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The Dead Cannot Speak. But Hitherto Unknown Information Has Emerged From The Confidential Archives Of The Syrian Presidency And Foreign Ministry, Published In A New Book By Bouthaina Shaaban, Who Spent Ten Years As Hafez's Interpreter And Is Still An Adviser To His Son Bashar.

-Robert Fisk

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The Dead Cannot Speak.

Robert Fisk

...

The Dead Cannot Speak. But Hitherto Unknown Information Has Emerged From The Confidential Archives Of The Syrian Presidency And Foreign Ministry, Published In A New Book By Bouthaina Shaaban, Who Spent Ten Years As Hafez's Interpreter And Is Still An Adviser To His Son Bashar.

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I Still Wonder If The United States Realizes How Much Planning Went Into This. When We Talk About "mindless Terrorists," We Are Lying To Ourselves.

Clinton Impressed Assad: A Young Man Who Appeared To Want To Be Neutral In The Arab-israeli Dispute - An Illusion Of Course, But That's What Assad Thought.

Refuse To Accept The Narrative Of History Laid Down By Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals And Journalists.

When I Arrived In Beirut From Europe, I Felt The Oppressive, Damp Heat, Saw The Unkempt Palm Trees And Smelt The Arabic Coffee, The Fruit Stalls And The Over-spiced Meat. It Was The Beginning Of The Orient. And When I Flew Back To Beirut From Iran, I Could Pick Up The British Papers, Ask For A Gin And Tonic At Any Bar, Choose A French, Italian, Or German Restaurant For Dinner. It Was The Beginning Of The West. All Things To All People, The Lebanese Rarely Questioned Their Own Identity.

Everyone Outside The Roman Empire Was Called A Barbarian. Everyone Outside Obama’s Empire Is Called A Terrorist.

I Was Very Struck By The Fact That Colin Powell Said He Would Produce Evidence And Then Never Produced It. Then Tony Blair Produced A Document Of Seventy Paragraphs, But Only The Last Nine Referred To The World Trade Center, And They Were Not Convincing. So We Have A Little Problem Here: If They're Guilty, Where Is The Evidence? And If We Can't Hear The Evidence, Why Are We Going To War?

It Is Always An Eerie Experience To Sit Among Bashar Al-assad's Soldiers.

Israel Lost Its War. Will Assad's Enemies Lose, Too?

And I Think, In The End, That Is The Best Definition Of Journalism I Have Heard; To Challenge Authority - All Authority - Especially So When Governments And Politicians Take Us To War, When They Have Decided That They Will Kill And Others Will Die.

And It's True, You Hear Things In Damascus And, After A Few Hours, The Human Double-take Stops Operating.

Bin Laden Is Not Well Read And He's Not Sophisticated, But He Will Have Worked Out Very Coldly What America Would Do.

If It Is Bin Laden, He's A Very Intelligent Guy. He's Been Planning His War For A Long Time. I Remember The Last Time I Met Him In 1997 In Afghanistan. And Bin Laden Said To Me "from This Mountain, Mr. Robert, Upon Which You Are Sitting, We Beat The Russian Army And Helped Break The Soviet Union. And I Pray To God That He Allows Us To Turn America Into A Shadow Of Itself." When I Saw The Pictures Of New York Without The World Trade Center, New York Looked Like A Shadow Of Itself.

It's A Journalist's Job To Be A Witness To History. We're Not There To Worry About Ourselves. We're There To Try And Get As Near As We Can, In An Imperfect World, To The Truth And Get The Truth Out.

Imperfect World

The Dead Cannot Speak. But Hitherto Unknown Information Has Emerged From The Confidential Archives Of The Syrian Presidency And Foreign Ministry, Published In A New Book By Bouthaina Shaaban, Who Spent Ten Years As Hafez's Interpreter And Is Still An Adviser To His Son Bashar.

Tanks Come In Two Forms: The Dangerous, Deadly Kind And The "liberating" Kind.

I Suppose, In The End, We Journalists Try - Or Should Try - To Be The First Impartial Witnesses Of History. If We Have Any Reason For Our Existence, The Least Must Be Our Ability To Report History As It Happens So That No One Can Say: 'we Didn't Know - No One Told Us.'

At Baalbek Nuts I Bought Pistachios From The Lebanese Owners, Who Answered My Request For Their Thoughts On The War With The Typically Lebanese Response Of No Problem. It's A Lie, As We All Knew.

Osama Bin Laden Is Not Well Read And He's Not Sophisticated, But He Will Have Worked Out Very Coldly What America Would Do In Response To This Attack 9/11. I'm Sure He Wanted America To Attack Afghanistan. Once You Do What Your Enemy Wants, You Are Walking Into A Trap, Whether You Think It's The Right Thing To Do Or Not.

Osama Bin Laden

Fundamentalism Is Not Bred In Poverty. There Are Plenty Of Poor Countries In The World That Don't Have Violence Because Amid The Poverty There Is A Kind Of Justice And In Some Countries A Democracy.

And History`s Fingers Never Relax Their Grip, Never Leave Us Unmolested, Can Touch Us Even When We Would Never Imagine Their Presence.

Whether Osama Bin Laden Is Doing It Cynically And Has No Interest In These Matters, Or Whether He's Doing It Out Of Genuine Conviction, His Voice Has A Tremendous Resonance Throughout The Arab World. One Editorial In A Lebanese Paper Said It Is A Matter Of Great Humiliation For The Arabs That The Only Man Who Can Outline, Truthfully, What Our Humiliations Are Is An Arab Who Has To Say It From A Cave In A Foreign Country.

It's Very Easy To Start A War But The Muftah, As The Arabs Say, The Key To Switch Off A War, Is Very Difficult To Find.

In Palestine, The Israelis Claim They Found A Land Without People,' A Syrian Officer Explained To Us. 'now They Will Take Southern Lebanon And Claim They Have Found Another Land Without People If These Refugees Do Not Return.

At The End Of The Day, Bin Laden's Interest Is Not Washington And New York, It's The Middle East. He Wants Saudi Arabia. He Wants To Get Rid Of The House Of Saud.

The End Of The Day

After The Allied Victory Of 1918, At The End Of My Father's War, The Victors Divided Up The Lands Of Their Former Enemies. In The Space Of Just Seventeen Months, They Created The Borders Of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia And Most Of The Middle East. And I Have Spent My Entire Career — In Belfast And Sarajevo, In Beirut And Baghdad — Watching The People Within Those Borders Burn.

When I Saw The Pictures Of New York Without The World Trade Center, New York Looked Like A Shadow Of Itself.

A Businessman Admits That He 'let Go' An Employee Because He Was A Sunni Muslim. You Simply Have To Look After Yourself, He Explains. I Am Shocked, Like A Good Westerner Should Be.

At The End Of The Day, Osama Bin Laden's Interest Is Not Washington And New York, It's The Middle East. He Wants Saudi Arabia. He Wants To Get Rid Of The House Of Saud. There's A Great Deal Of Resentment, Even Inside The Royal Family, At The Continued Military Presence Of The United States There.

I Do Not Make Stories Up, Full Stop.

I Wouldn't Say I Was Part Of An Anti-war Campaign.

Individuals In Various Countries Like Egypt And Saudi Arabia Listen To The Tapes Of Bin Laden. They Gather In Groups Of Four Or Five. They Feel They Want To Do Something To Express Their Support For What They've Heard. The Idea That They Were Taking Orders Is A Particularly Western Idea.

Bin Laden Was Very Keen To Point Out To Me That His Forces Had Fought The Americans In Somalia. He Also Wanted To Talk About How Many Mullahs In Pakistan Were Putting Up Posters Saying, "we Follow Bin Laden." He Even Produced A Sort Of Kodak Set Of Snapshots Of Graffiti Supporting Him.

Wasn't Saddam Destroyed? Wasn't Gaddafi Liquidated? Didn't Milosevic Go To The Hague? All True. But Stalin Survived. Kim Jong-un Isn't Doing Too Badly, Either - Though That's Probably Because He Actually Has Nuclear Weapons, As Opposed To Iran Which Might Or Might Not Be Trying To Acquire Them And Thus Remains On The Israeli-american Target List.

I Don't Know What Happens If They Get Bin Laden. I'm Much More Interested In What Happens If They Don't Get Bin Laden.

We Love To Think This Fundamentalism And Terrorism Is All About Poverty, And, Of Course, It Has A Connection. You Can See That These People Not Only Are Poor But They Have No Outlets. These Governments Allow No Opposition. So What Do People Do? They Go To Islam. It's The Only Organizational Institution Where They Can Express Their Feelings. But It's Not About Poverty. I've Never Seen A Single Demonstration In Which The People Have Come Out With Signs Saying, "please Give Us Better Roads. Please Give Us New Prenatal Clinics. Please Give Us A New Sewage System."

So Here's A Question From One Who Believed, Only A Week Ago, That Baghdad Might Just Collapse And That We Might Wake Up One Morning To Find The Baathist Militia And The Iraqi Army Gone And The Americans Walking Down Saadun Street With Their Rifles Over Their Shoulders. If The Iraqis Can Still Hold Out Against Such Overwhelming Force In Umm Qasr For Four Days, If They Can Keep Fighting In Basra And Nasiriyah – The Latter A City That Briefly Rose In Revolt Against Saddam's Regime In 1991 – Why Should Saddam's Forces Not Keep Fighting In Baghdad?

People Turn To Violence, Because They Have No Other Avenue Left.

Bin Laden Was Constantly Revolving In His Mind The Fact That He Had Got Rid Of The Russians; Therefore, The Americans Can Be Got Rid Of, Too. And Where Better Than In The Country Where He Knows How To Fight?

I've Never Seen A Single Demonstration In Pakistan, In The Streets Of Gaza, In The West Bank, In Which The People Have Come Out With Signs Saying, "please Give Us Better Roads. Please Give Us New Prenatal Clinics. Please Give Us A New Sewage System." I'm Sure They'd Like Those Things, But It's Not What They Demand In The Demonstrations. In The Demonstrations, They Talk About Justice, They Talk About An End To Israeli Occupation.

Why Is It That We Go To Immense Lengths Getting The Serbs Who Were Responsible For The Massacre Of 7,000 At Srbrenica-that's Slightly More Than The Total Figure For New York 9/11-and We Take Them To A Tribunal In The Hague, And One After Another, We Arraign Them, Try Them, Convict Them, And Punish Them In Front Of The World, But No Plans Have Been Brought Forward To Get Osama Bin Laden And His Friends And Put Them On Trial.

Osama Bin Laden

I Don't Like The Definition 'war Correspondent'. It Is History, Not Journalism, That Has Condemned The Middle East To War. I Think 'war Correspondent' Smells A Bit, Reeks Of False Romanticism: It Has Too Much Of The Whiff Of Victorian Reporters Who Would View Battles From Hilltops In The Company Of Ladies, Immune To Suffering, Only Occasionally Glancing Towards The Distant Pop-pop Of Cannon Fire.

The [israelis] Believed - They Were Possessed Of An Absolute Certainty And Conviction - That 'terrorists' Were In Chatila. How Could I Explain To Them That The Terrorists Had Left, That The Terrorists Had Worn Israeli Uniforms, That The Terrorists Had Been Sent Into Chatila By Israeli Officers, That The Victims Of The Terrorists Were Not Israelis But Palestinians And Lebanese?

Why Is It That We Go To Immense Lengths Getting The Serbs Who Were Responsible For The Massacre Of 7,000 At Srbrenica - That's Slightly More Than The Total Figure For New York - And We Take Them To A Tribunal In The Hague, And One After Another, We Arraign Them, Try Them, Convict Them, And Punish Them In Front Of The World, But No Plans Have Been Brought Forward To Get Bin Laden And His Friends And Put Them On Trial?

The Syrian Army Is Tired Of Corruption. It Is Tired Of Party Nepotism. It Is Becoming Very Angry With Those It Blames For The War.

Saudi Arabia Is The Most Fragile Of All Arab States, Though We're Not Saying So. And, Unfortunately, Bin Laden Puts His Finger On The Other Longstanding Injustices In The Arab World: The Continued Occupation Of Palestinian Land By The Israelis; The Enormous, Constant Arab Anger With The Tens Of Thousands Of Iraqi Children Who Are Dying Under Sanctions; The Feelings Of Humiliation Of Millions Of Arabs Living Under Petty Dictators, Almost All Of Whom Are Propped Up By The West.

In Just One Year In Bosnia, Thirty Of My Colleagues Died. There Is A Little Somme Waiting For All Innocent Journalists.

War Is Primarily Not About Victory Or Defeat But About Death And The Infliction Of Death. It Represents The Total Failure Of The Human Spirit.

When You Have A Crime Against Humanity That Is So Awesome In Scale And Death, It Is More Than Permissible To Look Around And Say, Who Recently Has Been Declaring War On The United States? Of Course, The Compass Points Straight To Bin Laden.

President Bush Cruelly Manipulated The Grief Of The American People - And The Sympathy Of The Rest Of The World - To Introduce A 'world Order' Dreamed Up By A Clutch Of Fantasists Advising The Secretary Of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

In One Way, I Fear All Damascus Is A Dungeon. Or Do You Have To Live Here To Appreciate That?

We Live In A Society In The West, Where, When Men Do Violent Things, They Do Them Under Orders. They Are Soldiers Carrying Out Orders Or Mafia Men Carrying Out Killings For Bosses. But The Way Things Happen In The Middle East Is Not The Same As In The West. Look, International Capital Has Been Globalized, So Osama Bin Laden Is Globalized. It's Not Surprising To Find Followers Of Bin Laden In All These Countries.

How Could Believers, People Who Regard Themselves As True Muslims, Get On Those Planes, Quoting The Words Of God Delivered Through The Prophet To Themselves, Knowing They Were Going To Kill Innocent People? They Saw The Other Passengers On The Plane. They Could See The Woman With Her Little Daughter. They Saw People Making Phone Calls To Their Wives Or Their Husbands. They Knew Who They Were Killing.

Whatever The Political Injustices Are That Created An Environment That Brought This About, It Was Not Americans Who Flew Those Planes Into Those Buildings. And We Should Remember That. The Crimes Against Humanity Were Perpetrated By People Who Were Arab Muslims.

These Terrible Terrorism Acts Occur Because Of Political Situations And Injustice In Various Parts Of The World. The Middle East Is Heavy With Injustice. After September 11,george W.bush Announced That He Had Always Had A Vision Of A Palestinian State. Why Didn't He Tell Us That Before September 11, When It Would Have Been A Bit More Impressive?

President Bush Will Come Here And There Will Be New "friends" Of America To Open A New Relationship With The World, New Economic Fortunes For Those Who "liberated" Them.

New Relationship

U.s. Journalists I Don't Think Are Very Courageous. They Tend To Go Along With The Government's Policy Domestically And Internationally. To Question Is Seen As Being Unpatriotic, Or Potentially Subversive.

I Was Very Struck By The Fact That Colin Powell Said He Would Produce Evidence Of Osama Bin Laden Fault And Then Never Produced It. Then Tony Blair Produced A Document Of Seventy Paragraphs, But Only The Last Nine Referred To The World Trade Center, And They Were Not Convincing. So We Have A Little Problem Here: If They're Guilty, Where Is The Evidence? And If We Can't Hear The Evidence, Why Are We Going To War?

The Violence Stems From Injustice, Because People Feel They Have Been Treated Unfairly In The Middle East, Whether That Means Military Occupation, Starvation Under U.n. Sanctions, Whether It Means That They Have A Dictatorship Imposed On Them, Propped Up By The West. This Is Why People Turn To Violence, Because They Have No Other Avenue Left.

Osama Bin Laden Is Very Shrewd. But He Struck Me, Even In 1997, As Being Remarkably Out Of Touch. I Remember Thinking This Does Not Look Like The Type Of Guy Who Walks To The Top Of A Mountain With A Mobile Phone And Says, "operation B, Attack."now He Is America's Number One Enemy. He's Always Wanted To Be That.

Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden Puts His Finger On The Other Longstanding Injustices In The Arab World: The Conying So. And, Tinued Occupation Of Palestinian Land By The Israelis; The Enormous, Constant Arab Anger With The Tens Of Thousands Of Iraqi Children Who Are Dying Under Sanctions; The Feelings Of Humiliation Of Millions Of Arabs Living Under Petty Dictators, Almost All Of Whom Are Propped Up By The West.

Some Of The Guys In The Northern Alliance Are War Criminals. One Of The Northern Alliance Commanders Ran A Slave Girl Network In Kabul In 1994. Remember That There Was A Period When Every Woman On The Streets Was At Risk Of Being Raped. This Was The Northern Alliance Period Of Glory.

We Live In A Society In The West, Where, When Men Do Violent Things, They Do Them Under Orders. They Are Soldiers Carrying Out Orders Or Mafia Men Carrying Out Killings For Bosses. But The Way Things Happen In The Middle East Is Not The Same As In The West.

Colleagues Will Malign You If You're A Moderately Successful Journalist.

I've Lived In The Middle East For Twenty-five Years. I Know Exactly How These Issues Come Up. Even My Landlord, Who Is A Moderate Lebanese Guy, Says, "but Bin Laden Says What We Think." These People Believe That Osama Bin Laden Is Being Targeted Not Because Of The World Trade Center And Washington; They Are Not Convinced By The Evidence That Has Been Produced. They Believe He's Being Targeted Because He Tells The Truth.

Obama, Who Is Becoming More And More Preacher-like, Wants To Be The Punisher-in-chi Ef Of The Western World, The Avenger-in-chie F. There Is Something Oddly Roman About Him. ... The Lesser Races Must Be Civilized And They Must Be Punished... Everyone Outside The Roman Empire Was Called A Barbarian. Everyone Outside Obama’s Empire Is Called A Terrorist.

The Sheer Violence Of It, The Howl Of Air Raid Sirens And The Air-cutting Fall Of The Missiles Carried Its Own Political Message; Not Just To President Saddam But To The Rest Of The World. We Are The Superpower, Those Explosions Said Last Night. This Is How We Do Business.

The Word 'democracy' And The Name Of Assad Do Not Blend Very Well In Much Of Syria.

The Americans May Think They Have 'liberated' Baghdad But The Tens Of Thousands Of Thieves - They Came In Families And Cruised The City In Trucks And Cars Searching For Booty - Seem To Have A Different Idea What Liberation Means.

Even My Landlord, Who Is A Moderate Lebanese Guy, Says, "but Bin Laden Says What We Think." These People Believe That Bin Laden Is Being Targeted Not Because Of The World Trade Center And Washington; They Are Not Convinced By The Evidence That Has Been Produced. They Believe He's Being Targeted Because He Tells The Truth.

The Bin Laden I Met Each Time Was In A Simple Saudi White Robe, With A Simple, Cheap Kafiya And Very Cheap Plastic Sandals. But A Videotape Released Before September 11, Which I Saw On Lebanese Television, Had Him In A Gold Embroidered Robe. When I Saw This, I Thought, Whoa, Has This Guy Changed? I Wouldn't Have Imagined Him Ever Appearing In Such Golden Robes When I Met Him.

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