.              

London Independent reporter Robert Fisk writes in his most recent article:

"It's going wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined.

"The army of 'liberation' has already turned into the army of occupation.

"The Shi'ites are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of 'liberation'.

"At night on every one of the Shia Muslim barricades in Sadr City, there are 14 men with automatic rifles.

"Even the individual US Marines in Baghdad are talking of the insults being flung at them.

"'Go away! Get out of my face!' an American soldier screamed at an Iraqi trying to push towards the wire surrounding an infantry unit in the capital yesterday.

I watched the man's face suffuse with rage.

"'God is Great! God is Great!' the Iraqi retorted.

"'F*** you!'

"It is much worse than that.

"The Americans have now issued a 'Message to the Citizens of Baghdad', a document that is as colonial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone.

"'Please avoid leaving your homes during the night hours after evening prayers and before the call to morning prayers,' it tells the people of the city.

"'During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move through the area. Please do not leave your homes during this time. During all hours, please approach Coalition military positions with extreme caution.'"

"So now - with neither electricity nor running water - the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn.

"It's a form of imprisonment, in their own country. Written by the command of the 1st US Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name.

"'If I was an Iraqi and I read that,' an Arab woman shouted at me, 'I would become a suicide bomber.'

"And all across Baghdad, you hear the same thing, from Shia Muslim clerics to Sunni businessmen, that the Americans have come only for oil, and that soon - very soon - a guerrilla resistance must start

Transcript

Goodman: After spending a month in Iraq, could you describe your
thoughts?


Fisk: Well, my assumption is that history has a way or repeating
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?" and I said to
him "do you realize how history is repeating itself?" and he turned
to me and said "yes history is repeating itself, and I knew what he
meant. He was referring to the British invasion or Iraq in 1917 and
Lt. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude, when we turned up in Baghdad and 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 and 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. And 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, and 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, and 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 in to 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.


Ironically, 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) and 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 I said what can you do? And
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, and I gave him a map of the exact locations, the
collaterals on the locations to the marines and nobody went there,
and all the Korans were burned, Korans going back to the 16th Century
totally burned.


So, 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, and 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.


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.


Fisk: Yeah, well 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 seem 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. Now, 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 has 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, a much more serious in the long term. The arsonists, the
men who were going around burning, they must have had maps, they knew
where to go, they knew what would not be defended by the Americans.
In one case, you know 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, and 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. And 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.




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.



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 that was burning was the Department of Higher Education/Computer
Science and 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 and
he said "well, we're guarding a hospital" and I said "there's a fire
next door, a whole bloody government ministry is burning. And he
said, "yeah 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, you know, 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. And 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 in 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. And one has to ask the question,
why was this permitted to happen. I don't know the answer.



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.


Fisk: Well 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. You know, I say to people
over and over again: war is not about primarily victory or defeat,
it's primarily about human suffering and death. And 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 and is very happy, 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. And 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. Well, 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. And 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.


Goodman: Robert Fisk, do you have any idea about casualty numbers
right now?


Fisk: No, it's impossible. Amy, it's impossible. You know, 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 were removed. But they were
still there, along with the bodies the next day. That's a fact. I
saw.


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.


Fisk: Well, 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. And 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.
And 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 M1A1 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. And 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 and I actually rushed to their Bureau and they showed me
the videotape and 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. And 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. And 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.
And 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: 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 ­ ­



Fisk: Well, yeah I've heard this story. I know this. Well, 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. Look I don't think the American
military people are inherently wrong or awful or bad. You know, 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, you know, 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. You know,
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, you know, 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?



Goodman: Well. I'm not there yet. But you mentioned your colleague ­ ­



Fisk: You're going to ask me where he is, aren't you?


(they laugh)


Goodman: OK, where is he?


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.


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?


Fisk: Well, 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. You know, 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 and it was the official British document issued by
Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude after he invaded Iraq with the
British Army in 1917. And 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. And 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, you know, 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.


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....


Fisk: He's definitely tired, Amy. He's very definitely tired, yeah.


Goodman: Well, 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...



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.




Goodman: Then let me ask you about the targeting of Syria right now.




Fisk: Look, 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.



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?



Fisk: Well, 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. And 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. Well, 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. You 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, and 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.

Goodman: Well Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for doing that.

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