Some of the guys in the Northern Alliance are war criminals. One of the Northern Alliance commanders ran a slave girl network in Kabul in 1994. Remember that there was a period when every woman on the streets was at risk of being raped. This was the Northern Alliance period of glory.

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.

War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.

Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly Roman about him. ... The lesser races must be civilized and they must be punished... Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

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.

U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.