrument in a window is to be the signal for
capital punishment for those who are legitimately
filming the war for an international news agency,
something has gone terribly wrong. I think the real
problem at the end of the day lies in the White
House, with President Bush.
There were a number of American Marines and soldiers
I met who were very helpful to me in understanding
what was happening. At one point, I was next to an
American tank that came under fire -- I don't know
where from -- and I thought the soldiers behaved with
great restraint. They could have shot at civilians.
In some cases, I know in other places in Baghdad,
they did and killed people and I think it was a war
crime to have done so.
But in the American tank I was close to, they did
not. And those soldiers behaved admirably. I have to
say that. I think they were frightened, I think they
were tired. They hadn't washed etc. But I'm sorry. I
don't get too romantic about soldiers who invade
other peoples' countries. But I thought their
discipline was probably pretty good, to be frank. In
other places, it was not. But again, war is primarily
about suffering and death, not about victory and
defeat and not about presidents who -- oh, I'm so
tired of talking about your president. Or indeed the
president of Iraq who's a pretty vicious man frankly
if he's still alive. Where is he? That should be your
last question, Amy: Where is Saddam Hussein?
Amy Goodman: I'm not there yet. But you mentioned your colleague
--
Robert Fisk: You're going to ask me where he is, aren't you? (they
laugh)
Amy Goodman: OK, where is he?
Robert Fisk: You know what, I have this absolute fixation that
he's in Belarus, the most horrible ex-Soviet state
that exists: Minsk. I tell you why I think this. This
is long before the Iran -- sorry, Freudian slip --
long before the Iraq war. I had this absolute
obsession that Minsk -- I've been to Minsk. It's a
horrible city! It's full of whiskey, corruption,
prostitutes and damp apartments. Very, very favorable
to the Ba'ath party of Iraq.
And I noticed in the local newspaper here in Beirut,
I fear about six or seven weeks ago an article that
said that the Olympic committee of Belarus in Minsk
had invited Uday Hussein, beloved son of the `great
ruler of Iraq,' to a chess tournament in Minsk and I
thought, My God, this is where they're going to go.
And if you think of all the stories which may be
complete hogwash of how they got out by train with
the Russian ambassador through Syria, where else to
go but Minsk?
I actually mentioned it to my foreign desk and my
foreign editor said, "Off you go to Belarus!" and I
said, "No please, please, not Belarus! I've been
there before. It's awful!" But I do have this kind of
suspicion maybe he's there. But there you go. He may
be in Baghdad. He may be captured tonight. I really
have not the slightest idea.
Amy Goodman: Robert Fisk, you mentioned your Lebanese colleague
who has shrapnel in her head and said she covered the
civil war in Beirut, which brings us to a piece you
did about questioning whether what we're going to see
in Iraq is the beginning of a civil war between the
Sunni and the Shiia. What do you think now?
Robert Fisk: If it's not the beginning of a civil war between the
Sunni and the Shiia in Iraq, it will be the beginning
of a war of liberation by the Sunni and the Shiia
themselves against the Americans. My feeling is that
there will be a war -- it may already have begun --
against the Americans by the Iraqis. The Kurds will
play a different role for all kinds of reasons, but
the Sunnis and the Shiias may well find some unity in
trying to get rid of their occupiers.
One can't help in the Middle East but be struck by
the ironies of history. Just over a week before --
no, two weeks before America invaded Iraq, a document
went on auction. It's a public auction in Britain at
Swinden in southwestern England. And I made a bid for
it. As a matter of fact, I found out it was going to
go on sale.
It was the official British document issued by
Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude after he invaded
Iraq with the British Army in 1917. It was his
proclamation to the people of the Zilayah, that's to
say the governerate of Baghdad.
And I quote from the first paragraph: "We come here
not as conquerors, but as liberators to free you from
the tyranny of generations," just like President Bush
says he's come now. I actually wrote about this
document in the newspaper and said it was going to
come up for auction which was a very bad mistake
because the auctioneers rang me up from Swinden,
England to Beirut when I was actually interviewing,
ironically enough, three Iraqi refugees here in
Beirut.
And they said do you want to bid for it, the bidding
has started. I said yes I will bid for it. It was
originally going to go for US $156. And so many
readers of The Independent who'd read my article
turned up. It actually went for $2000. And God spare
me, I bought it.
So now I am the owner of Sir Stanley Maude's
document, telling the people of Baghdad that the new
occupiers, the British Army of 1917, had come there
as liberators, not as conquerors, to free them from
the tyranny of generations of tyrants and dictators.
And now, a few weeks later, there I am in Baghdad,
listening to the American Marine Corps issuing an
identical document, telling the people they'd come
not as conquerors, but as liberators. And I wonder
sometimes whether people ever, ever read history
books.
Amy Goodman: We're talking to Robert Fisk, the correspondent for
The Independent. He is tired. He has just come out of
Iraq after a month --
Robert Fisk: He's definitely tired, Amy. He's very definitely
tired, yeah.
Amy Goodman: I wanted to ask you about -- you might have heard
about Judith Miller's report in the New York Times,
saying a former Iraqi scientist has told a US
military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons
and biological warfare equipment only days before the
war began and also said Iraq secretly sent
unconventional weapons and technology to Syria
starting in the 80's and that more recently --
Robert Fisk: (overlapping): How amazing . . . how amazing . . .
how very fortunate that that special report should
come out now. Listen, every time I read Judith Miller
in the New York Times, I nod sagely and smile. That's
all I'm going to say to you, Amy. I'm sorry. Don't
ask me to even comment upon it. It's not a serious
issue.
Amy Goodman: Then let me ask you about the targeting of Syria
right now.
Robert Fisk: Syria will not be invaded by the United States
because it doesn't have enough oil. It will be
threatened by the United States, on Israel's behalf
perhaps. But it doesn't have sufficient oil to make
it worth invading. So the answer is: Syria will not
be invaded.
Amy Goodman: As you leave Iraq and you look back at what you saw,
what are key areas that you see as different, for
example, than the Persian Gulf War? And what happened
afterwards and what are you going to pursue right
now?
Robert Fisk: We've got the first occupation of an Arab capital by
a Western army since General Allenby entered
Jerusalem and since Sir Stanley Maude entered
Baghdad. We did have the brief period of French and
American armies entering Damascus and indeed Beirut
in the Second World War. But that was part of a Vichy
French Allied War. It wasn't part of a colonial war.
We now have American troops occupying the wealthiest
Arab country in the world. And the shockwaves of that
are going to continue for decades to come, long after
you and I are in our graves, if that's where we go. I
don't think we have yet realized, I don't think that
the soldiers involved or the Presidents involved have
yet realized the implications of what has happened.
We have entered a new age of imperialism, the life of
which we have not attempted to judge or assess or
understand. I'm 56 now. Maybe I'll never see the end
of it, I probably won't. But my goodness me, I've
never seen such historical acts take place in the 27
years I've been in the Middle East. And the results
cannot be good.
I don't believe we've gone to Iraq because of weapons
of mass destruction. If we'd done that, we would have
invaded North Korea.
I don't believe we've gone there because of human
rights abuses because we connived at those abuses for
many years when we supported Saddam.
I think we've gone there for oil. And though we may
get the oil I think the price will be very high. More
than that, I don't know. My crystal ball, as I always
say, has broken a long time ago.
But I'll keep on watching the story, I guess, because
like my father who was much older than my mother, was
a soldier in the first World War, I want to keep
watching history happen. I would, however, yet again,
for the umpteenth time on your program, Amy, quote
Amira Haas, that wonderful journalist for Ha'aretz,
the Israeli newspaper, who said, "the purpose of
journalism is to monitor the centers of power." And
we still do not do that. We must monitor the centers
of power. And we must try to question why governments
do the things that they do and why they lie about it.
And we don't do that. We don't do that.
Amy Goodman: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for doing that.
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