Watch Fisk Twist

Moonbats 23 Comments

In this amusing interview with Tony Jones of the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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?

Yeah.

23 Replies to “Watch Fisk Twist”

  1. Zarqawi and bin Laden–it was easy to believe Zarqawi did not exist–after all, according to Bush, they are no longer looking for bin Laden either!
    The problem with this scenario, when the leaders lie with impunity no one believes, or knows truth from fiction. Remember the WMD–they didn’t exist either!

  2. George,
    The CIA and all other major intelligence orgs said Iraq had WMD. The leaders of the Democratic party, who had access to the same intelligence, accepted it. The documents emerging now show the Iraqis talking as though they had WMD. We don’t know what they did with their WMD. Even at this point it’s not safe to say they didn’t have it and to have accepted their assurances in the face of a decade of deception would have been naive. To suggest Bush lied when he was told it was a slam dunk is to lie. So why are you lying George?
    It’s also stupid to tell this lie. There were a dozen reasons to invade and liberate Iraq -all legitimate. Only Bush’s critics would be stupid enough to think he would emphasize the one reason that would be proved to be untrue.
    If the thought of 25 million Iraqis forming a democracy in Iraq is driving you crazy advance a better argument as to why this in not good. Your false claim that Bush lied is boring.

  3. The “Bush lied” line is getting very tenuous. Saddam as much as said he had WMDs.
    Iran now says they have the means for nuclear weapons. They say they will destroy, obliterate, wipe off the face of the earth Israel.
    Do we believe them? If they follow through, do we blame the US for doing nothing when they had the opportunity?
    The left will blame the US no matter what happens. Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Darfur, anywhere else in Africa. Consistency is the hobgoblin of the left.
    enough

  4. No “civil war” in Iraq? Must be more “lies”.
    For civil war check out Darfur/Sudan where Muslims are killing other Muslims. More “lies”. +
    Iraq Shiites hail partial deal with Sunnis on key ministries
    AFP ^ | May 1 2006
    Posted on 05/01/2006 5:59:17 AM PDT by jmc1969
    Iraq’s dominant Shiite bloc said it had reached a preliminary deal with minority Sunnis Monday on sharing out the key posts in a national unity government although the details remained to be ironed out.
    “We reached an agreement that the ‘sovereign’ posts would be distributed fairly,” said Shiite politician Salam al-Maliki, the outgoing transport minister, after talks with Sunni leaders.
    He was referring to the key defense, interior, foreign, oil and finance ministries.
    “There is a consensus of views under which independent people should be nominated to the security ministries,” the minister added.
    Prime minister designate Nuri Maliki had already said he intended to name independent MPs to the interior and defense ministries to avoid allegations of sectarianism.
    (Excerpt) Read more at reliefweb.int … +
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624543/posts
    Sudan | Fleeing the horsemen who kill for Khartoum | Economist.com
    The other war, between the government and two rebel groups in Darfur, pits Muslim against Muslim. The divide in Darfur is ethnic, between Arabs and black …
    http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2668200 –

  6. Canadian troops kill up to 20 Taliban
    Reuters ^ | May 1, 2006 | Robert Birsel
    Posted on 05/01/2006 10:00:50 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
    Canadian troops killed up to 20 Taliban insurgents who were preparing to ambush a military convoy in southern Afghanistan, a Canadian military spokesman said on Monday. +
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624693/posts

  7. The only reason so many people buy the “Bush Lied” line is that so many politicians, the media and the cliterati keep saying it over and over and over.
    “Bush Lied” has no basis in truth and believing it only serves to obscure the real dangers facing the world.

  8. Hey George,
    They didn’t find Hoffa’s body, does that mean he never existed at all or does it mean he’s still alive and hiding in the same alternate universe as Elvis?
    Absence of proof is not proof of absence. In fact, there is a multitude of evidence from many sources indicating that the WMD’s were moved to Syria during the time that you lefty idiots were agitating for Bush to waste more time with the UN.
    But don’t let logic and reasoning (or facts) get in the way of your rants and agendas. Lack of reason is what makes you the liberal you are.

  9. I challenge you to find a more accomplished war correspondent than Robert Fisk.
    You see, this is the part of blogging that keeps it irrelevant. You’re all sitting in front of your computers providing opinion while guys like Fisk have been in the front lines of the wars in the middle east for 26 years.
    Fisk has been in the front lines in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1985 (the only western journalist left in the country when the war started); in Lebanon to witness the massacre at the Shatila refugee camp (thank Ariel Sharon); the Iran at Iraq war from 1980-88 (during which he reported on the chemical weapons being used by Saddam, some of which were made in USA); the first Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
    It’s easy for you all to post your opinions about Fisk, but you should ask yourself if you really know more than Fisk.

  10. andrew asked: “I challenge you to find a more accomplished war correspondent than Robert Fisk.”
    This is a slamdunk: The winner is: “Abd AlTwab Abdallah AL Mulah Huwaish” wins; beats Fisk, handover fisk, ‘cording to Baghdad Bob. +
    2001 Top Secret Document: Production of Prohibited Nerve Gas Detectors (Translation)
    Pentagon/FMSO website for Iraq Pre-war documents ^ | May 1 2006 | jveritas
    Posted on 05/01/2006 1:05:30 PM PDT by jveritas
    Saddam Regime Document CMPC-2003-016083 dated in 2001 contains a series of Top Secret memos that address the production of Nerve Gas Detectors which was prohibited by the United Nations resolutions concerning Iraq according to the document itself. The importance of the production of the Nerve Gas Detector is shown by the top secret letters exchange between the Presidential Office and the head of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission (M.I.C). This documents is yet another indication that Saddam Regime never stopped his WMD programs, and the nerve Gas Detector which some can see it a �defensive in nature� is not to be considered so when it comes to Saddam Regime, everything has an offensive and aggressive use.
    Beginning of Translation of page 5 of document CMPC-2003-016083
    In the Name of God the Most Merciful The Most Compassionate >>>
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624797/posts
    http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm

  11. Andrew–I agree 100%. It was Fisk who refused to be ’embedded’ during the Iraq war. His editors were asked by the US to remove him and they, to their credit, refused.
    As for Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Shatila, nothing more needs to be said. I just wonder if those wishing Israel would again go into Lebanon would mind if they used Canadian passports again?

  12. GeorgeAndrew: Why are the Falange blameless for SabraShatilla?
    Don’t you think Sharon was smart enough to figure out that a massacre would heap international opprobrium on him and Israel. This is after all the same man who said one of his snipers had Arafat in his sights at the time but he gave the command to not shoot.
    The amazing thing about Fisk is that after all his time as a M.E. journalist, he’s still a total moron. That’s what blind ideology does. Look and learn. Just read the item! His desire to blame the Americans and absolve the terrs is palpable.

  13. The question of whether he took payments from the Saddam Hussein regime is still open. Remember – this is the man who stood before British television cameras and stated that the Americans were not in Baghdad at about the same time their tanks rolled through in the background.

  14. I see that the “Off Topic” bunch is still at it Kate.
    I think I’ll give this up for a while.
    OMMAG

  16. GM–Fisk is one of the most honest journalists around. He doesn’t take sides–he tells what he sees. Anyone who does not like what he writes are the ones taking sides. As Fisk mentioned, the US has claimed that they have killed this man at least twice. They also claim they are in Afghanistan looking for bin Laden–now Bush states otherwise–so Fisk is right–you can’t tell what is going on without a scorecard.
    It is very disingenuous of you to mention payoffs from Hussein–after all Maurice Strong, Demarais, and a company of Martin’s, have been proven to have done so!

  17. Fisk is one of the most honest journalists around. He doesn’t take sides…
    Thanks George. I’m having an enjoyable fit of the giggles.

  22. TerryGain–the only comment I can make is that perhaps you should read Fisk’s article rather than someone’s slanted summary of it? Below is the article
    United States of Israel?
    When two of America’s most distinguished academics dared to suggest that US foreign policy was being driven by a powerful ‘Israel Lobby’ whose influence was incompatible with their nation’s own interests, they knew they would face allegations of anti-Semitism. But the episode has prompted America’s Jewish liberals to confront their own complacency. Might the tide be turning?
    By Robert Fisk
    04/27/06 “The Independent” — – Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard sunshine past Eliot Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he’s one of two authors of an academic paper on the influence of America’s Jewish lobby) but whose fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of no interest to him. “John and I have deliberately avoided the television shows because we don’t think we can discuss these important issues in 10 minutes. It would become ‘J’ and ‘S’, the personalities who wrote about the lobby – and we want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to encourage a broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East.”
    “John” is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the “war on terror”, that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress – so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there – and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel.
    “Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy,” the authors have written, “…stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism … Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of.” This is strong stuff in a country where – to quote the late Edward Said – the “last taboo” (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America’s relationship with Israel.
    Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac “has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents.”
    But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television – as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be – did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report’s publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper’s headline, had created a “debate” about the lobby’s influence.
    They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the Mearsheimer-Walt theory of “anti-Semitism” abuse is correct. “I believe,” he said, “that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in.” Congressman Eliot Engel of New York said that the study itself was “anti-Semitic” and deserved the American public’s contempt.
    Walt has no time for this argument. “We are not saying there is a conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its work – all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example – how do we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try and have all the information available.”
    Walt doesn’t exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his work – it’s all part of his desire to keep “discourse” in the academic arena, I suspect, though it probably won’t work. But no-one could be anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that “would be seized on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas”. The two are preparing a reply to Dershowitz’s 45-page attack, but could probably have done without praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke – adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names of Mearsheimer and Walt. “Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke,” ran the Washington Post’s reprehensible headline.
    The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel’s friend in the American press, took an even weirder line on the case. “As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy” its headline proclaimed to astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of two Aipac lobbyists – due to begin next month – who are charged under the Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the stand.
    Almost a third of the Journal’s report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men “allegedly sought to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number of senior US officials. Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon official, has pleaded guilty to misusing classified information. Mr Franklin was charged with orally passing on information about a draft National Security Council paper on Iran to the two lobbyists… as well as other classified information. Mr Franklin was sentenced in December to nearly 13 years in prison…”
    The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that lawyers and “many Jewish leaders” – who are not identified – “say the actions of the former Aipac employees were no different from how thousands of Washington lobbyists work. They say the indictment marks the first time in US history that American citizens… have been charged with receiving and disseminating state secrets in conversations.” The paper goes on to say that “several members of Congress have expressed concern about the case since it broke in 2004, fearing that the Justice Department may be targeting pro-Israel lobbying groups, such as Aipac. These officials (sic) say they’re eager to see the legal process run its course, but are concerned about the lack of transparency in the case.”
    As far as Dershowitz is concerned, it isn’t hard for me to sympathise with the terrible pair. He it was who shouted abuse at me during an Irish radio interview when I said that we had to ask the question “Why?” after the 11 September 2001 international crimes against humanity. I was a “dangerous man”, Dershowitz shouted over the air, adding that to be “anti-American” – my thought-crime for asking the “Why?” question – was the same as being anti-Semitic. I must, however, also acknowledge another interest. Twelve years ago, one of the Israeli lobby groups that Mearsheimer and Walt fingers prevented any second showing of a film series on Muslims in which I participated for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel – by stating that my “claim” that Israel was building large Jewish settlements on Arab land was “an egregious falsehood”. I was, according to another Israeli support group, “a Henry Higgins with fangs”, who was “drooling venom into the living rooms of America.”
    Such nonsense continues to this day. In Australia to launch my new book on the Middle East, for instance, I repeatedly stated that Israel – contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists – was not responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. Yet the Australian Jewish News claimed that I “stopped just millimetres short of suggesting that Israel was the cause of the 9/11 attacks. The audience reportedly (and predictably) showered him in accolades.”
    This was untrue. There was no applause and no accolades and I never stopped “millimetres” short of accusing Israel of these crimes against humanity. The story in the Australian Jewish News is a lie.
    So I have to say that – from my own humble experience – Mearsheimer and Walt have a point. And for a man who says he has not been to Israel for 20 years – or Egypt, though he says he had a “great time” in both countries – Walt rightly doesn’t claim any on-the-ground expertise. “I’ve never flown into Afghanistan on a rickety plane, or stood at a checkpoint and seen a bus coming and not known if there is a suicide bomber aboard,” he says.
    Noam Chomsky, America’s foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic – so critical of Israel that he does not even have a regular newspaper column – does travel widely in the region and acknowledges the ruthlessness of the Israeli lobby. But he suggests that American corporate business has more to do with US policy in the Middle East than Israel’s supporters – proving, I suppose, that the Left in the United States has an infinite capacity for fratricide. Walt doesn’t say he’s on the left, but he and Mearsheimer objected to the invasion of Iraq, a once lonely stand that now appears to be as politically acceptable as they hope – rather forlornly – that discussion of the Israeli lobby will become.
    Walt sits in a Malaysian restaurant with me, patiently (though I can hear the irritation in his voice) explaining that the conspiracy theories about him are nonsense. His stepping down as dean of the Kennedy School was a decision taken before the publication of his report, he says. No one is throwing him out. The much-publicised Harvard disclaimer of ownership to the essay – far from being a gesture of fear and criticism by the university as his would-be supporters have claimed – was mainly drafted by Walt himself, since Mearsheimer, a friend as well as colleague, was a Chicago scholar, not a Harvard don.
    But something surely has to give.
    Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie – a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 – has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.
    “How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons,” Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, “when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?” Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: “Rachel Corrie won’t get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted.”
    Saree Makdisi – a close relative of the late Edward Said – has revealed how a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. “I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory ‘profile’,” Makdisi says, “…not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake – my academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning – but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics.”
    Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. “In September 2002,” they write, “Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (www.campus-watch.org) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel… the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.”
    Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay – albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press – discusses Israel’s pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. “Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes,” the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: “Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.”
    Walt says he might take a year’s sabbatical – though he doesn’t want to get typecast as a “lobby” critic – because he needs a rest after his recent administrative post. There will be Israeli lobbyists, no doubt, who would he happy if he made that sabbatical a permanent one. I somehow doubt he will.

  23. “Noam Chomsky, America’s foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic -”
    Noam Chomsky- Not so moral that he couldn’t resist alleging that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was “some sort of silent genocide” (oh my how articulate is this linguist) at the very time the U.S. was saving lives with its humanitarian intervention.
    And when he is found out does he apologize? No he lies about what he said. And of course we heard the hue and cry from the Jewish controlled press for an apology didn’t we. What planet are you on George that you don’t know that Chomsky is a leftist fraud?
    George
    See Noam Chomsky Naked and Exposed before your very eyes. It’s not a pretty sight. A career built on self-loathing. What do his followers do that makes them so guilt ridden that they accept his fantasies about the fundamentally evil nature of their own country- a country that’s done more good than any other country on earth.
    http://semiskimmed.net/misc/chomsky_genocide.html

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