I wouldn't say I was part of an anti-war campaign.

The dead cannot speak. But hitherto unknown information has emerged from the confidential archives of the Syrian presidency and foreign ministry, published in a new book by Bouthaina Shaaban, who spent ten years as Hafez's interpreter and is still an adviser to his son Bashar.

Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.

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.

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.

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.

The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.