Robert Fisk reported from Baghdad as the missiles were falling in March 2003

[madfloridian]

I ran across his report again tonight, and it is just stunning.

It was so shocking what we did as a country, so unbelievable that we televised it on national TV night after night in a rather proud and awed way.

We attacked a country that never harmed us, bombed them, killed civilians, and then occupied them. And none of our leaders talk about it publicly. It is a non-topic.

From The Independent UK, March 22, 2003.

Minute after minute the missiles came, with devastating shrieks

Saddam's main presidential palace, a great rampart of a building 20 storeys high, simply exploded in front of me ­ a cauldron of fire, a 100ft sheet of flame and a sound that had my ears singing for an hour after. The entire, massively buttressed edifice shuddered under the impact. Then four more cruise missiles came in.

It is the heaviest bombing Baghdad has suffered in more than 20 years of war. All across the city last night, massive explosions shook the ground. To my right, the Ministry of Armaments Procurement ­ a long colonnaded building looking much like the façade of the Pentagon ­ coughed fire as five missiles crashed into the concrete.

...."From high-rise buildings, shops and homes came the thunder of crashing glass as the shock waves swept across the Tigris river in both directions. Minute after minute the missiles came in. Many Iraqis had watched ­ as I had ­ television film of those ominous B-52 bombers taking off from Britain only six hours earlier. Like me, they had noted the time, added three hours for Iraqi time in front of London and guessed that, at around 9pm, the terror would begin. The B-52s, almost certainly firing from outside Iraqi airspace, were dead on time.

You can still find videos at You Tube of the bombing, of the shock and awe.

There is something anarchic about all human beings, about their reaction to violence. The Iraqis around me stood and watched, as I did, at huge tongues of flame bursting from the upper stories of Saddam's palace, reaching high into the sky. Strangely, the electricity grid continued to operate and around us the traffic lights continued to move between red and green. Billboards moved in the breeze of the shock waves and floodlights continued to blaze on public buildings. Above us we could see the massive curtains of smoke beginning to move over Baghdad, white from the explosions, black from the burning targets.

How could one resist it? How could the Iraqis ever believe with their broken technology, their debilitating 12 years of sanctions, that they could defeat the computers of these missiles and of these aircraft? It was the same old story: irresistible, unquestionable power. Well yes, one could say, could one attack a more appropriate regime? But that is not quite the point. For the message of last night's raid was the same as that of Thursday's raid, that of all the raids in the hours to come: that the United States must be obeyed. That the EU, UN, Nato ­ nothing ­ must stand in its way. Indeed can stand in its way.

We are still occupying them, and will for an indeterminate time. True facts are sketchy, propaganda prevails...we really don't know that much about how things are over there.

We also heard much truth from John Pilger when he said there were no tears or remorse for the fallen of Iraq.

Fisk continued his writings from wartorn Iraq. This is from April 2003.

Torn To Pieces

Yesterday evening, I drove through the city for more than an hour. Hundreds of streets are now barricaded off with breeze blocks, burnt cars and tree trunks, watched over by armed men who are ready to kill strangers who threaten their homes or shops. Which is just how the civil war began in Beirut in 1975.

A few US Marine patrols did dare to venture into the suburbs yesterday - positioning themselves next to hospitals which had already been looted - but fires burnt across the city at dusk for the third consecutive day. The municipality building was blazing away last night, and on the horizon other great fires were sending columns of smoke miles high into the air.

Too little, too late. Yesterday, a group of chemical engineers and water purification workers turned up at the US Marine headquarters, pleading for protection so they could return to their jobs. Electrical supply workers came along, too. But Baghdad is already a city at war with itself, at the mercy of gunmen and thieves.

There is no electricity in Baghdad - as there is no water and no law and no order - and so we stumbled in the darkness of the museum basement, tripping over toppled statues and stumbling into broken winged bulls. When I shone my torch over one far shelf, I drew in my breath. Every pot and jar - "3,500 BC" it said on one shelf corner - had been bashed to pieces. Why? How could they do this? Why, when the city was already burning, when anarchy had been let loose - and less than three months after US archaeologists and Pentagon officials met to discuss the country's treasures and put the Baghdad Archaeological Museum on a military data-base - did the Americans allow the mobs to destroy the priceless heritage of ancient Mesopotamia? And all this happened while US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was sneering at the press for claiming that anarchy had broken out in Baghdad.

I fear there will no accountability for all that we did. The ones who were plotting this insane invasion got too many on board with them...and there will probably be no punishment for any.

[Mr Rabble]

1. Generally regarded as THE best reporter in the ME.

Totally suppressed here, Fisk really is the standard bearer for exceptional reporting from the ME- by a Westerner.

He is absolutely correct, as is Pilger.

[G_j]

2. we will be thankful we have his reports

as a record of history.

[madfloridian]

4. We will surely have no record of history from our complicit media.

Not of that time in our history. They beat the war drums all the way.

[msfiddlestix]

14. Robert Fisk was brilliant, Committed, Passionate and Courageous

I listened to his reports which were numerous in those early weeks and months, and he still continued reporting long after, all the while the Corporate Media gave absolutely no public mention, no public attention or credit to his excellent work.

[roody]

3. I am ashamed to be from the country that did this.

I protested the war every chance I could.

[madfloridian]

5. I was so angry when they attacked that month.

I called all the candidates who approved the war, I called all my congressmen, they did not seem to care at all.

[Selatius]

6. It was rape.

If you can rape a nation of people, that's how it is done.

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[roody]

8. My friend Charlie Liteky was in Baghdad to witness

this atrocity. He was with Voices for Peace, who have since changed their name to avoid paying fines for having broken the sanctions. http://vcnv.org/

[madfloridian]

9. Since US reporters were "embedded", we did not get much from them..

except the glory of war and being the savior of that country. They made it sound glorious.

[truedelphi]

12. The Voices of Peace people are such heroes.

Kathy Kelley went and stayed in Baghdad during the Shock and Awe campaign.

I remember KPFA interviewing her at the tail end of that and how when asked what she wanted next, she is replying 'I just am so sick of war. I want so much to go home."

ANd of course, she was fully aware that those kind Iraqis who took her into their homes, fed her and befriended her and shared their children with her, they were not able to leave and go home to Chicago.

Imagine if you are sick of war after five weeks of it - how much more awful if you have to endure it for FIVE YEARS!!

[balantz]

10. I always ask that my fellow US citizens refrain from saying "We did this".

People often say what you did:

"I fear there will no accountability for all that WE did."

We were lied into the support of these brutal and illegal acts, all the way from the deceptions of 9/11. We didn't do these horrible deeds. I never condoned these acts, especially after I learned of all the lies that precipitated them. And I'm willing to bet that the majority of us are just as innocent.

Let's not include ourselves in the blame any longer. I know they say "You are either with us, or you support the terrorists", but that is a failed proposition and also a spoken threat against free peoples everywhere.

[msfiddlestix]

13. "We" as a Nation did this..

We are collectively responsible. The point that "we" were "lied into the support" this colossal tragedy does not negate this fact. Although it is used in an attempt to mitigate our collective responsibility, we are none the less, collectively responsible, no matter how hard many millions of us deplored, expressed our outrage and protested by putting our bodies on the line (in marches and demonstrations) before this event occurred and these deplorable actions was taken.

Many millions of us understood very well that the justifications used to attack Iraq were lies and we said so, loud and clear and often.

[balantz]

19. I disagree to an extent.

Because our corporate owned government and media have consistently worked for the will of the oligarchy it seems to represent rather than for our will it is supposed to represent. If our hands are tied short of resorting to revolution then we are not to blame as much as they are. In fact joining with THEM in the blame to me is wrong. And in a way they have attempted to include us in the blame with them after having lied to us and then tying our hands, because they pretend to represent our will.

[madfloridian]

16. It was done in our name.

Even if we fought against its happening.

[balantz]

22. Yes, it was done in our name, which is a further crime.

See my response in post #19.

[BlueMTexpat]

11. I see that there are already movements afoot to dismiss

any responsibility for BushCo based on their so-called "good intentions."

Anyone who believes that this bunch of yayhoos ever had "good intentions" ... and especially towards Iraq ... has not been paying attention.

I had the privilege of hearing Fisk speak in person a few years back. If you haven't finished your Christmas shopping, his book "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" is an excellent read. I hope that BOTH Obama and Clinton read it thoroughly and well.

[madfloridian]

15. Yes, so many in the media and congress were complicit

in giving Bush his agenda. They will have to make it be okay.

[derby378]

17. Obama should find a place in his administration for Fisk

Good for him! :applause:

[spanone]

18. someday america will have to answer to it's war crimes

[madfloridian]

20. Fisk from June 2008..."only the cell phones of the Iraqi people can record their tragedy"

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-snapshots-of-life-in-baghdad-849226.html

"Three bodies lie beside a Baghdad street on a blindingly hot day. The one on the right is dressed in a white shirt and bright green trousers, his hands tied behind his back. Two others on the left lie shoeless, both dressed in check shirts, dumped – how easily we use that word of Baghdad's corpses – on a yard of dirt and bags of garbage. They, too, of course, are now garbage. The wall behind them, a grim barrier of dun-coloured brick, seals off this horror from two two-storey villas and a clutch of palm trees, the normal life of Baghdad just a wall away from the other "normal" life of Baghdad's sectarian killings. No one knows whose bodies they are and the picture – taken from a car window – was snapped in fear by an unknown Iraqi.

It is a cell-phone picture, for now only the cell phones of the Iraqi people can record their tragedy. Another shows a young man's body, taken from beside a car wing mirror, hands tied behind his back with his own shirt. Bombs explode across the Baghdad skyline, columns of smoke move into the air like sinister ghosts. Palm trees block off streets of fearful Iraqis. A car bomb blazes, the faint image of a US Humvee outlined against the trees. There are broken bridges, wounded friends, blood-soaked cloth.

...."But it is the cell phone that has captured this terrible, fearful, brave face of Baghdad. Western photographers can no longer roam the streets of the Iraqi capital – and few other cities in Iraq – and in south-west Afghanistan, the same phenomenon has occurred. We Westerners need the locals to photograph their tragedy and their ragged, often fuzzy, poorly framed pictures contain their own finely calibrated and terrible beauty. The fear of the cell-phone snapper is contained in almost every frame. Most of the Iraqis are refugees-to-be, for the Dutch photographer Geert van Kesteren, who collected 388 pages of photographs for his book Baghdad Calling, wanted to catalogue the tragedy of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are the largely ignored victims of our demented 2003 invasion and occupation.

Van Kesteren, an unassuming but imaginative journalist whom I met recently in Holland, noticed that refugees used their cell phones as family albums and decided, in the words of Brigitte Lardinois, formerly director of Magnum Photos in London, "to let the pictures of ordinary, non-professional photographers tell the story this time". Iraqi refugees in Jordan asked friends to send more pictures from Baghdad."

They are the only ones recording their history now. We call ourselves victors, and victors get to write the history unless someone else is doing it also.

[malaise]

21. What I'll never forget is the BBC reporter describing the bombing

as beautiful like fireworks. I'll take those words to my grave - the slaughter of people was fireworks.

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. Kick and recommended - the most intellectually honest journalist in the whole world

read his books, Pity the Nation or The Conquest of the Middle East. Mr. Fisk does not cut anyone any slack for atrocities no matter what the cause. He treats all equally. No other journalist I have ever come across is so lacking in bias toward one side or the other as Robert Fisk - by far the best journalist in the Middle East if not the whole world.

[Douglas Carpenter]

24. Kick and recommended. Excellent article