...Goodman: What about the journalists? It looks like there is the highest percentage of foreign journalists, as a percentage of foreign casualties, that we have seen in a long time. It looks like the number at this point is 14 journalists killed as well as the shelling of the Palestine Hotel.

Fisk: Well, I think that the number of journalists covering war - indeed, the number of journalists in general - is increasing all the time. And so I suppose, it's not a very romantic thing to say, but I suppose that as the number of journalists increase, the number of casualties among journalists will increase as well. There were a number of incidents which we seem to have understood. The ITV reporter, who got north of the American lines near Basra, was returning and got shot by US Marines, along with his crew. Another British reporter who may or may not have committed suicide, I don't know, which has nothing to do with the Americans or the Iraqis per se, if that's the case.

We have the Palestine hotel, which is one of the more serious cases of all. That particular day began with the killing of the journalist from Al Jazeera, the Qatari/Doha television chain... while he was on the roof preparing to do a broadcast, an American jet came in so low, according to his colleagues downstairs, they thought it would land on the roof, and fired a single missile at the generator beside him and killed him. About three and a quarter hours later, an American M1A1 Abrams tank on the Jumeirah River bridge, about three quarters of a mile from the Palestine Hotel where the journalists were staying, fired a single round, a depleted uranium round, as I understand, at the office of Reuters where they were filming the same tanks on the bridge.

I was actually between the tank and the hotel, when the round was fired. I was trying to get back from a story... When I got there, two of my colleagues, one from Reuters and one from Spanish Television, both of whom were to die within a few hours, the first one within half an hour, were being brought out in blood-soaked bed-sheeting. And a Lebanese colleague, a woman, Samia, with a piece of metal in her brain. She recovered. She had brain surgery. She's married to the London Financial Times correspondent here in Beirut. She survived.

The initial reaction was very interesting because the BBC went on air saying it was an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade... Then it emerged, thanks be to God for the attempt to get the truth, that TV3, a French channel, had recorded the tanks' movements and I actually rushed to their Bureau and they showed me the videotape and you saw the American tanks for five minutes beforehand, in complete silence - there was nothing happening - going onto the bridge, moving its turret, and then firing at the hotel. The camera shakes and pieces of plaster and paint fall in front of the camera. Clearly, it's the same shot.

...Now I was in between the tank and the hotel and there was complete silence. And when initially the Americans said they knew nothing about it, when it became clear the French had a film, before the Americans realized how long the film was running for prior to the attack, they said that the tank was under persistent sniper and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire, which is not true. I would have heard it because I was close to the tank and the hotel and it would have been picked up on the soundtrack, which it wasn't. This statement was made by General Buford Blount, the same 3rd Infantry Division commander who boasted that he'd be using depleted uranium munitions during the war in an interview with Le Monde in March, a month ago... The clear implication was that the gunfire had come from the Reuters office, which was a most mendacious, vicious lie by General Blount... And General Blount has not apologized for it. So far he has gotten away with his lie, I'm sorry to say.

Amy: Nouvelle Observatoure, the French Newspaper, is reporting that a US Army captain named Captain Wolford said unlike what the military reported, he did not see sniper fire from the Palestine hotel. But he did see what he thought was light glinting off of binoculars from one of the hotel's balconies. He said he had never been told the Palestine Hotel was the home base for almost all the international journalists in Baghdad and assumed the ----

Fisk: Well, yeah I've heard this story... [But] if American commanders in the field are not told the intelligence information about where people are in what hotels, it doesn't say much about the American military.

...But I don't think that the American soldiers were bad people. I think they believed in what they were doing, up to the point that you can. I think that they believed that their war was an honorable one, even though I don't think it was. But I think that they had been previously misled, and I think something has gone wrong with the leadership of the American military, when you can have a general like Blount lying about the press. If to see a flash of what appears to be a camera or some kind of reflecting instrument in a window is to be the signal for capital punishment for those who are legitimately filming the war for an international news agency, something has gone terribly wrong. I think the real problem at the end of the day lies in the White House, with President Bush.

There were a number of American Marines and soldiers I met who were very helpful to me in understanding what was happening. At one point, I was next to an American tank that came under fire - I don't know where from - and I thought the soldiers behaved with great restraint... I think they were frightened, I think they were tired, they hadn't washed, etc. But I'm sorry, I don't get too romantic about soldiers who invade other peoples' countries.

...But again, you know, war is primarily about suffering and death, not about victory and defeat and not about presidents who-- Oh, I'm so tired of talking about your president! Or, indeed, the president of Iraq, who's a pretty vicious man, frankly, if he's still alive. Where is he? That should be your last question, Amy: Where is Saddam Hussein?

...Goodman: OK, where is he?

Fisk: You know what, I have this absolute fixation that he's in Belarus, the most horrible ex-Soviet state that exists: Minsk.

I tell you why I think this... Long before the Iraq war, I had this absolute obsession that Minsk-- I've been to Minsk; it's a horrible city! It's full of whiskey, corruption, prostitutes and damp apartments. Very, very favorable to the Ba'ath party of Iraq. And I noticed in the local newspaper here in Beirut, I fear about six or seven weeks ago an article that said that the Olympic committee of Belarus in Minsk had invited Uday Hussein, beloved son of the 'great ruler of Iraq', to a chess tournament in Minsk and I thought, My God, this is where they're going to go. And if you think of all the stories, which may be complete hogwash, of how they got out by train with the Russian ambassador through Syria, where else to go but Minsk?

I actually mentioned it to my foreign desk, and my foreign editor said "Off you go to Belarus!" and I said "No, please, please, not Belarus! I've been there before. It's awful!" --But I do have this kind of suspicion maybe he's there.

But there you go. He may be in Baghdad. He may be captured tonight. I really have not the slightest idea.

...You know, one can't help in the Middle East but be struck by the ironies of history. Just... two weeks before America invaded Iraq, a document went on auction. It's a public auction in Britain, at Swinden in southwestern England. And I made a bid for it... It was the official British document issued by Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, after he invaded Iraq with the British Army in 1917. And it was his proclamation to the people of the Zilayah, that's to say, the governerate of Baghdad. And I quote from the first paragraph: "We come here not as conquerors, but as liberators to free you from the tyranny of generations," just like President Bush says he's come now. I actually wrote about this document in the newspaper, and said it was going to come up for auction, which was a very bad mistake because the auctioneers rang me up from Swinden, England, to Beirut... And they said, 'do you want to bid for it, the bidding has started.' I said, 'yes, I will bid for it.' And it was originally going to go for US $156.00... It actually went for $2000. And God spare me, I bought it.

So now I am the owner of Sir Stanley Maude's document, telling the people of Baghdad that the new occupiers, the British Army of 1917, had come there as liberators, not as conquerors, to free them from the tyranny of generations of tyrants and dictators. And now, you know, a few weeks later, there I am in Baghdad, listening to the American Marine Corps issuing an identical document, telling the people they'd come not as conquerors, but as liberators, and I wonder sometimes whether people ever, ever read history books.

Goodman: We're talking to Robert Fisk, the correspondent for The Independent. He is tired. He has just come out of Iraq after a month.

Fisk: He's definitely tired, Amy. He's very definitely tired, yeah.

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