Viewpoint: UK war reporter Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk, one of the leading British war correspondents of his generation, is a controversial figure.
An author and Middle East correspondent for the UK's Independent newspaper, Fisk's impassioned, some would say polemical, reporting of conflicts in the region has drawn both praise and criticism.
He has won the British International Journalist of the year award seven times and reported from the region for nearly 30 years.
The BBC News website spoke to Robert Fisk about Iraq, reporting conflicts and his encounters with Osama Bin Laden as he promoted his latest book, The Great War for Civilisation - the conquest of the Middle East.
BBC: You've said that your next visit to Iraq may be your last - why?
Robert Fisk: Iraq is becoming so dangerous for journalists now that I and my colleagues ask ourselves if the risk is worth the story.
Having said that, I probably will keep going back.
I've never been on an assignment that is as dangerous as Iraq on a personal basis and we've reached a point in the Iraq story that our access to real sources - not the Americans and the British and the Iraqi government but real people - is so restricted that we can only just about do our jobs.
You've been critical of what you describe as "hotel reporting" from Iraq. What should news organisations be doing that they are not?
The first thing they should do is say to their readers or viewers that they are confined to their hotels and don't leave and don't do any street reporting.
By using a Baghdad dateline they give the impression they can check stories that they can't.
So for example, when the Americans claim they killed 142 "terrorists" in Tal Afar, the impression is given they can check the story out, but they can't because they can't go there.
The reality is they are merely being an echo chamber for various spokesmen, officials and generals - there is nothing wrong with that, but just tell the people at the other end of the story the circumstances of your own reporting.
Do you think that the passing of the constitution in Iraq in a referendum will have an impact on the level of violence there?
Not really. Most Iraqis are just trying to survive. They have no electricity and very little money to pay for fuel. They are desperate to protect their families, womenfolk and children from being kidnapped for money.
They are frightened of the suicide bombers that sometimes seem to attack at the rate of five or six times a day.
Iraq is in a state of total anarchy from Mosul all the way down to Basra.
There are armed insurgents on the streets within half a mile of the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the US and UK embassies are. The whole American project in Iraq is effectively dead.
When you are there you realise it but when you emerge from this bubble of anarchy and watch television in Britain or America you can be persuaded it's going fine.
It's not going fine - it's a disaster.
Can you tell us about your impressions of Osama Bin Laden from your meetings with him?
He's a man of ferocious self-conviction who became more and more vain as the years went by - but also a person who thinks before he speaks.
Bin Laden will sit back and clean his teeth with a piece of miswack wood while he thinks for up to a minute about what his answer to your question should be.
His interests have changed as the years have gone by.
When I first met him in 1993 he was obsessed with the victory he and his mujahideen had gained over the Soviet army.
In 1996 he was obsessed by what he called the corruption of the Saudi royal family.
In 1997 he was obsessed by the American presence throughout the Arab world. That was probably still obsessing him on 11 September 2001 but I haven't seen him since then.
He was a very self-conscious and self-confident man but with a ferocious desire to rule or participate in an Islamic caliphate in which the laws would truly be Koranic where I don't think there would be a lot of women's rights.
Did you get any sense at your last meeting that his organisation was capable of carrying out the 9-11 attacks?
No. But he did say to me that he prayed that God would allow al-Qaeda to turn America into a shadow of its former self.
At the time I thought it was just rhetoric but when I saw the almost biblical pictures on the evening of 11 September I did think that New York was a shadow of its former self.
In your latest book, you say that Bin Laden hinted that he wanted you to work for al-Qaeda - and you turned him down. What do you think he wanted?
I've no idea. It was at the third meeting and when I arrived in his tent and he came over to me with a big smile which I didn't like and said: "One of our brothers had a dream that you arrived on a horse dressed as a Muslim Imam and wearing a turban - this means you are a true Muslim."
I felt at once that he was trying to make a recruit of me and that he thought that because I was a fair reporter that he would be able to bring me across to his side.
I was quite horrified by this and tried to think how best to reply, because after all I was surrounded by al-Qaeda people.
What I said was: "I am not a Muslim. I am a journalist and my job is to tell the truth."
He realised I was rejecting him and said: "But that is the same as being a good Muslim."
I breathed a big sigh of relief.
What is the nature of the conflict between the West and the Muslim world? Is it a clash of civilisations or are we exaggerating the real appeal of a small number of extremists?
I've never come across this famous "clash of civilisations" and I think it's a myth.
I live in the Muslim world and among Muslims. My landlord is a Muslim, my grocer is a Muslim and I think the idea is nonsense.
One of the themes of your reflections on the Middle East seems to be the cyclical nature of history and political leaders repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. Could you expand on this?
Yes, my latest book is called The Great War for Civilisation after the inscription on the back of my father's World War I medal.
After WWI the British and French created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and the Middle East.
I've spent my entire professional career watching the people within those borders burn.
For me it's all about linking history with the present.
Oddly enough, that's true of Bin Laden as well, he talks about the Balfour declaration, the Sykes-Picot agreement and the loss of Andalusia to the Christians in the 15th Century.
It seems that in many ways, history haunts us and maybe we should all carry a history book in our back pockets.
Do you think the internet and blogging will change the way conflicts are reported?
I've no idea - I don't use the internet and don't use emails so I've no idea.
Why did you choose to become a foreign correspondent?
At age of 12 after seeing the Alfred Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent in which a reporter called Humphrey Haverstock goes to Europe to cover the outbreak of the WWII.
He witnesses an assassination, chases spies, gets shot down by a German battleship, files a scoop and wins the most gorgeous woman in the movie - I thought that sounded pretty good.
It didn't turn out to be that adventurous, exciting or romantic for me in the Middle East.
It turned out in my case in the Middle East to be a job of recording the injustices, torture, dictators and wars that have plagued the region.
You take a definite position in your reporting - something many correspondents say they don't do.
If you believe that victims should have more of a say than people who commit atrocities then yes I take a definite position. If reporters don't do that then they are out of their minds.
If you are covering the liberation of extermination camps at the end of WWII do you give equal time to the SS? No - you speak to the victims.
Equally, when I was reporting the Palestinian suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001 in which 22 Israelis were killed - over half of them children - I reported the atrocity that had taken place. I didn't give equal time to the Hamas spokesman.
This idea that you must balance out a story by talking to the oppressors on an equal basis with the victims is ridiculous.
If you are a baker or a bus driver and you see something terrible then you feel angry about it.
I, as a journalist, also have the right to feel angry and talk about it with anger - and that's what I do.
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