Bin Laden was very keen to point out to me that his forces had fought the Americans in Somalia. He also wanted to talk about how many mullahs in Pakistan were putting up posters saying, "We follow bin Laden." He even produced a sort of Kodak set of snapshots of graffiti supporting him.

And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do.

Osama Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do in response to this attack 9/11. I'm sure he wanted America to attack Afghanistan. Once you do what your enemy wants, you are walking into a trap, whether you think it's the right thing to do or not.

President Bush will come here and there will be new "friends" of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who "liberated" them.

When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.