-- James A. Donald:
[According to Fisk] the airport was in no imminent danger of falling,
Kevin S. Van Horn:
And, according to the Sun-Sentinel report, it wasn't -- they reported it as empty early in the morning.
The Sun Sentinel reports it being attacked with heavy Iraqi casualties within hours of Baghdad Bob's making the claims that Robert Fisk endorsed,and falling later that night. Fisk tells us that the Iraqi minister was right and the Americans were wrong, that the Americans had been caught lying again The Sun Sentinal reports that the Iraqi minister (Baghdad Bob) was wrong, the Americans were right, and the Baghdad Bob was caught lying.
Now you are being dishonest. He made no claim about what might happen in the future, only about what he was seeing at that moment.
You are splitting legalistic hairs. If Fisk is telling the truth, the Sun Sentinel is lying. If the Sun Sentinel is telling the truth, Fisk is lying, Subsequent events give us good cause to believe the Sun Sentinel was telling the truth, and that Baghdad Bob was lying extravagantly and ridiculously. And if Baghdad Bob was lying, which today everyone, including Fisk, agrees, then Fisk was lying, for Fisk told us that the Iraqi minister was right and the Americans were wrong, that the Americans had been caught lying. James A. Donald:
that in the unlikely event that the US had reached the outskirts, they had fled or been driven back.
Kevin S. Van Horn:
This statement is complete fantasy, and corresponds to nothing that Fisk actually wrote in his report.
Fisk wrote in his report: "Had the Americans found themselves miles away on the edge of the old RAF airbase at Habbaniyeh, one wondered, and confused it with the airport outside Baghdad? Had they sent a patrol up to the far side of the Saddam airport for a few minutes, just to say they'd been there? Back in 1941, a German patrol briefly captured the last tram-stop on the line west of Moscow, collecting the discarded passenger tickets as souvenirs - and then got no farther. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG UF2jhZOGzR8dKNQyDi7aAAL0PxEKS2JzZq7j9/wo 4j5LuVYJEoaFiMRRjMce6FlKzsLV6RpvY/jHfji09