Q. What about Iraqi casualties?
Fisk. The Americans are not interested; they don't want to know. The authorities won't tell us. The health minisstry, run by American appointees, won't tell us. Almost every day I go to the mortuary in Baghdad and find twenty or thirty people -- men, women, children -- dead of gunshot wounds, shot at American checkpoints, shot in family feuds, shot by insurgents for alleged collaboration. The Iraqis are paying a terrible price every day for our adventure. And this is just Baghdad I'm talking about, not Mosul, not Najaf, not Basra. And when you hear Iraqis say it was better under Saddam, it's time qw listen to them. They know what Saddam was like. They don't want Saddam. But they mean that there was security. Do you want freedom and anarchy or do you want dictatorship and security? If you have a family, it's a big choice to make.
.....................................
Q. Seymour Hersh has written that responsibility hasn't gone up the chain of command.
Fisk. Seymour Hersh, with the possible exception of John Burns, is about the only American journalist doing his job on Iraq. Hed doesn't have to go there, but God, we're learning what's happening from him. The banalities in the American mainstream press are certainly not worth reading. We do not fully understand, for example, that there are 20,000 to 30,000 armed mercenaries from South Africa, Ireland, Britain, and America. They are a law unto themselves. They shoot, they kill, and they don't care. There is no law, no justice, nothing. Progressive, June 2005, pp. 42-43.
***********
HE (Hersh) DOESN'T HAVE TO GO THERE, BUT BY GOD, WE'RE LEARNING WHAT'S HAPPENING FROM HIM.
And that is declared by a man who wasn't thre for a few weeks or a few months but for 30 years!
Carrol