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TRANSCRIPT: CHARLIE ROSE SHOW: "ATONEMENT"
The Charlie Rose Show
October 23, 2012 Tuesday
SHOW: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW 11:00 PM EST
Charlie Rose
GUESTS: James L. Jones, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Mazarr, David
Ignatius, Dexter Filkins
[parts omitted]
I am pleased to have Dexter Filkins back at this table. Welcome.
DEXTER FILKINS: Thanks.
CHARLIE ROSE: This article is called "Atonement". It is an extraordinary story.
DEXTER FILKINS: I am part of the story, inevitably. But I was driving
around Baghdad in a rental car, you know, a week after Saddam Hussein
fell. The whole capital if you remember was in chaos, buildings were
on fire, people were looting. I drove past a hospital where I saw
a huge crowd trying to, you know, trying to tear the building apart
and I went inside.
I found an Iraqi family -- a woman in particular who had at the time
I think was about 20 years old. She had been shot by these Americans
in the shoulder pretty badly. Her father had been killed, her two
brothers had been killed in a kind of, you know, it was an accident
basically. They got caught in a fire fight, the Marines, you know,
thinking they were the enemy shot and killed the male members of
their families. A very sad story
CHARLIE ROSE: Shot and killed the drivers.
DEXTER FILKINS: The drivers, yes. And that was, you know, that was --
I wrote a story about it; that was nine years ago and that was it. I
mean that was one of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of stories that
I wrote back then and more or less forgot about it. It was a sad story.
A couple of months ago, out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from
a guy I never heard of, his name is Lu Lobello. And he said are you
the guy that wrote that story about the Iraqi family that got shot
up in Baghdad back in 2003? I am one of the people that shot him. You
know I need your help, basically and that is kind of where it started.
CHARLIE ROSE: Needed your help to do what?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, remarkably and again this story is filled with
kind of miracles, but there were the two survivors in this family,
there was Nora Kachadoorian. They`re Armenian Christians which makes
them a minority in Baghdad. Nora Kachadoorian, the 20-year-old that I
met then. She is now 31 or so. Her mother, Margaret, they now live in
Glendale, California, amazingly. First they stayed in Baghdad for three
years, four years, it got -- the height of the civil war they fled to
Syria. And they got asylum in the United States a couple of years ago.
The Marine who contacted me, Lu, he`s in San Diego so it turns out
after all of this, after all this time, all this anguish, one of the
guys that put bullets into their car, Lu Lobello lives two hours away
from the survivors of this terrible accident.
CHARLIE ROSE: What was the story when he came back from Iraq?
DEXTER FILKINS: He is pretty damaged I think. I think they all were.
You know, it was a very strange circumstance. It was an intersection.
I mean this sort of thing happened a lot in Iraq. But there was an
intersection - - 165,000 American troops are converging on Baghdad.
This is April 8 of 2003. It is the day before Saddam Hussein fell.
And as they walked into the city, suddenly Iraqi army, what was left
of it opened fire. So they got into this gigantic fire fight and fired
thousands of rounds of ammunition. A bunch of Marines were wounded.
And as that happened Iraqis were just driving into the intersection.
They didn`t know what was going on. They were just trying to flee
or whatever - - again, this happened all the time in Iraq. And they
didn`t know. So the Marines didn`t know either. They thought who are
these people driving right toward us, you know, so they opened fire.
CHARLIE ROSE: A caravan, three of them.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes in this case the Kachadoorian family. It was nine
members of their family and their dog, and basically all of their
valuables in three cars driving. They were racing to get to their
house which was just around the corner. And the Americans saw them
coming, and they opened fire and they opened fire on a lot of people
that day, a lot of civilians because, again, they didn`t know, there
were bullets flying everywhere. They were terrified. They thought they
were suicide bombers or something so they opened fire on these cars.
Margaret Kachadoorian she jumps out of the car, she used to teach
English in Baghdad. She was an English literature student and she
started screaming in English, "We are the peace people. We are the
peace people." And so the Marines stunned stopped firing and in the
middle of this gun battle, ran out into the intersection to get them.
So, you know, the men are dead, the women are still alive, they
get them out. It is pretty sad story. And so the Marines who were
involved in that, including the guy who called me, Lu Lobello, you
know, a lot of them are kind of wrecked.
CHARLIE ROSE: They came back and could never put it together?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. They didn`t really -- yes, I mean it is an amazing
story. I mean, Lu, you know, who I think was 19 or 20 at the time, he
had a big machine gun, you know. He didn`t think about it for a few
years, not until he got out of the Marines. And then he said he was
just looking on the Internet one night looking for stories about his
unit, and bang, out pops my story about this civilian, these Iraqi,
this Iraqi family.
CHARLIE ROSE: He felt guilt about it and had nightmares about it
before that.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes he was tormented and he`s certainly tormented now
so he -- when he got that name, when he got the name of the family
he thought "I have to find these people, I have to find them." And
that is where he spent the last five years looking for them and he
set up a Web site.
CHARLIE ROSE: He had gone through a -- kind of hell of his own, too.
DEXTER FILKINS: I mean there is a whole range of reactions among all
of these Marines but Lu I think was, yes, tormented I think, you know.
Basically as he explained to me, he hasn`t slept through the night in
nine years, you know. Just can`t get it out of his head. Painkillers,
the whole bit.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what happens when they come together?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, it is amazing. I mean he called me and said can
you kind of help me do this? You know. I think they are in Glendale,
like one other thing -- I can`t just knock on their door. I am the
guy that pumped bullets into their car.
So I called the Kachadoorians. And you know, they remembered me. And
they said, oh yes, sure. Come on over. So --
CHARLIE ROSE: You were a war correspondent.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes, yes. Exactly. So I jumped on an airplane and
flew to Glendale. And you know, they live in a kind of beautiful
palm-lined street in Glendale and they`re the sweetest people in the
world, the Kachadoorians.
CHARLIE ROSE: And did they want to see him?
DEXTER FILKINS: They were pretty tentative about it at first, but
they said look we forgive him. They are Christians. They`re Jehovah`s
Witnesses which is remarkable. I didn`t know there were any in Iraq
but they`re very religious, which isn`t surprising given everything
they have been through.
And they said, you know, ok. We will see him. You know. We will see
him. And God, it was amazing when he finally came. So I kind of --
I was there. I kind of brought them together and Lu, you know, Lu
started crying the moment he saw them. And so there was this long
meeting in this very small living room where they live, you know,
the Kachadoorians, Nora`s husband, their two kids. I was their
photographer. And they had to work it all it all out. So this was a
long meeting --
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: They say he`s forgiven?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Yes. She said look, and Margaret kind of
pre-empted the moment and said, look, we forgive you, do you feel
better now? And he didn`t, so it took some time. They had to work
through it and there were these long pauses in the conversation that
would go on for three minute and I wanted to get up and leave. It
was so painful, you know.
But by the end of the meeting, the Kachadoorians were saying, you know,
you are like our son, you are like our brother.
CHARLIE ROSE: This is stunning.
DEXTER FILKINS: You can come back any time. You are a member of our
family. It is unbelievable. Absolutely extraordinary.
And he has. He has been back several times. He has been back to see
them. They talk on the phone.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how is he today because of this?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think he feels a lot better. He says he still can`t
sleep and, you know, there are members of his unit who I contacted.
Some of them kind of give you this standard Marine response, you
know, which is we did what we had to do and, you know, war is hell
and that`s the end of it. But there are other guys -- I mean I called
this one guy. Real sweet guy Kenneth Tune and, you know, I think he
was 19 when he went over.
And the moment I introduced myself on the phone -- I never met this guy
-- he started sobbing, you know. "We murdered those people. My God,
we murdered those people." His wife had left him. He was addicted to
drugs. And, you know, basically what these guys told me was half the
unit, half their company, you know, 75 out of 150 guys are basically
wrecked over this, you know; whether they are unemployed or homeless
or drinking too much or, you know, divorced or whatever.
CHARLIE ROSE: What does this say about the way we understand,
understand veterans who are coming home?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think there is a lot of wreckage out there, you
know. There is just all of this stuff, you know. And, you know, they
get help, they get some but I mean, I think it is just really hard,
you know. I mean look, this was -- I remember thinking --
CHARLIE ROSE: 2003.
DEXTER FILKINS: This is 2003. I was in one house, you know, one tiny
little house in Glendale in their living room, the Kachadoorian`s
living room. I thought my God there is so much wreckage in this room,
you know. And how many of these are there, you know. In Baghdad,
of course; here; this must be everywhere. We just don`t hear about
it very much.
I never would have heard about it but for Facebook. Thank you Facebook
for that.
CHARLIE ROSE: We were engaged in the longest war of our history.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And we had too many people coming back from combat and
we didn`t know what was beneath the surface?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think that is right. I mean you know, they do get
help but I think I mean -- you know, if you just go over to whether
it was Iraq or Afghanistan, you meet these guys and they are 25 years
old and they have done three combat tours or four, you know. They
are divorced, they have got two kids but you see that it is like God,
they live, they just live entire lifetimes in three, four years.
But it was just that kind -- these wars went on forever so whoever was
in there just did serve over and over and over again, you know. But
what do you do? I mean what do you do when there is an -- I interviewed
a guy in the piece, a psychiatrist who used this term "moral injury".
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
DEXTER FILKINS: And he said a lot of soldiers and Marines suffer from
kind of moral injury, which he described as sort of it happens when
you get an order, you do something that you believe at the time was
absolutely correct and the only thing you could do. And it turns out
to have terrible consequences; it`s basically what happened here.
And even the guys -- even the guys that were kind of very, very
clear-eyed about it and said look we killed their family, what do we
say to them.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. I mean that`s the dilemma too.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Like what do you do? What do you do with that,
that knowledge? And, you know, and then there is the Kachadoorians,
you know; and they are just living in this little house in Glendale
and nobody even knows they are there. God knows, there are thousands
of those people, most of them are still in Baghdad or still in Iraq,
but --
CHARLIE ROSE: What happened to all of the families in Iraq?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes, I mean, you know, that kind of thing, an Iraqi car
or, you know, driving it to a checkpoint, you know and getting shot at.
CHARLIE ROSE: Especially at that stage.
DEXTER FILKINS: It happened all the time you know, because you can`t --
it is so easy to see why, you know. You are some kid with a gun and
you see a car coming at you 40 miles an hour and you are quelling in
English stop, stop, stop, and the car doesn`t stop, and you open fire,
you know. It happened all the time.
CHARLIE ROSE: Iraq today, what is going on?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, it is pretty unstable. I mean it is holding
together. I mean I don`t -- I mean here we are, you know, there are no
American troops there, basically. And it is remarkable in a way that
it has held together. And I don`t know, I mean, I am planning to go
back pretty soon. I think -- you know, I just came from the region and,
you know, Iraq sits on one side of Syria and Lebanon is on the other.
And I think there is a kind of great deal of concern about what is
going to happen when Assad falls because he probably will fall at
some point. And I think there`s a -- in Lebanon, the fear is kind of
sectarian war of some ort. And in Iraq, the fear is that the Sunni
insurgency could kind start up again because it will be kind of
emboldened by probably a Sunni takeover in Syria.
And so, but, you know, it is all very fragile and seems to be getting
worse there.
CHARLIE ROSE: And Syria has also spilled over into Lebanon?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes it has. Yes. In fact, I mean literally spilled
over. I mean I drove to the border when I was there and to the Syrian
border in Lebanon. And there was a huge fight going on, you know,
100 yards away. There was, you know, there were Free Syrian Army guys
operating on the Lebanese side of the border. There was -- yes, there
was Hezbollah that the Shiite militia was like running an ambulance
back and forth. I mean it`s definitely coming over.
And you saw what happened last week, you had --
CHARLIE ROSE: The assassination.
DEXTER FILKINS: Assassination of the very senior intelligence
official, yes. And that has all sorts of consequences; that was kind
of a predominantly Sunni organization in aid. I mean everything in
Lebanon is sectarian and usually it hangs together well, it is like
Iraq, but sometimes it comes apart, it is very fragile. So everybody
sort of has an eye on Syria, you know.
CHARLIE ROSE: This article is calls "Atonement", it is in the "New
York" magazine, by Dexter Filkins. Thank you.
DEXTER FILKINS: Thank you. Thank you very much.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
The Charlie Rose Show
October 23, 2012 Tuesday
SHOW: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW 11:00 PM EST
Charlie Rose
GUESTS: James L. Jones, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Mazarr, David
Ignatius, Dexter Filkins
[parts omitted]
I am pleased to have Dexter Filkins back at this table. Welcome.
DEXTER FILKINS: Thanks.
CHARLIE ROSE: This article is called "Atonement". It is an extraordinary story.
DEXTER FILKINS: I am part of the story, inevitably. But I was driving
around Baghdad in a rental car, you know, a week after Saddam Hussein
fell. The whole capital if you remember was in chaos, buildings were
on fire, people were looting. I drove past a hospital where I saw
a huge crowd trying to, you know, trying to tear the building apart
and I went inside.
I found an Iraqi family -- a woman in particular who had at the time
I think was about 20 years old. She had been shot by these Americans
in the shoulder pretty badly. Her father had been killed, her two
brothers had been killed in a kind of, you know, it was an accident
basically. They got caught in a fire fight, the Marines, you know,
thinking they were the enemy shot and killed the male members of
their families. A very sad story
CHARLIE ROSE: Shot and killed the drivers.
DEXTER FILKINS: The drivers, yes. And that was, you know, that was --
I wrote a story about it; that was nine years ago and that was it. I
mean that was one of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of stories that
I wrote back then and more or less forgot about it. It was a sad story.
A couple of months ago, out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from
a guy I never heard of, his name is Lu Lobello. And he said are you
the guy that wrote that story about the Iraqi family that got shot
up in Baghdad back in 2003? I am one of the people that shot him. You
know I need your help, basically and that is kind of where it started.
CHARLIE ROSE: Needed your help to do what?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, remarkably and again this story is filled with
kind of miracles, but there were the two survivors in this family,
there was Nora Kachadoorian. They`re Armenian Christians which makes
them a minority in Baghdad. Nora Kachadoorian, the 20-year-old that I
met then. She is now 31 or so. Her mother, Margaret, they now live in
Glendale, California, amazingly. First they stayed in Baghdad for three
years, four years, it got -- the height of the civil war they fled to
Syria. And they got asylum in the United States a couple of years ago.
The Marine who contacted me, Lu, he`s in San Diego so it turns out
after all of this, after all this time, all this anguish, one of the
guys that put bullets into their car, Lu Lobello lives two hours away
from the survivors of this terrible accident.
CHARLIE ROSE: What was the story when he came back from Iraq?
DEXTER FILKINS: He is pretty damaged I think. I think they all were.
You know, it was a very strange circumstance. It was an intersection.
I mean this sort of thing happened a lot in Iraq. But there was an
intersection - - 165,000 American troops are converging on Baghdad.
This is April 8 of 2003. It is the day before Saddam Hussein fell.
And as they walked into the city, suddenly Iraqi army, what was left
of it opened fire. So they got into this gigantic fire fight and fired
thousands of rounds of ammunition. A bunch of Marines were wounded.
And as that happened Iraqis were just driving into the intersection.
They didn`t know what was going on. They were just trying to flee
or whatever - - again, this happened all the time in Iraq. And they
didn`t know. So the Marines didn`t know either. They thought who are
these people driving right toward us, you know, so they opened fire.
CHARLIE ROSE: A caravan, three of them.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes in this case the Kachadoorian family. It was nine
members of their family and their dog, and basically all of their
valuables in three cars driving. They were racing to get to their
house which was just around the corner. And the Americans saw them
coming, and they opened fire and they opened fire on a lot of people
that day, a lot of civilians because, again, they didn`t know, there
were bullets flying everywhere. They were terrified. They thought they
were suicide bombers or something so they opened fire on these cars.
Margaret Kachadoorian she jumps out of the car, she used to teach
English in Baghdad. She was an English literature student and she
started screaming in English, "We are the peace people. We are the
peace people." And so the Marines stunned stopped firing and in the
middle of this gun battle, ran out into the intersection to get them.
So, you know, the men are dead, the women are still alive, they
get them out. It is pretty sad story. And so the Marines who were
involved in that, including the guy who called me, Lu Lobello, you
know, a lot of them are kind of wrecked.
CHARLIE ROSE: They came back and could never put it together?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. They didn`t really -- yes, I mean it is an amazing
story. I mean, Lu, you know, who I think was 19 or 20 at the time, he
had a big machine gun, you know. He didn`t think about it for a few
years, not until he got out of the Marines. And then he said he was
just looking on the Internet one night looking for stories about his
unit, and bang, out pops my story about this civilian, these Iraqi,
this Iraqi family.
CHARLIE ROSE: He felt guilt about it and had nightmares about it
before that.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes he was tormented and he`s certainly tormented now
so he -- when he got that name, when he got the name of the family
he thought "I have to find these people, I have to find them." And
that is where he spent the last five years looking for them and he
set up a Web site.
CHARLIE ROSE: He had gone through a -- kind of hell of his own, too.
DEXTER FILKINS: I mean there is a whole range of reactions among all
of these Marines but Lu I think was, yes, tormented I think, you know.
Basically as he explained to me, he hasn`t slept through the night in
nine years, you know. Just can`t get it out of his head. Painkillers,
the whole bit.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what happens when they come together?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, it is amazing. I mean he called me and said can
you kind of help me do this? You know. I think they are in Glendale,
like one other thing -- I can`t just knock on their door. I am the
guy that pumped bullets into their car.
So I called the Kachadoorians. And you know, they remembered me. And
they said, oh yes, sure. Come on over. So --
CHARLIE ROSE: You were a war correspondent.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes, yes. Exactly. So I jumped on an airplane and
flew to Glendale. And you know, they live in a kind of beautiful
palm-lined street in Glendale and they`re the sweetest people in the
world, the Kachadoorians.
CHARLIE ROSE: And did they want to see him?
DEXTER FILKINS: They were pretty tentative about it at first, but
they said look we forgive him. They are Christians. They`re Jehovah`s
Witnesses which is remarkable. I didn`t know there were any in Iraq
but they`re very religious, which isn`t surprising given everything
they have been through.
And they said, you know, ok. We will see him. You know. We will see
him. And God, it was amazing when he finally came. So I kind of --
I was there. I kind of brought them together and Lu, you know, Lu
started crying the moment he saw them. And so there was this long
meeting in this very small living room where they live, you know,
the Kachadoorians, Nora`s husband, their two kids. I was their
photographer. And they had to work it all it all out. So this was a
long meeting --
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: They say he`s forgiven?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Yes. She said look, and Margaret kind of
pre-empted the moment and said, look, we forgive you, do you feel
better now? And he didn`t, so it took some time. They had to work
through it and there were these long pauses in the conversation that
would go on for three minute and I wanted to get up and leave. It
was so painful, you know.
But by the end of the meeting, the Kachadoorians were saying, you know,
you are like our son, you are like our brother.
CHARLIE ROSE: This is stunning.
DEXTER FILKINS: You can come back any time. You are a member of our
family. It is unbelievable. Absolutely extraordinary.
And he has. He has been back several times. He has been back to see
them. They talk on the phone.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how is he today because of this?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think he feels a lot better. He says he still can`t
sleep and, you know, there are members of his unit who I contacted.
Some of them kind of give you this standard Marine response, you
know, which is we did what we had to do and, you know, war is hell
and that`s the end of it. But there are other guys -- I mean I called
this one guy. Real sweet guy Kenneth Tune and, you know, I think he
was 19 when he went over.
And the moment I introduced myself on the phone -- I never met this guy
-- he started sobbing, you know. "We murdered those people. My God,
we murdered those people." His wife had left him. He was addicted to
drugs. And, you know, basically what these guys told me was half the
unit, half their company, you know, 75 out of 150 guys are basically
wrecked over this, you know; whether they are unemployed or homeless
or drinking too much or, you know, divorced or whatever.
CHARLIE ROSE: What does this say about the way we understand,
understand veterans who are coming home?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think there is a lot of wreckage out there, you
know. There is just all of this stuff, you know. And, you know, they
get help, they get some but I mean, I think it is just really hard,
you know. I mean look, this was -- I remember thinking --
CHARLIE ROSE: 2003.
DEXTER FILKINS: This is 2003. I was in one house, you know, one tiny
little house in Glendale in their living room, the Kachadoorian`s
living room. I thought my God there is so much wreckage in this room,
you know. And how many of these are there, you know. In Baghdad,
of course; here; this must be everywhere. We just don`t hear about
it very much.
I never would have heard about it but for Facebook. Thank you Facebook
for that.
CHARLIE ROSE: We were engaged in the longest war of our history.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And we had too many people coming back from combat and
we didn`t know what was beneath the surface?
DEXTER FILKINS: I think that is right. I mean you know, they do get
help but I think I mean -- you know, if you just go over to whether
it was Iraq or Afghanistan, you meet these guys and they are 25 years
old and they have done three combat tours or four, you know. They
are divorced, they have got two kids but you see that it is like God,
they live, they just live entire lifetimes in three, four years.
But it was just that kind -- these wars went on forever so whoever was
in there just did serve over and over and over again, you know. But
what do you do? I mean what do you do when there is an -- I interviewed
a guy in the piece, a psychiatrist who used this term "moral injury".
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
DEXTER FILKINS: And he said a lot of soldiers and Marines suffer from
kind of moral injury, which he described as sort of it happens when
you get an order, you do something that you believe at the time was
absolutely correct and the only thing you could do. And it turns out
to have terrible consequences; it`s basically what happened here.
And even the guys -- even the guys that were kind of very, very
clear-eyed about it and said look we killed their family, what do we
say to them.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. I mean that`s the dilemma too.
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes. Like what do you do? What do you do with that,
that knowledge? And, you know, and then there is the Kachadoorians,
you know; and they are just living in this little house in Glendale
and nobody even knows they are there. God knows, there are thousands
of those people, most of them are still in Baghdad or still in Iraq,
but --
CHARLIE ROSE: What happened to all of the families in Iraq?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes, I mean, you know, that kind of thing, an Iraqi car
or, you know, driving it to a checkpoint, you know and getting shot at.
CHARLIE ROSE: Especially at that stage.
DEXTER FILKINS: It happened all the time you know, because you can`t --
it is so easy to see why, you know. You are some kid with a gun and
you see a car coming at you 40 miles an hour and you are quelling in
English stop, stop, stop, and the car doesn`t stop, and you open fire,
you know. It happened all the time.
CHARLIE ROSE: Iraq today, what is going on?
DEXTER FILKINS: Well, it is pretty unstable. I mean it is holding
together. I mean I don`t -- I mean here we are, you know, there are no
American troops there, basically. And it is remarkable in a way that
it has held together. And I don`t know, I mean, I am planning to go
back pretty soon. I think -- you know, I just came from the region and,
you know, Iraq sits on one side of Syria and Lebanon is on the other.
And I think there is a kind of great deal of concern about what is
going to happen when Assad falls because he probably will fall at
some point. And I think there`s a -- in Lebanon, the fear is kind of
sectarian war of some ort. And in Iraq, the fear is that the Sunni
insurgency could kind start up again because it will be kind of
emboldened by probably a Sunni takeover in Syria.
And so, but, you know, it is all very fragile and seems to be getting
worse there.
CHARLIE ROSE: And Syria has also spilled over into Lebanon?
DEXTER FILKINS: Yes it has. Yes. In fact, I mean literally spilled
over. I mean I drove to the border when I was there and to the Syrian
border in Lebanon. And there was a huge fight going on, you know,
100 yards away. There was, you know, there were Free Syrian Army guys
operating on the Lebanese side of the border. There was -- yes, there
was Hezbollah that the Shiite militia was like running an ambulance
back and forth. I mean it`s definitely coming over.
And you saw what happened last week, you had --
CHARLIE ROSE: The assassination.
DEXTER FILKINS: Assassination of the very senior intelligence
official, yes. And that has all sorts of consequences; that was kind
of a predominantly Sunni organization in aid. I mean everything in
Lebanon is sectarian and usually it hangs together well, it is like
Iraq, but sometimes it comes apart, it is very fragile. So everybody
sort of has an eye on Syria, you know.
CHARLIE ROSE: This article is calls "Atonement", it is in the "New
York" magazine, by Dexter Filkins. Thank you.
DEXTER FILKINS: Thank you. Thank you very much.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress