Free Republic

Every good reporter knows that prediction is best left to astrologers. But Robert Fisk -- legendary war correspondent, three-time interviewer of Osama bin Laden, witness to Middle Eastern intrigues for three decades -- has a confidence that would make the Oracle blush. In 1991, he scorned the "myth of a short, sharp victory" over Saddam Hussein in the coming war to free Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. Victory came in just six weeks. In 2001, he doubted Afghanistan's Taliban would throw down their arms in the face of the U.S.-led assault after 9/11. Five weeks later, the Taliban abandoned Kabul. In 2003, he...

Robert Fisk, one of leading journalists and commentators on the Middle East, wonders how much the West really cares about what happens to Iraqis. He speaks movingly and candidly of walking in the morgues of Baghdad, seeing the bodies of young women shot at checkpoints for not stopping in time, or ripped to pieces by suicide bombers. Why then, he asks, are the casualty figures for these civilians never released?

U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order. Davis made last-minute arrangements Wednesday for Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s daily news show, Democracy Now!, to interview Fisk via satellite from a television station in Toronto. He appeared on a large screen...

The London bombings have shocked the world and once again raised the question 'Why?'. But people who hurry to blame fundamentalists and poverty are missing the point: Islam itself. Today there is a lot of talk about the root causes of Islamic terrorism and how to deal with them. So what are these root causes then? UK-US foreign policy? The West’s lust for oil? Illiteracy and poverty in the Muslim world? The hijacking of Islam by a few extremists? These, amongst others, are the reasons most left-wing intellectuals and self-declared liberal Muslim thinkers, from British journalist Robert Fisk to Pakistani...

In December 1996, Robert Fisk of the London newspaper The Independent traveled to the mountains north of Khartoum where he met Osama bin Laden. The opening sentences of the article he wrote about the meeting went as follows: Osama Bin Laden sat in his gold fringed robe, guarded by loyal Arab mujahedin… . With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. In a second article he wrote about the same meeting, Fisk upgraded bin Laden’s...

Mr. Robert Fisk: We Are Tired of Your Orientalism April 15 , 2005 Joseph Hitti One more time, Robert Fisk (April 11, 2005; http://www.tayyar.org/tayyar/articles.php?article_id=2846&type=opinions ), of the British leftist daily “The Independent”, propagates the lies and deceptions that the European and American left used for much of the past thirty years to justify the death of Lebanon at the hands of the foreign intervention. It does not seem to matter to Mr. Fisk that the consensus, as well as the preliminary results of an international investigation, point to a foreign responsibility in Prime Minister Hariri's assassination, like the assassination of...

Link below if you can stand the stench from the latest pile by Fisk. All I'm posting is this:

http://pei.ucc.ie/dara/Agenda_End_Hi.mpg - Link To Video April 24, 2004 Screamers: Robert Fisk Brings Back Fond Memories It was "undoubtedly the funniest television moment of the year so far" according to Ian O'Doherty (Robert Fisk freaks out on television, Irish Independent, April 20, 2004). If you missed the item, don't hold your breath, this should appear on the internet fairly soon. And so it has, via Tim Blair.

The judge in charge of Saddam Hussein's trial was in fear for his life today after his identity was revealed by a UK newspaper. The Iraqi Special Tribunal had asked the media to protect his anonymity. But he was named by Robert Fisk, foreign correspondent of The Independent. Downing Street warned that the judge now faced reprisals from Saddam loyalists. A Foreign Office source added: "Obviously this shows questionable judgment about an individual's safety." When TV footage was broadcast yesterday, censors made sure the judge was pictured only from behind. Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, defended his decision, saying:...

DOWNING Street blasted The Independent yesterday for naming the judge in Saddam’s trial — putting his life at risk. It accused journalist Robert Fisk of breaking an agreement with the Iraqi Special Tribunal not to identify anyone in the court other than the defendants.

'Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," writes Robert Fisk, famed Middle East correspondent of the London Independent. "Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash." Hmm. Sounds like Fiskie's the one straining at the leash here. You can practically hear him panting. Down, boy. For a week now,...

First, our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera. Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash.The Muslim suicide bomber cries Allahu Akbar, God is great. And what does Lynndie England's partner-in-crime do? Why,...

London - It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair. But it takes only a few moments to absorb the implications of the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin yesterday. Yes, he enthusiastically endorsed suicide bombings - including the murder of Israeli children. Yes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, in a wheelchair or not. But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday, and something infinitely more dangerous - another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world. Take the old man himself....

This is the best article.

Arab states are largely squalid, corrupt, brutal dictatorships. No surprise there. We created most of these dictators 13 February 2004 - For democracy, read fantasy. Iraq is getting so nasty for our great leaders these days that anything - and anyone - is going to be thrown to the dogs to save them. The BBC, the CIA, British intelligence - any journalist that dares to point out the lies that led us to war - get pelted with more lies. The moment we suggest that Iraq never was fertile soil for Western democracy, we get accused of being racists....

The problem I have with the whole Gadhafi saga is that the Libya I know can scarcely repair a drain or install a working lavatory in a hotel. Yet this same Libya, after years of sanctions, was apparently making a nuclear bomb. Libyan nuclear scientists. Say those three words over and over again. Really? And what was that odd word in the Downing Street announcement? "Program"? Wasn't that exactly what Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iraq of developing after the weapons of mass destruction he had told us all about turned out to be non-existent? According to the usual anonymous...

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 Saddam Hussein, like Adolf Hitler, will live on for millions of people By ROBERT FISK BRITISH COLUMNIST Was this really the man with whom I shook hands almost a quarter of a century ago? I've spent 24 hours looking again and again at those videotapes. The more I look, the more Saddam turns into a wild animal. An American interviewed by The Associated Press said he'd gone straight to church to pray for him. The face I remember from my meeting with him was chubby in an insolent sort of way, the mustache so well trimmed...

The dangers of Fisking David Pryce-Jones accuses the Independent journalist Robert Fisk of hysteria and distortion in his reporting on the Middle East In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: ‘fisking’, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent, stationed these many years in Beirut. The preconceptions and prejudices that are immortalising Fisk in the English language express an...

David Pryce-Jones accuses the Independent journalist Robert Fisk of hysteria and distortion in his reporting on the Middle East In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: ‘fisking’, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent, stationed these many years in Beirut. The preconceptions and prejudices that are immortalising Fisk in the English language express an unqualified contempt for America....

David Pryce-Jones accuses the Independent journalist Robert Fisk of hysteria and distortion in his reporting on the Middle East In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: ‘fisking’, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent, stationed these many years in Beirut. The preconceptions and prejudices that are immortalising Fisk in the English language express an unqualified contempt for America....