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Journalists are in the same madly rocking boat as diplomats and statesmen. Like them, when the Cold War ended, they looked for a new world order and found a new world disorder. If making and conducting foreign policy in today's turbulent environment is difficult, so is practicing journalism.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries.

Historically, war journalists have embedded themselves with one side, which means the greatest threat comes from the clearly delineated enemy of that side.

Journalists are simply leftists disguised as reporters. They're political activists disguised as reporters.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.

Journalists couldn't do their jobs overseas without taking risks, and the same is true for diplomats and intelligence officers.

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me.

My journalistic mission was straightforward: to await the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nobody knew quite when this would be. But the diplomacy - the meetings in the U.N. security council, the allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the martial language of Tony Blair and George W. Bush - all suggested a war was brewing.

Frankly, most governments are used to lying to each other - to a degree that most people would find shocking. Part of diplomacy is the art of strategic lying.