Robert Fisk: Let the truth speak

Uncovering and reporting on death, destruction, and unspeakable atrocities must be about as harrowing as any job gets. We can never imagine the bravery needed in going unarmed into a war zone where some combatants from either side would rather kill you than talk to you.

One man almost stands alone in his endeavour to bring to the world those uncomfortable truths that great powers across the globe seek to hide:  The Independent’s Robert Fisk.

Fisk has covered many uncomfortable truths over the decades, predominantly, but not exclusively in the Middle East, that his shocking stories are often easily dismissed by his detractors as, ‘Well he would say that wouldn’t he’.  

Last week's Pentagon leaks not only show that Fisk was right about  the stories he wrote, such as his 2003 report that highly paid overseas security guards were killing innocent Iraqis at random and at will, but it also turns out he and other reporters vastly underestimated the scale of abuse and destruction that has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last ten years.  

In one of his most heartfelt and compelling articles in recent years, Fisk a man whose mantra has been, ‘…a journalist job is to tell the truth’, laments that the facts exposed by the leaks have been a reality that Iraqis have known and lived with for some time. 

Simon Woolley