When you see the things I see, you would never support war ever again"

Sanitised images hide truth about war, says Fisk


By Ian Herbert
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The sanitised images of war broadcast on television are a "lethal weapon" masking atrocities which demonstrate that conflict can "never be justified," an Independent debate was told last night.

"War is not about victory or defeat. It is about the total failure of human spirit," Robert Fisk, The Independent's Middle East correspondent, told the debate. "When you see the things I see, you would never support war ever again."

The increasingly chaotic conflict in Iraq is utterly unjustifiable and a by-product of the same Western thirst for "control, control, control" of the Middle East's assets and resources that has been evident for centuries, added Fisk. "We've always gone to the Middle East to 'liberate' people, taking with us our guns and our swords, our horses and our helicopters," he said

Fisk, whose new book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East has been published by Fourth Estate, said there could be no lasting settlement in Iraq for as long as the occupiers remained there.

He presented a powerful case for presenting in the media the full horror of war - images such as the blood that poured over the top of his shoes in a Baghdad hospital, and the bones he saw where should have been feet on the legs of a child - a horrific sight which was edited out in newspaper images of the child.

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