Much copy and paste...

but I just read a long and interesting telephone interview with The Independant's journalist Robert Fisk, conducted by Amy Goodman, on a US website. Had to share some of his observations with you. Fisk is currently based in Bagdad. (For a full transcript, click here.)


Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Host: "Set the scene for us in Baghdad right now."

Robert Fisk, The Independent: "Well, it's been a relatively - relatively being the word - quiet night, there's been quite a lot of explosions about an hour ago...

The strange thing is that the intensity of the attacks on Baghdad changes quite extraordinarily; you'll get one evening when you can actually sleep through it all, and the next evening when you see the explosions red hot around you.

As if no one really planning the things, it's like someone wakes up in the morning and says, "Let's target this on the map today", and it's something which sort of characterizes the whole adventure because if you actually look at what's happening on the ground, you'll see that the American and British armies started off in the border. They started off at Um Qasr and got stuck, carried on up the road through the desert, took another right turn and tried to get into Basra, got stuck, took another right at Nasiriya, got stuck - it's almost as if they keep on saying, "Well let’s try the next road on the right", and it has kind of a lack of planning to it. There will be those who say that, "No it's been meticulously planned," but it doesn't feel like it to be here."


RF:"In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they've started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn't an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, "Well, we're going to liberate the people of Iraq". And because it provided this excuse, it obviously then had to believe that these people wanted to be liberated by the Americans.

And, as the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music- and they were greeted with bullets."


RF:"The Iraqis have not risen up against their oppressors as they did in 1991 when they were betrayed by the Americans and the British after being urged to fight Saddam- they're staying at home. They're letting the Americans do the liberating. If the Americans want to liberate them, fine, let the Americans do it- but the Americans aren't doing very well at the moment.

You see, we've already got a situation down in Basra where the British army have admitted firing artillery into the city of Basra, and then winging on afterward talking about 'We're being fired at by soldiers hiding among civilians'. Well, I'm sorry; all soldiers defending cities are among civilians. But now the British are firing artillery shells into the heavily populated city of Basra. When the British were fired upon with mortars or with snipers from the cragg on the state or the bogside in Derry and in Northern Ireland, they did not use artillery, but here, apparently, it is ok to use artillery on a crowded city. What on Earth is the British army doing in Iraq firing artillery into a city after invading the country?"


RF:"The Americans can do it- they have the firepower. They may need more than 250,000 troops, but if they're willing to sacrifice lives of their own men, as well as lives of the Iraqis, they can take Baghdad; they can come in.

But, you know, I look down from my balcony here next to the Tigris River- does that mean we're going to have an American tank on every intersection in Baghdad? What are they there for- to occupy? To repress? To run an occupation force against the wishes of Iraqis? Or are they liberators? It's very interesting how the reporting has swung from one side to another. Are these liberating forces or occupying forces? Every time I hear a journalist say 'liberation', I know he means 'occupation'. "