Robert fisk

In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

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

A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.

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.

I do not make stories up, full stop.

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.

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.

When you have a crime against humanity that is so awesome in scale and death, it is more than permissible to look around and say, who recently has been declaring war on the United States? Of course,...

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