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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.

Robert Fisk

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Robert Fisk
Age: 74 †
Born: 1946
Born: July 12
Died: 2020
Died: October 30
Historian
Journalist
War Correspondent
Writer
Ends
Arabia
Washington
East
York
Wants
Middle
Saudi
Interest
Saudis
House
Laden

More quotes by Robert Fisk

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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
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I do not make stories up, full stop.
Robert Fisk
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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.'
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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And history`s fingers never relax their grip, never leave us unmolested, can touch us even when we would never imagine their presence.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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?
Robert Fisk
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And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk