An example of the journalism of old, journalism that is dying in the spin of modern pretend objectivity and a loss of values and historical education. A man who lived there, was in the danger zones, and talked to OBL and others. Excellent.
"And Churchill’s voice immensely tired and maybe he had a few glasses before he spoke, and you have this extraordinary feeling of power and a man who is using his knowledge of history and imbuing it into other people. What knowledge of history does Bush have? He confused Cambodia with Vietnam. He talks about Vietnam but he managed to avoid going there, as we know Cheney did."
"...none of the Western leaders have been in war. You see, their knowledge of wars, The Bushes and the Blairs, are from TV, Hollywood Movies. When Churchill committed people to war, he had been in the trenches in WW1. Theodore Roosevelt had direct experience. Eisenhower certainly did, I mean he was Supreme Allied Commander of WW2. So, you had in the post war years, you had Western leadership that knew what war was about
: it was about death and screaming and loss and sorrow."
An Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk
By Wajahat Ali
"There’s a sign of how governments used to behave. Four years before the end of the War, when it looked as if the Germans were going to win, Churchill and the British, alone without any American involvement in the War, he was planning post War Germany. And as British troops moved under fire into the German city of Cologne in 1945, British Civil Servants in flak jackets went with them to take over the Town Hall, because they wanted civil administration to resume immediately. To get the fuel running, get rationing, get the people fed. It worked, and people didn’t die. I mean the Germans were poor and hungry, but they didn’t die. There’s a classic example of how before the age of instant television, news press conferences, spin doctors, etc., people planned for the future and generally it tended to work; by and large, it was successful. That was four years before the end of WW2. Four days before the Americans occupied the center of Baghdad, they didn’t have a coherent plan. They had an odd committee set up in the State Department, but no one listened to it and it had 20 people. So, you’re carried along on this instant decision making: “So, whaddya’ gonna’ do, Mr. Bush? How do you respond to this?” And Bush has had 5 minutes before hand to bone up on what he is going to say."
http://www.counterpunch.org/waj04262008.html
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