Robert Fisk quotes - page 2

At the time, I was working for The Times. My story ran in full. Then an official of the Foreign Office lunched my editor and told him my report was "not helpful". Because, of course, we supported President Saddam at the time and wanted revolutionary Iran to suffer and destroy itself. President Saddam was the good guy then. I wasn't supposed to report his human rights abuses. And now I'm not supposed to report the slaughter of the innocent by American or RAF pilots because the British Government has changed sides. (Robert Fisk)
The New York Times "last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and "leave in their wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known". The missiles are a myth – I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm – but this doesn't matter. View quote
Robert Fisk
When I visited Syrian special forces along the front lines, I was given extraordinary amounts of detail. They gave me the code numbers for the various positions they've got, told me where the rebels were - about 800 meters away in a forest. I met soldiers who had been wounded but were still serving. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that? View quote
Robert Fisk
I do not make stories up, full stop. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. (Robert Fisk)
When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating. View quote
Robert Fisk
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
Israel lost its war. Will Assad's enemies lose, too? View quote
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. View quote
Robert Fisk
It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers. View quote
Robert Fisk
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that. View quote
Robert Fisk