It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career — in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad — watching the people within those borders burn.

Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind.

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

I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'

I still wonder if the United States realizes how much planning went into this. When we talk about "mindless terrorists," we are lying to ourselves.

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.