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

The violence stems from injustice, because people feel they have been treated unfairly in the Middle East, whether that means military occupation, starvation under U.N. sanctions, whether it means that they have a dictatorship imposed on them, propped up by the West. This is why people turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

Individuals in various countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia listen to the tapes of bin Laden. They gather in groups of four or five. They feel they want to do something to express their support for what they've heard. The idea that they were taking orders is a particularly Western idea.

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

President Bush cruelly manipulated the grief of the American people - and the sympathy of the rest of the world - to introduce a 'world order' dreamed up by a clutch of fantasists advising the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers.

In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,' a Syrian officer explained to us. 'Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return.