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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 05:04 pm
Another scholarly attempt at decoding Robert Fisk; it’s becoming quite an industry. Agam’s view:
That’s the weirdest thing about the Fisk interview. The questioner is completely normal, and Robert speaks like something Iowahawk would write.
- I see Fisky’s up again on 4 Corners tonight no doubt telling us Zarqawi is fake but real. Its a veritable Fisk Fest at the moment, what did we do to deserve this?Posted by the nailgun on 2006 05 01 at 02:36 AM • permalink
- Fisk is not real. Has anybody actually ever seen him except on the ABC? They made him to improve ratings which he hasn’t because the ABC doesn’t care about ratings. He is an evil caricature of a hate figure. A creature of right wing blogs bestialized by propagandists and made monstrous even though he is just a lunatic. However he is very popular in the Muslum world which would be a real problem for all of us if he was real which he is not. Therefore he is just a problem for the ABC. And himself. Therefore those of you who keep parodying him all the time are just playing into his hands by making him something he is not which is a real threat which he would be if he was real which he isn’t so he is not. Or wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for you.
So stop taking him so seriously.
- Many blogs have pointed out how Fisk absurdly contradicted himself. However, no one I’ve read took note of Fisk’s claim that the American’s on numerous occasions have claimed to have killed Zarqawi. I’ve followed the news on Iraq closely for years and I’ve never seen a claim by the U.S. that they had killed Zarqawi. I’ve seen stories about rumors near misses which the U.S. spokespeople explicitly denied. Unless someone produces some evidence to the contrary, I’m assuming this is another typical Fisk lie. Too bad no one interrupted him to say “no, they’ve never made any such claim.”Posted by John in Tokyo on 2006 05 01 at 03:07 AM • permalink
- Unless someone produces some evidence to the contrary, I’m assuming this is another typical Fisk lie.
I recall the occasional tentative report that Zarqawi might have been killed, usually out of Pakistani or Jordanian newspapers (or others in the general area), which were always quickly debunked. Fisk strikes me as the kinda guy who would remember the initial reports, but none of the follow-up. The part about those reports being US-originated is just the added colour commentary that his fevered mind can’t help but produce.
- Since I’ve been coming here, I’ve noticed that KR (he who must be obeyed, but not mentioned in dispatches) might have some secret agent type people working for him that some (at the DU, for instance) have only speculated about, but never actually found proof of their existence. According to things I’ve read here, however, it seems that not only is the speculation based on fact, but that the VRWC has morphed. I hesitate to go further, for obvious reasons.
In light of this, I was kinda wondering if maybe this Fisk guy is a product of … well, you know. I mean, the guy’s a perfect propaganda patsy. He actually sounds like he’s for the enemy, but I sense a diabolical substratum that tells me he’s too damn good to be true.
I’m just sayin’ seems like, that’s all.
- What Geoff said … Fisk should be applauded for venturing bravely into the nabulous no man’s land between what is real and what is unreal and reporting back. Clearly traumatized by what he saw. Don’t you guys have some random Dreamtime thing going on down there? Maybe he wandered into that.Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 01 at 08:21 AM • permalink
- uh … I actually meant nabulous. Look it up. It means something. In my own alternate Dreaming. Totally nabulous…Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 01 at 08:22 AM • permalink
- Slightly off topic, but a domestic verison of ol’ fiskie, that internationally reknowned cartoonist Michael Luenig, will be appearing on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope next Monday night (if you can lower yourself to watch non-commercial television).
Stand by for monumental self justification:
“I am not anti-semetic, the cartoon is not anti-semitic, but if it is critical of Israel policies, of course it will be picked up by those that also criticise Israel yada yada”. Or something like that.
- The continuing myth of Fisk’s “expertise” is something I look on as a good sign. If there were a significant number of credible writers whose expertise was undeniable, and who were able to make a plausible case that a) we are losing in Iraq, b) Zarqawi and others like him were provoked by the West, and c) our best strategy is to pull out now, surely we’d be hearing from them, and not from Fisk. Not, of course, that we don’t hear from other “experts” – but they always seem to turn out to be disaffected CIA analysts, Clintonian generals, or mere politicians, whose staying power in the media as oracles of gloom is unsustainable.
- The current “Robert Fisk” is an audioanimatron, created by Karl Rove to replace the crusading journalist tragically beaten to death in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it runs Windows…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 01 at 09:35 AM • permalink
- Well 4 corners took the fisk thesis and ran with it. I thought I had llost the ability to be shocked by just how deranged the communard at the ABC or SBS could get when they have to deal with any of the subjects that appear to set them into spastic rages, but this 4 corners episode was an eye opener whose main points appeared to be:
1. Zarqawi was a nobody until the Americans framed him fro the murder of Ambasodor Foley in Jordan.
2. The Americans deliberately left hima laive when they had a chance to kill him (this is at the time when he supposedly is in fact a nobody anyway) because if Zarqawi died before the Americans invaded they would have no cause to invade, and don’t let anyone fool you with any crap about the Americasn being relutant to take out Zarqawi’s camp because they were in delicate negotiations over trying to get a UN resolution past the French, or negotitating the Passage of troops through Turkey, because we all know and remeber how the American and british case for intervention stood or fell on the presence of Zarqawi.
3. Zarqawi only became somebody because of American propoganda, if they had never accused hime of murdring Foley he would have remained a nobody.
4. Strangely though once he became a somebody he has proven absolutely invincible and his bloody swathe has not aliented anyone anywere, and Al Queada is now resuscitated and Zarqawi is pretty much about to take over the whole Middle East because the American soldiers are just completely incompetent.This whole Tokyo Rose Style agit prop peice uses Zarqawi’s own videos, and as usual the only Americans who get a look in are disgrunteled ex CIA officers and “analysts” who have a book to sell. There was one Ex naval intelligence officer who got a breif moment and was quite reasonable, but the rest is like a cinematic view inside Fisk’s brain.
- Paco, aren’t you kind of stating the obvious? Of course those who are going to be critical of the war or Bush’s policies are going to be disaffected. Criticism is rarely forthcoming from those who are in agreement, right?
And there is at least come truth to Fisk’s assertion about how Zarqawi’s name has become a household word. How many people knew who this guy was before prior to March 2003, much less knew how to pronounce his name?
Had Bush decided to nail the SOB before the Iraq war, no more than a handful would ever have herd of him.
- Addamo:
First of all I find the whole idea that Zarqawis prominence is due to American trumpeting a little strange, he became a houshold name after a series of terrorist spectaculars and surely the media have something to do with that narrative as well.
As for the argument that he owes his prominence to not being hit in 2002 it seems a little circular, because it rests on the conspiratorial belief that his exitence was convenient for the US case for war, and dismisses out of hand that at that time Powell and the Administration behind him were trying everything to put together a united diplomatic and military front to enforce the resolutions against Saddam. The past history of such surgical bomb strikes was not encouraging to risk all these other efforts, there was a firm commitment to the UK that the US would pursue the UN route, and there was also the delicate matter of trying negotiate Turkey’s aquiescence, and that is leaving aside the cosiderable difficulties in keeping the Germans and French onside, who at this time still seemed as if they might fall in behind a second resolution.
Besides which it appears contradictory to be one moment arguing that none of these concerns would have outweighed trying to get Zarqawi in 2002, making him importnat enough to risk the entire effort to forge a colaition, and at the same time to be arguing that in 2002 he was obviously so unimportant as to make it obvious that his subsequent fame was purley the product of American manipulation and lies about the nature of the insurgency.
This is nothing other than the same trope that advanced the idea that Bin Laden wa primarily an American creation, either an illusion created by Straussians or because Bin Laden was created by the Americans in the Afghan war (this last bit particularly stupid as the day before 9/11 Bin Laden himself had drawn attention to just whom been the primary benficiary of US backing in the Afghan war by killing that Achmed Shah Massoud, whoese northern Alliance would subsequently be the US’s key ally in the war that followed).
The 4corners report following hard upon Fisks self fisking shows just how obsessivley deranged sections of the left have become, you should be careful not to be bitten by rabid dogs.
- Leave the truth alone Addamo. Don’t come on it.
This prick’s name became pretty well known after he blew up the UN headquarters in Baghdad. And after he murdered a helpless man with a butcher’s knife, had it filmed as if he had just won the local bowling tournament and then broadcast around the globe with the aid of an army of dribbling pornography obsessed degenerates. Osama bin Laden impressed an even larger audience with much the same strategy, albeit on a grander scale.
It takes a strange kind of moral perspective to see beyond all this and somehow nail it all on Bush. Truly insightful.
- “Paco, aren’t you kind of stating the obvious? Of course those who are going to be critical of the war or Bush’s policies are going to be disaffected. Criticism is rarely forthcoming from those who are in agreement, right?” Right, but irrelevant. Criticism through the proper channels is always possible. But in government, bureaucracies don’t get to establish their own separate foreign policies.
- genwolf
Fair argument, except for a couple of points. The US had already ramped up bombing by late 2002 in the no fly zones, so targeting Zarqawi’s camp would arguably have gone largely un-noticed.
Furthermore, Powell cited the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq during his presentation to the UN, as evidence that Saddam was offering him refuge and thus, supporting terrorism. This is in spite of the CIA’s own conclusion that there was no relationship between the two.
- Was that the same CIA who was sure there were WMD programs in Iraq? Yes.
So is the CIA’s credibility a matter of Addamo’s convenience? Yes.Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 05 03 at 04:37 PM • permalink
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