Posted on 03/30/2003 5:16:21 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
CAIRO, Egypt, Mar 30, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A former CNN journalist told state-run Iraqi TV that U.S. war planners had misjudged Iraq's determination to stand up to the American-led coalition's invasion force.
"Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces," Peter Arnett said during the interview aired Sunday by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt.
Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, garnered much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War in Baghdad. He is now reporting from the Iraqi capital for NBC.
During his prerecorded Baghdad studio interview, which was translated by a green military uniform-wearing Iraqi anchor, Arnett said the Bush administration had ignored his and other reports about "the determination of the Iraqi armed forces and the government willingness to fight for their country."
It was not immediately clear when the interview was conducted.
Arnett was the on-air reporter of the 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill U.S. defectors. Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded over the report, which the station later retracted. Arnett ultimately left the network.
Arnett established close contacts with Iraqi government officials during his several visits to Iraq, but was unable to reflect anti-government sentiments through private interviews with Iraqis without the presence of Information Ministry minders.
President George Bush, the current U.S. leader's father, accused Arnett of being a "traitor" over what he considered were pro-Iraqi reports during the 1991 conflict.
"Whenever I gave a report (in 1991) of civilian casualties or civilian installations destroyed and casualties created, the Pentagon and Bush administration got very angry and called me traitor," he said on Iraqi Television.
Of the current conflict, Arnett also said the current U.S. invasion plan had failed and that American military strategists are now "trying to write another war plan."
Odds that the convenient coersion rumor was started to cover just such an eventuality?
Indeed... another of Saddam's USEFUL IDIOTS exposes himself.
This SOB should be arrested immediately upon his return (if he dares) to the US.
What's really interesting about this story is how the print media is reporting it as straight news, with not a little subtle smirking.
I can't help thinking of the leftist professor on O'Reilly last week who was accusing Fox of bias in favor of the war, based on the fact that some of its reporters had referred to the U.S. as "we."
In the liberal mind, Fox is biased for acknowledging loyalty to the U.S. in the use of the first person plural, but Arnett expressing his personal anti-war, pro-Iraqi views on the enemy's state-run TV station, as a reporter for an American network, during wartime, is legitimate journalism.
I doubt it. Even if he did have a gun pointed to his head, he was still saying what he wanted to say. The man's a whore at best, a traitor at worst. Just go back and study his track record. It speaks for itself.
I sincerely doubt it. You give the Left too much credit. :-) Heinlein's Razor -- Never attribute to human malice what can more easily be attributed to human stupidity. Arnett's a traitorous media whore. End of story.
If there is indeed a "pause", then your argument is absolutely right, but I take issue with the idea that there IS a pause. I'm not saying there isn't; I'm not saying there is. I'm saying that I do not have one scrap of the war plan to point to and say, "See, here is where we're supposed to be taking our 'operational pause'," or, alternatively, "Here is our contingency plan for ______" (plug your favorite stupid press briefing topic into there).
Saying that we have "paused" indicates, rhetorically, that we have stopped operations in some sense. *That* I simply do not believe to be the case. So if there *is* a "pause", it consists of BDA, re-tuning equipment, re-fueling, flexing supply lines, what have you. That is to say, there is action going on EVERY SECOND. So, in that sense, I can say that there *is* no pause, but pretty much, I can't say anything with any degree of certainty, except that our victory is assured. Peter Arnett can't even get to the assured victory part. :p
P.S. Please don't take this as a flame, I'm just pouring out my daily dosage of armchair-general-hating vitriol...your post makes perfect sense, *if* there is a pause, I'm just rejecting the "knowability", to borrow a Rumsfeld line, of that assertion.
I absolutely agree. And I *don't* think he was doing it just to "stay in Iraq". Again, I point to Arnett's track record of proven bias and lies.
Smack! Wham! The man hits it out of the park. ;-)
Although "liberal mind" is a bit of an oxymoron, so I'd like to amend it to "mindset", or perhaps, "dogma", since their approach to political views is always tinged first through the lenses of emotion and only much later through the clear glass of cold reason.
However, I predict you're going to see a LOT of CYA from the networks involved in this. They can read polls, and they know they survive on ratings. S'why poor little Connie got the axe. I'm not saying they'll convert en masse, but they WILL attempt mealy-mouthed apologies of all sorts in the CYA process which will provide us all with a great deal of amusement.
Wesley Clark can never go that far. He has "crazy eyes". Look at the man's stare sometimes for a while. It'll genuinely freak you out, I promise. Crazy eyes, I tell you! :-)
Glad to see that Arnett's track record of lies is well known, and I'd just like to say I'm damn sorry he was around to badmouth our military when you were enlisted...even more sorry the SOB is still around...rest assured, he's gonna pay for this one, one way or another. Admin. ain't just gonna sit on this (oh Lord, I hope not). Arnett hasn't just CROSSED the line; he's leapt over it like Superman would leap over a tall building. Garbage. This man is *garbage*.
A freep wouldn't phase them a bit. They were taken over by the radical left 10-20 years ago. I grew up on that magazine and can even remember when all the photos were black and white, but when they went over to the dark side, I stopped subscribing. No surprise at all that they picked up Arnett's contract.
Maybe it's time to suggest to Arnett that it would not be in his best long-term best interests to return to American soil after the war. Perhaps he and Robert Fisk could move to Lichtenstein and get married, instead.
--Boot Hill
That is a very intriguing idea.
Based on the comments attributed to Arnett on this thread, and how his firing from CNN derailed his career for some years, I do believe you're correct that this is gratuitous slandering by Arnett as a thank you to Iraq.
I've sent my e-mails and will do some calling shortly. Some people just need to be taken down.
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