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.

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

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.

I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation.

In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

I don't know what happens if they get bin Laden. I'm much more interested in what happens if they don't get bin Laden.