Here are some excerpts from an interview with Robert Fisk in Bhagdad. Read the full story! It's a very good analysis of where we are now.

"Robert Fisk: It’s like someone wakes up in the morning and says, “Let’s target this on the map today”, and it’s something which sort of characterizes the whole adventure because if you actually look at what’s happening on the ground, you’ll see that the American and British armies started off in the border. They started off at Um Qasr and got stuck, carried on up the road through the desert, took another right turn and tried to get into Basra, got stuck, took another right at Nasiriyah, got stuck—it’s almost as if they keep on saying, “Well let’s try the next road on the right”, and it has kind of a lack of planning to it. There will be those who say that, “No it’s been meticulously planned,” but it doesn’t feel like it to be here.

(...)

The American correspondent was saying to me yesterday morning, “This is ridiculous, we simply can’t report the story, because every time we have to deal with something Saddam says, the Pentagon claims it’s not him or it’s his double or it was recorded 2 weeks ago”. So, the story ceases to be about what the man says, the story starts to be this totally mythical, fictional idea that it really isn’t Saddam or it’s his double, etcetera. I watched this recording on television, all his television broadcasts are recordings because he’s not so stupid as to do a live broadcast and get bombed by the Americans while he’s doing it. The one thing you learn if you’re a target is not to do live television broadcasts, or radio for that matter, or, indeed telephone. But if you listen and read the text of what Saddam said, it has clearly been recorded in the previous few hours, and I can tell you, having once actually met the man, it absolutely was Saddam Hussein. But that’s the strange thing, you see, that in the US, the Pentagon only has to say it’s not Saddam, that it’s a fake, it was recorded years ago, or that it’s a double, and the Hollywood side of the story, which is quite rubbish, it’s not true - it is him, then takes over from the real story, which is ‘What the hell is this guy actually saying?’.

(...)

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!): Why have you chosen to remain in Baghdad?

Robert Fisk:  Because I don’t work for Colin Powell, I work for a British newspaper called The Independent; if you read it, you’ll find that we are. It’s not the job of a journalist to snap to the attention of generals. I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago in my newspaper saying that before the war began in Yugoslavia, the British Foreign Office urged journalists to leave and then said the British intelligence had uncovered a secret plot to take all the foreign reporters hostage in Belgrade. I decided this was a lie and stayed - and it was a lie. In Afghanistan, just before the fall of Khandahar, as I was entering Afghanistan, the British Foreign Office urged all journalists to stay out of Taliban areas and then said the British intelligence had uncovered a plot to take all the foreign reporters hostage. Aware of Yugoslavia, I pressed on to Khandahar and it proved to be a lie. Just before the bombardment here, the British Foreign Office said that all journalists should leave because British intelligence had uncovered a plot by Saddam to take all journalists hostages, at which moment I knew I’d be safe to stay because it was, of course, the usual lie. What is sad is how many journalists did leave. There were a very large number of reporters who left here voluntarily before the war believing this meretricious nonsense. I should say that the Iraqis have thrown quite a large number of journalists out as well. But I don’t think it’s the job of a journalist to run away when war comes just because it happens to be his own side doing the bombing. I’ve been bombed by the British and Americans so many times that it’s not ‘shock and awe’ anymore, it’s ‘shock and bore’, frankly.