FRIENDLY FIRE FELLS FISK
Even lefties can no longer stand to listen to Robert Fisk dribble shit:
TONY JONES, LATELINE PRESENTER: Well, Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for 'The Independent' newspaper and more than 30 years of reporting from the region makes him one of the most acute observers of the Arab world. To discuss the implications of the al-Zarqawi video, he joins us now from Beirut. Thanks for being there, Robert Fisk. Do you have any doubt at all that these really are images of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?Tony Jones interrupts at this point and it's all downhill for Fisk from there. Read the whole thing.
ROBERT FISK, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: They do look like Zarqawi. I think it's pretty clear that he is alive, which I doubted for some time and that he, indeed, made this videotape. It clearly is a blow to the United States in the sense that they have several times claimed that they've killed him, which they obviously haven't done, and the tape is obviously new. But I think it is part of the bestialisation, if you like, of those people we want to hate, in the sense that I think individuals like Zarqawi or bin Laden don't actually matter. It's a bit like, you know, after you make a nuclear bomb, you go around arresting all the nuclear scientists and putting them in prison. It doesn't do any good. The nuclear bomb exists. Al-Qaeda exists. The organisation which bin Laden has created exists. So, the individuals per se don't actually matter anymore, but that's something which I think the Americans don't yet grasp.
TONY JONES: The last time we spoke, you did indeed think it very possible that he'd actually been killed and no-one knew where he was. So that's not so surprising.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah.
TONY JONES: You also thought he was a creature invented to fill the narrative gaps. In other words, a creature created, in a sense, by American propaganda. He's much more than that; isn't that evident from this video?
ROBERT FISK: Yeah. It is pretty clear. He does exist. He is still alive and that was him on the video. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I watched it several times over and am clearly of the mind that this is the man. What we do need to know, of course, is whether he has actually any real status over and above being a name al-Zarqawi. In other words, does he actually have any real status as a militant, as a resistant, as a rebel, whatever you like to use the word, terrorist, other than just being a person who is to be hated and to be bestialised in front of the television screens. The issue really is, I think, is this a person who is seriously an enemy of the "West" or is this just another person who is popping up on our screens to say this is the latest mad lunatic, the latest fanatic, the latest terrorist whom we have to be concerned about? That is the real issue, you see. Over and over again we've had this system where whereby we've had Ayatollah Khomeini and Gaddafi in Libya. We've had these extraordinary figures in the Middle East, like Nasser, for example, in Egypt in 1956 and people whom we are encouraged to loathe, encouraged to hate and who, ultimately, are just figureheads, who in the end are people who we just are encouraged to loathe, encouraged to hate. People who, at the end of the day, are not per se people who we need to worry about, people who, indeed --
posted by J F Beck at 10:53 PM
15 Comments:
At least now I know what someone might sound like 30 seconds after having a stroke.
You managed to watch it all? The cringe factor was too great for my delicate sensibilities, I had to go and bait some jihadis on the internet instead.
Thanks for the transcript. I couldn't stay the distance either. Embarressing for him and embarressing for the ABC that they haven't worked out the guy is a screw loose.
I think that the nose might give some hint as to what is inducing what appears to be some form of dementia.
Seriously he did seem to have memory problems.
"hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on a second"
"look, look, look"
are we picking up on some trend here?
Thanks for alerting us to the transcript
Is that Robert Fisk, or Jonathan Quist?
K. Bowman sum's up.
Fisk did sounded prety incohenemt during the interview, but what he had to say had been all but comfirmed by a frank admission of the Pentagon.
An April 10th Washington Post article stated, that..
"The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900890_pf.html
Even worse, the article goes on to say how the Pentagon had concocted fake Al-Zarqawi letters, boasting about suicide attacks and leaked them to Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, who splashed it on the front page the next day. Despite the fact that Filkins had severe doubts about the authenticity of the letter, the Times got down on their knees, licked boots, and published it anyway.
The same documents directly state that the false promotion of Al-Zarqawi includes marking the the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign."
A U.S. 'Propaganda' Program, al-Zarqawi, and 'The New York Times'
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002314713
Let`s also not forget that Bush had an opportunity to take out Zarqawi`s camp prior to the invasion, but shose to leave him there (under the safety of the no-fly zones) so that Powell could run ot the UN and tell them what a bad boy Saddam was for letting him stay.
Wombat,
Heaven forbid that the conduct of a war should be dictated by grand strategy and larger political considerations!
Have you ever read Clausewitz? Why do you think that the US exaggerating Zarqawi's importance to the insurgents is a bad thing? Iraqis can't stand the man. If they associate the insurgency with him, they will withold their support.
That is the point of the whole exercise, right?
Hello?
Mastiff,
Greeting to you.
Interesting idea. Trouble is that a war that is dictated by grand strategy and larger political considerations implies a war of aggression. Under international law, that’s not allowed. In fact that Geneva Conventions lists this kid of war as the mother of all war crimes.
It is plainly obviously that the exaggeration of Zarqawi's importance to the insurgents is a was not done for he benefit of Iraqi’s, but to provide fodder for domestic political considerations. As you rightly point out, Iraqis have little regard for him anyway, including the insurgents, so playing up his crimes is pretty futile.
As for whether that is the idea or not, I am still waiting on the US government to provide an answer to that. Clearly Zarqwi has served a valuable purpose to the occupation.
If the idea of demonizing Zarqawi was to turn Iraqis away from opposing the occupation, then perhaps Bush should have taken him out before the invasion when he had the chance, rather than leave him there so that he could bolster his case for he invasion in the first place.
What Bush did was akin to planting evidence was it not?
as for the this convenient video popping up, how is it that unnamed ’sources’ always confirm that the video is ‘authentic’? It is too ridiculous for words.
Have a think about it.
You boys should lay off the Pilger pills.
Why, does Pilger also read the news?
This is hardly tin foil hat stuff:
"But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
I'd be curious to see what the Left's reaction would have been to a pre-emptive strike into Iraq solely against Zarqawi? I thought that the Left has been arguing that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Queda? So it seems futile to now argue that the President should have attacked these Al Queda camp because as we all know Al Queda, according to the anti-war crowd, was not in Iraq.
Here we go with the straw man argument.
Why should the he Left's reaction to a pre-emptive strike into Iraq solely against Zarqawi, be any different to every other a pre-emptive strike into Iraq which has been justified the supposed presence of Zarqawi? For example, the November 2004 attack on Fallujah was sold as a way to capture Zarqawi.
There was no connection between Iraq and Al Queda, prior to 2003. That only happened as a result of the invasion, which created an Al Qaeda playground. In fact, Zarqawi and OBL weren’t even allies until recently.
It`s completely circular logic to argue that we had to invade Iraq because of the Al Qaeda presence that grew within Iraq as a result of the invasion.
I guess I was too subtle, a pre-emptive strike against Zarqawi would have been before 2003, not after.
To the anonymous poster who said,
"Have a think about it."
I'm dismayed you would allege that the United States is
violating the Geneva Convention.
Throughout history armies have waged war on civilians,
in fact for many armies the killing of the unarmed and
defenseless was what they did most of the time. The
Baathists and the Al Quaeda fall squarely within that
tradition.
The Geneva Convention is all about trying to change this.
The convention is an agreement between peoples at war not
to attack civilians. It's also about clearly identifying
combatants because obviously if one side looks just like
civilians, this would make the unintentional killing of
civilians by the other side inevitable.
The United States is remarkable in that it's attempting
to hold to the Geneva Convention despite it's opponents
flagrant contempt for it.
The main area where I would criticize the United States
with respect to the Geneva Convention is our failure to
execute captured enemy combatants who are not in
uniform. This is something allowed by the Geneva
Convention and it is, even if not explicity stated
so, a requirement, because not doing so rewards and
encourages those parties waging war on civilians.
Not executing captured enemy combatants who
are not clearly identifiable as soldiers violates the
spirit of the Geneva Convention.
Likewise all those who support or assist through their
words and actions the Al-Quaeda, the Baathists and
similar, are opposed to the Geneva Convention. There
is simply no way to support these people without
implicity asserting that you favor the killing of
civilians in warfare.
Predictably those who are opposed to the U.S. will
claim that the U.S. kills civilians. Well of course
it does. There's no way to fight a violent conflict
without accidently killing people and there's no way
to deploy hundreds of thousands of men with weapons
without some of them being bad apples who will
deliberately kill the defenseless. The Geneva Convention
is not about perfection, it's about changing war
from an activity where the dominant purpose is the
killing of civilians to an activity where such
acts are rare.
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