Robert Fisk on DEMOCRACY NOW (March 5th)

[laststeamtrain]

Robert Fisk on Osama bin Laden at 50, Iraqi Death Squads and Why the Middle East is More Dangerous Now Than in Past 30 Years of War Reporting

AMY GOODMAN: Well, congratulations also on your 2006 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom.

ROBERT FISK: Thanks very much, indeed. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You said last night at a large event at Town Hall in New York, where you were honored and you spoke, that you consider the award important as a flak jacket. Explain.

ROBERT FISK: Well, if you report the Middle East and you do it fairly and honorably and you criticize everyone, and that includes Israel, you’re going to get the sticks and stones, sometimes literally. You get a lot of flak. And when a journalist gets an honor like the Lannan Award or a journalistic award in Britain, OK, it’s flattering, it’s nice. All journalists like that. But particularly in the Middle East, it’s a way of showing that there are other people in the West who say, “You’re doing the right job. Keep it up.”

And it’s also a lesson to those critics, particularly the particularly venomous ones, and you and I could think of them straightaway, who try to destroy your career by lying about you, by accusing you of being anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, you name it. It’s a way of saying, “Well, hold on a second. Look at this list of awards. Do you think these people are all the same? Do you not realize that this was for some reason?” So, it is a flak jacket. It’s a protection for journalists when we get awards for reporting in the Middle East, particularly in the Middle East.

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Reads from his book: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

“The presence in Iraq of so many thousands of Western mercenaries -- or ‘security contractors,’ as the American press coyly referred to them -- said as much about America's fear of taking military casualties as it did about the multi-million-pound security industry now milking the coffers of the US and British governments. Security firms were escorting convoys on the highways of Iraq. Armed plain-clothes men from an American company were guarding US troops at night inside the former presidential palace where Paul Bremer had his headquarters. In other words, security companies were now guarding the occupation troops. When a US helicopter crashed near Fallujah in 2003, it was an American security company that took control of the area and began rescue operations. Needless to say, casualties among the mercenaries were not included in the regular body count put out by the occupation authorities.”

The latest figure that I have as a journalist now is that we now have in Iraq 120,000 Westerner mercenaries. That's almost equal to the total number of American troops.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/05/1515214

[robinlynne]

1. 120,000 mercenaries in Iraq, besides the soldiers!!!!!!