Posted on 03/30/2003 10:54:47 PM PST by ru4liberty
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2002
Former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, whose virulent ant-Americanism even Ted Turner's network could no longer stomach, wants to go back to Iraq before war sets in there, according to PR Watch.
Now freelancing for Camera Planet, Arnett covered the Gulf War from Saddam Hussein's bosom, using every opportunity to spout Iraqi propaganda while slandering U.S. forces.
In one infamous incident, Arnett told CNN viewers that a building housing Iraqi secret police and a chemical warfare facility that had been bombed was really a baby milk factory. As proof he held up a sign in English that said baby food.
That it was conclusively proved the building had been housing an Iraqi intelligence unit did not faze Arnett at all, according to the New Australian.
During the Vietnam war, the New Zealand-born Arnett's reports, beginning in 1962, quickly made clear his sympathy for the Communist North. To him, American forces could do nothing right. The North's war against the South, he insisted, was fully justified.
On one occasion, wrote the New Australian, he reported that American troops had experimented on Vietnamese children with "poisonous chemicals."
His most infamous attack on the U.S. military was CNN's shameful Operation Tailwind "special" in which he questioned America's right to condemn Saddam for producing chemical weapons while American forces had used them in Laos, an outright falsehood.
When the hoax was revealed, he claimed he had merely mouthed the words given him - that he had never read the script.
During the Gulf War, Arnett covered Desert Storm for CNN from Baghdad, where Saddam gave him unprecedented assistance to make his reports, all of which turned out to be pro-Saddam in one way or another, the New Australian recalled.
After Saddam's defeat, Arnett regularly visited Iraq and was given extensive access to officials denied other reporters. Fellow journalists called him "Baghdad Pete."
If he cons his way back to Baghdad, he can expect to be welcomed back by his buddy Saddam with open arms.
That's saying quite a bit.
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