Hannes Coudenys24 maart 2006 – 21:05

‘My book is very depressing, it’s about torture, ethnic cleansing, suffering, secret policemen, genocide, mass killings, betrayal.’

‘War, I have to say, is not primarily about victory or defeat, it is about the total failure of the human spirit.’

‘After a bombing, I saw wild dogs tearing up human bodies and a crew was filming it. Why are you filming this I asked them, you’ll never get it on the television. Oh, it is just for the archives.’

‘Television will not show you the horrors we see in war, it will not show you the dogs tearing the bodies to pieces, it will not show you the children screaming as they die. If an Iraqi soldier is obliging enough to die in a romantic pose, face unmutilated beside the road then you can see it from a distance, the face of war.’

‘Television makers say: we must respect the dead by not showing the horror. That’s weird I think: It’s ok to kill them, but we got to respect them when they are dead.’

‘You see more reality of war in cinema than on television.’

‘In July alone, 1100 Iraqi’s died by violence in just Baghdad.’

‘Osama Bin Lade said to me: ‘Mr. Robert, I pray that God permits us to turn America into a shadow of itself.’

‘If I put a fence up like the Israeli wall in my garden I can tell you the neighbours would be calling in the police.’

‘Journalists are semantically destroying the reality and the narrative of the conflict between Palestine and Israel.’

‘Journalists are making a mistake by going to war with a notebook in their back pocket instead of a history book.’

‘The Americans must leave Iraq, and they will leave Iraq, and they can’t leave Iraq.’

‘I don’t blame the journalist who are scared to leave the high protected hotel in Baghdad, they have families and the do not want to take the risk. What I do blame them for is that they don’t tell their readers and viewers that they can’t leave the hotel and get all their news from American officials.’

‘America will get out of Iraq, I think Bush will lose the war and then probably declare victory.’