Posted on 03/31/2003 2:39:49 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Last night Peter Arnett appeared on Iraqi television to give aid and comfort to Saddam's sadistic regime. No mystery surrounds Arnett's willingness to betray whatever journalistic principles he may have once possessed by openly collaborating with the Arab equivalent of Adolf Hitler. Even a very brief summary of his journalistic career will reveal that what drives this Quisling is a deep hatred of America.
It will probably surprise many of you to learn that Arnett is actually New Zealand-born. Now for some reason an inordinate number of New Zealand and Australian reporters carry around a lot of anti-American baggage and a deep rooted hostility towards the American military. Arnett is no exception, despite taking out American citizenship.
In 1962 Arnett landed as a war correspondent in Saigon where his reports quickly made clear that his sympathies lay with the totalitarian North. To Arnett American forces could do no right. To him the North's war against the South was fully justified, just as Burchett, an Australian traitor, argued that North Korea's assault on South Korea was justified. (I find the similarity with the repulsive Burchett striking.)
It was in Vietnam that Arnett revealed his penchant for bending the news to serve anti-American forces. On one occasion he even reported that American troops had experimented with "poisonous chemicals" on Vietnamese children. (Shades of Burchett's bio-warfare lies and the disgraceful Operation Tailwind hoax).
Arnett also invented the infamous "we had to destroy the village to save it" and then falsely attributed it to a US officer. The village was actually the town of Ben Tre that the Vietcong had destroyed but which Arnett painted as having been flattened by US forces. This is the kind of pro-communist reporting that landed him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966, thus degrading what had once been worthy award.
He later regretted that his coverage of the war had been insufficiently tough. I take this to mean that he felt he should have been harder on US troops whom he portrayed as murderous thugs. One particular incident reveals much about the man and his and his lack of common decency. He described how, while in Saigon, he watched a Buddhist monk set fire to himself. Arnett has freely admitted he could have saved the man by kicking away the can of petrol but he chose not to because he thought the suicide would make a good story. Well, he got his story and his photographs, all of which were used as anti-American propaganda. So much for his humanity.
The Gulf War demonstrated that Arnett's anti-Americanism had not softened. He covered Desert Storm for CNN (or was it Saddam Hussein?) 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.
There was the case to the chemical warfare facility that was bombed and among the ruins of which Arnett stood and stated had really been a baby milk factory. His proof was a sign in English saying baby food. That it was conclusively proved that building had been housing an Iraqi intelligence unit did not faze Arnett at all.
Another example of Arnett's journalistic ethics was CNN's Operation Tailwind 'special' that libelled US soldiers and was later exposed as a hoax. It did have the beneficial effect, however, of exposing Arnett as a liar. In order to support the program's outrageous lie that US special forces had used poison gas against Laotian villagers, Arnett alleged that Admiral Moorer had confirmed the use of nerve gas in Vietnam. This is a complete fiction.
What Admiral Moorer actually said is that "I would be willing to use any weapon and any tactic to save the lives of American soldiers." Moorer later made it absolutely clear that he never confirmed the use of nerve gas to CNN and that to his knowledge it had never been used in Vietnam. (The cowardly Arnett now claims that he had nothing to do with the script).
Yet Arnett used this hoax to question America's right to condemn Saddam for producing chemical weapons. After Saddam's defeat Arnett regularly visited Iraq and was given extensive access to officials that was denied to other reporters. Any wonder other reporters call him 'Baghdad Pete.'
While on one visit to Baghdad a gruesome incident took place that strongly reminded me of Arnett's attitude to the burning of the Vietnamese monk. Iraqi authorities allocated Arnett a driver. One day Saddam's secret police arrested the driver on suspicion of being an American agent and then tortured him for days. CNN did nothing to help him, even after, when near death, the secret police threw what remained of him onto the street.
When I think of this incident I think of Arnett taking pictures of a man slowly burning to death, even though he could have saved him. To make it worse, anti-Saddam sources named Arnett as the informer who turned the driver in. Whatever the truth of the matter, I think it is clear what kind of creature Arnett is.
Now that he has openly collaborated with a regime that is at war with his own country, what should be done with this slimy Quisling?
Regardless, he is a bottom feeder of the worst type and could never be trusted by anyone.
Actually we should be delighted that he is Saddam's friend. Do we want him? He will probably never find another job in any halfway respectable news organization again. Come to think of it....maybe CNN will hire him back.
Remind me to stay on your good side.
I have no evidence to back up anything I'm saying but I'm wondering if anyone else considered this?
If only the public realized the extent to which invention, false attribution, and phony sources are used by the media. We only occasionally hear of such cases — usually when the victims of false "reporting" are able to fight back conclusively. But these practices are far more widespread than the vast majority of people realize.
Keep this fact in mind: the media are the only entity whose product has virtual blanket protection from lawsuits and criminal codes that check excess in other businesses. To put it simply, the media has virtually unlimited power to say and depict anything they wish, and to hide behind anonymous sources. What happens when any group of human beings has unlimited power? Use your imagination.
He's a repulsive creature with a long and repulsive track record. Aside from that, if you read his statements, you'll see that it was not only denigrating US war efforts, but was full of things about the "valiant Iraqi military," etc., that could virtually have come straight out of Mao's Little Red Book.
Saddam is known to be a great fan of Stalin, and even though I think Saddam is worm food now, his regime is probably similarly devoted to Stalin and other Communist celebrities. They parrot this stuff, and Arnett seemed only too happy to go on their state TV and parrot it along with them and get it even wider distribution. I've heard that it's been shown all over the Middle East, to great acclaim.
Sorry, but I think he's a traitor and should get a traitor's punishment. This latest Lord Haw Haw should at least have his citizenship revoked.
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