Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star's editorial page editor emeritus, has a somewhat different perspective on Robert Fisk than does the Globe's Marcus Gee.

Some excerpts from Siddiqui's Sunday column:

The speaker is Robert Fisk, the world's most famous foreign correspondent, with the courage and know-how to spurn the journalistic bunkers of Baghdad and venture out on to the highways and byways of death, albeit in fewer and fewer forays.

He was in Toronto on a North American launch tour of his 1,366-page biography The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, written over 16 years. Its run of 50,000 copies is being followed with French and Arabic translations.

Fisk spoke to an overflow audience of 800 at U of T Wednesday. Here's what he said there and in an interview.

Bin Laden: "He is irrelevant. Al Qaeda exists. The monster exists. It's the most extraordinary institution, in that it has no membership. It's an NGO system of international terror.

"I don't even think Al Qaeda has a worldwide web. Do you think that the men who blew up the trains in London on 7/7 knew the bombers of Bali? No. Do you think the bombers in Madrid had any idea what was going to happen in London? No.

"Do you think they all had contact with bin Laden? Maybe, but I doubt it. But you see, it's not necessary any more. It's like avian flu. It doesn't matter which chicken started it."

Civil war: "I don't think there will be one. I've never heard an Iraqi talk of a civil war. Never. Americans and the Iraqi government officials, yes.

"The first time I heard of civil war was in 2003 when the U.S. spokesman Dan Senor spoke of it, to frighten the Iraqis into obedience. There has never been a civil war in Iraq. But someone does want one: hitting Shi'ite mosques, Shi'ite marketplaces, Shi'ite bus stations."

Who? "We are supposed to believe it's Al Qaeda and (Abu Musab al) Zarqawi. I don't know. We are so restricted in our movements. I still move around but I am still restricted."

Zarqawi? "He is a mystery. Is he alive? His wife, of whom he is very possessive, works for a living. His mother died last year and he didn't even send condolences — odd for a man who claims to be a super-Muslim. Is it possible he is dead? I have never heard his voice, except for the American ID of his voice."

Democracy: George W. "Bush said it'd only be a short time before every Arab state would want to be like Iraq. The experiment is over, thank you. If this is democracy, heaven spare us all.

"I think the Arabs would like a freedom of another kind: They want freedom from us."