Separated at birth??
By Andrew Grossman
NEW YORK (The Hollywood Reporter) --- NBC News is standing by correspondent Peter Arnett after he gave an interview to Iraqi TV in which he said the Bush administration had misjudged "the determination of the Iraqi armed forces and the government's willingness to fight for their country."
Arnett, who is reporting for NBC and MSNBC through his role as a correspondent for National Geographic (news - web sites) Explorer, also seemed to have nice things to say about Iraqi's Ministry of Information, saying it had "allowed me and many other reporters to cover 12 whole years since the Gulf War (news - web sites) with a degree which we appreciate and this is continuing today," according to reports on Sunday.
He said U.S. military officials are preparing a "new war plan."
Iraqi TV aired the interview Sunday, but it is uncertain when it took place.
Arnett is one of the few American broadcast reporters remaining in Baghdad. The government expelled two CNN reporters on March 20 for unexplained reasons as well as a Fox News Channel correspondent in February.
Other American television reporters left of their own volition when the war began.
NBC said in a statement that "Peter Arnett and his crew have risked their lives to bring the American people up-to-date, straightforward information on what is happening in and around Baghdad. His impromptu interview with Iraqi TV was done as a professional courtesy and was similar to other interviews he has done with media outlets from around the world. His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more."
NBC said Arnett would continue to report for the company.
Fallout from Arnett's remarks are likely to focus as much on the venue -- that he gave an interview to an enemy media outlet -- as his remarks, much of which were similar to what he has told other media outlets in the U.S. and abroad.
Arnett is a Pulitzer Prize-winner who was the only television reporter on the scene -- for CNN -- in 1991 when bombs fell on Baghdad.
In an article in Sunday's New York Times, Arnett is quoted as saying that the Iraqi deputy prime minister had warned him in an interview two weeks ago -- in a report that NBC News did not air -- that his people would resist American and British forces, saying "We're ready to be martyrs."
"It's deja vu all over again, the idea that this would be a walkover, the idea that the people of Basra would throw flowers at the Marines," Arnett told the Times's Frank Rich.
He told Iraqi television "Whenever I gave a report (in 1991) of civilian casualties or civilian installations destroyed and casualties created, the Pentagon (news - web sites) and Bush administration got very angry and called me a traitor."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
That doesn't work any more.
Then By G-d I think DOD should pull ALL of NBC's embedded reporters!
If this is an example of NBC's lack concern of one of their reports giving aid and comfort to the enemy then DOD would be less than prudent not to remove ALL of them out of concern for the safety of OUR troops.
G-d only knows how many lives will now be lost because of this bastards remarks.
i guess the other cnn reporters in the same room at the time have gotten demoted. bernie shaw, though hiding under the bed and whimpering, was in fact there.
dep
All day today on ABC News it's been "the U.S. is already defeated and Iraq has won the war." They are coming strikingly close to just calling Rumsfeld and Bush idiots who have been defeated by superior Iraqi strategy.
Our leftist media is pulling out all the stops right now to try and defeat the U.S. because if they can pull that off, they can destroy the Bush Administration and put leftist RATS like themselves in power for the forseeable future, and truly destroy this country -- which is their goal.
Their treason is out in the open.