Journalist Robert Fisk has attained a level of fame not granted to many: his name has become a verb. So frequently have the wild claims of this man been exposed as gaseous vapour that now "to fisK" has become synonymous with demolishing a weak argument point by point or as "The Globe and Mail" recently defined it "to check a person's really absurd assertions against the facts." It was Mr Fisk who spread the word of the "outrageous slaughter" perpetrated by Israel in the "massacre" at Jenin. It was he who poopoohed the notion that the Americans had taken Baghdad airport, and who praised the preternatural skill of the Iraqi army at concealing itself, not realizing that the ultimate in camouflage is to run away before the enemy arrives.
In this light therefore Dexter directs your attention to a bitter column by the legendary Mr Fisk writing in today's "Independent". If you wondered how the fall of Baghdad would be viewed by the anti-American left no better reaction can be found than in this article, where he manages to sneer at coalition troops and the cheering Iraqis in the same breath, sparing kind words only for the foreign Arabs who had come far to fight for Saddam only to be abandoned and scorned. Not everyone is happy in Baghdad tonight: frantic mujahadin are trying to get on the next bus for Syria and Robert Fisk is sobbing in his beer at the Palestine Hotel.