Peter Arnett: "Iraqis ... See Me as a Fellow Warrior."

[Tingkai]

NBC are a bunch of cowards with no journalistic integrity.

Arnett's comments have been said dozens of times by reporters around the world. The Iraqi resistance is stronger than expected. Re-inforcements are being sent in. The initial war plan of charging straight for Baghdad failed and had to be changed because the US/UK forces need to protect their supply lines. His reports, and other reports, of civilian casaulties affect public opinion around the world. That is a fact.

The sad thing is seeing Arnett apologize when he has done nothing wrong. Yes, he did an interview with the Iraqi state-controlled television station, but would anyone complain about him being interviewed by the state-owned BBC or CBC?

[Dr Strangelove]

Perhaps Arnett and Rivera will retire together to a little cable news talk show somewhere?

[Drake Tungsten]

Yes, he did an interview with the Iraqi state-controlled television station, but would anyone complain about him being interviewed by the state-owned BBC or CBC?

Are you just trolling or are you really too stupid to see the difference?

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Yes, he did an interview with the Iraqi state-controlled television station, but would anyone complain about him being interviewed by the state-owned BBC or CBC?

Are you just trolling or are you really too stupid to see the difference?

Are you just trolling or are you too stupid to read the interview?

Look at what he said. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He did not breach any journalistic ethics.

There was no reason to fire him.

[Ted Striker]

Arnett = turncoat dork

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Look at what he said. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He did not breach any journalistic ethics.

Granting the interview was a gross error in judgement and he should have known what the likely consequences of such an action.

There was no reason to fire him.

Arnett purposefully made himself into a hot potato and his employers didn't feel like sticking thier neck out on his behalf.

[Shi Huangdi]

News coming in: Arnett hired by the Daily Mirror, some British newspaper.

[gsmoove23]

ooo, I gotta say he's a dork on this one. His statements about the US I see no problem with. The fact that in the same interview he completely toadies up to the Iraqi regime shows a huge irresponsible bias. He should have realized that this would have been inevitable in a state sponsored interview and simply refused. Seems like he might have over compensated in trying to gain Iraqi "respect".

Still, I don't blaim the guy too much, he's been a coorespondent since Vietnam. Can anyone say "burnout"?

[Drake Tungsten]

Are you just trolling or are you too stupid to read the interview?

I was talking about your comparison of Iraqi TV to the BBC...

[Berzerker]

Bill O'Reilly said Arnett was providing aid and comfort - a way of accusing someone of treason without having to back up the accusation - because Arnett's comments will provide hope for the Iraqis and they will fighter harder. Huh? Since when do a people under attack need motivation from a reporter's assessment about the efficacy of battle plans? If Bill O'Reilly went there and told them they were losing badly and stood no chance, would they just throw down their weapons and give up?
And yet Fox and Bill are defending Rivera at the same time? Oh the irony...

[HershOstropoler]

Arnett has now achieved full clown status.

Btw:

"HOME OF THE FREE: ARNETT JOINS MIRROR

THE reporter sacked by American TV for telling the truth about the war is joining the Daily Mirror."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12795796&method=full&siteid=50143

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Granting the interview was a gross error in judgement and he should have known what the likely consequences of such an action.

Why? Simply because he gave an interview to Iraqi TV?

If he had made the same comments on the BBC, no one would have noticed. So why is it okay to be interviewed by the national television of one combatant nation, but not the other?

[CerberusIV]

The Daily Mirror hiring Arnett is not too surprising. They are anti-war and will lap up the kind of comments he gave in that interview.

What is worth noting is that the Mirror is anti-war to have a go at Tony Blair and the Labour party and to take a different line to their main rival newspapers, not from any serious commitment to being anti-war. I suppose it is called "demonstrating a balanced media approach".

[Guest]

Just some Arnett history I came across:

http://www.brookesnews.com/030104arnett.html

Why did Peter Arnett give aid and comfort to Saddam's sadistic regime?





Gerard Jackson
Melbourne: Australia
BrookesNews.Com
Tuesday 1 April 2003

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?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Tingkai
If he had made the same comments on the BBC, no one would have noticed.

Probably. I fail to see how that mitigates his stupidity in this instance. Hell, it would have been smarter to have said the same things on Al Jazeera.

So why is it okay to be interviewed by the national television of one combatant nation, but not the other?

It would have looked less like he was giving a propaganda coup to the Iraqi regime and he likely would have been able to keep his job.

God, this isn't even the first time Arnett has reaped a whirlwind of his own making. He should have known better.