"Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces," Leftist media’s useful idiot Arnett blathered last Sunday. "That is why America is now reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a war, and rewriting the war plan. The first war has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan."

Arnett shows sympathy toward Iraqi cause

According to the Media Research Center, Arnett’s next equally treasonous comment helped further the Iraqi cause:

"Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States," Arnett said. "It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."

Moreover, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) was so appalled by Arnett’s statements, she told Fox News that she found them "nauseating" and said Arnett was "kowtowing to what clearly is the enemy in this way."

"Let’s hope he’s not being coerced," Ros-Lehtinen said.

Not surprisingly, NBC initially defended Arnett’s calumny with its own propaganda:

"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," inveigled NBC News spokesperson Allison Gollust.

"His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more," Gollust unconvincingly argued. "His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for itself."

But WorldNetDaily’s Tom Marzullo wrote on March 31 that "what we are really reading this for is to find out about the whys and wherefores of the recently resurrected Arnett and his latest pro-Saddam journalistic antics so piously defended by NBC."

Whether NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic were backpedaling in response to the public backlash over Arnett’s gaffe or desperately trying to save face by staving off further liability, Arnett has been in trouble before with top media brass.

Arnett’s consistently fabricated, falsified stories

When Arnett worked for CNN during the 1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration purportedly thought Arnett had become a tool of Iraqi propaganda for claiming in a report on "CNN Newsstand" that the allied bombing of a biological weapons plant in Baghdad was a baby-milk factory.

The U.S. military, however, "responded vigorously" to the suggestion it had targeted a civilian factory, but Arnett stood by his story that the plant’s sole purpose was to make baby formula. CNN later retracted the story, fired two of its employees and Arnett eventually left.

But, according to the Media Research Center (MRC), CNN probably wouldn’t have come clean in the first place, had it not been for the Washington Times, the otherwise left-leaning Newsweek and the Weekly Standard "blowing away Arnett’s shabby reporting and exposing how CNN should have known its story was a farce, and how they mangled and misquoted military experts to create false impressions."

"And why just "reprimand" Peter Arnett, the infamous salesman of Iraqi propaganda during the Gulf War?" MRC Director Brent Bozell said. "It was enough of a mystery that CNN considered this America-hating New Zealander an asset to their credibility after the Gulf War, when he admitted to the National Press Club in March 1991 that he really didn’t know whether his Baghdad reporting was true, and he "didn’t go deep down" to try and find out.

"From now on, any important news story delivered by Peter Arnett is not going to be believed."

What’s more, the utterly outrageous thing about this whole incident is: Arnett is Pulitzer-prize winning journalist. The one who had drawn enormous paychecks from CNN, NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic for being entrusted with telling the truth! And this is how he repays them? Through acerbic treason, treachery and dishonesty?

Can Arnett be so derelict in his journalistic duties that he abandons the slightest vestige of conscience without first filtering it through his own anti-U.S. grievances?

One of liberal media’s useful idiots

In nationally syndicated columnist Mona Charen’s book "Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First," Arnett is listed among several "journalists" with leftist bents who are exposed as Communist-loving frauds.

In her best-selling depiction, Charen rightfully explained how "journalists" like Arnett, Dan Rather, Katie Couric and others have undermined the Cold War and claimed the onslaught of capitalism actually made those living under Communism worse off.

In fact, Charen exposes "media figures like Arnett who chuckled with praise for Communists and smirked with snide disdain for America, including Bill Moyers, Phil Donahue, Bryant Gumbel, Rather and Couric."

"They are always willing to blame America first," said Bozell of Charen’s shocking account, "and defend its enemies as simply misunderstood."

Now Arnett is among these same liberals who want to claim credit for the Cold War’s downfall and rewrite history.

"These are liberals who flocked to Castro’s Cuba and called it paradise, just as a previous generation of liberals visited the Soviet Union and proclaimed its glorious future," Charen wrote. "They are liberals who saw Communist Vietnam and Cambodia - in fact, Communism everywhere - as generally a beneficial force, and blamed America as a gross, blind, and blundering giant."

Actually, Arnett’s Communist mentality dates back to the Vietnam War.

"In that conflict, Arnett attempted to float - not once, but twice - the contrived story of the dread and deadly chemical weapons (common teargas, as it turned out) being deployed by the barbaric and murderous American military machine," Marzullo reported on March 31.

"Undismayed by having been found out, and after being rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize (similar to the 1930s prize for "debunking" Stalin’s coldly calculated, but well-documented Ukrainian genocide), Arnett skipped off merrily into the sunset with his North Vietnamese bride to later appear on CNN."

Arnett’s polemic rants continue

In fact, at CNN, Marzullo wrote, Arnett became a rising star, broadcasting from around the world until 1990, where he was the only Western reporter allowed to stay in and report from Baghdad during the first Gulf War, reiterating the baby milk factory fiasco.

"While there, his reporting was widely criticized for its apparent slant favoring Saddam’s regime, culminating in his infamous "Baby-Milk-Factory" story with its hastily scribbled signs in each of the languages that particular run of footage was to be aired with," Marzullo said.

"After the war, Arnett was granted unique and extensive privileges to cover the story within Iraq and, once again, his reporting was very favorable to the Iraqi regime. His coverage of Saddam’s mass murder of Kurdish people with nerve agents and the brutal suppression of the Shiite revolt were kind, to say the least."

But in 1998, the bottom dropped out for Arnett when the CNN-TIME "Valley of Death" story premiered, ultimately putting his and CNN’s reputation on the line.

"For that jewel of lurid deception, Arnett (well protected from internal review by CNN executives) dredged up his already twice-rejected nerve-gas story, applied some sparkly glitter effects with very adroit editing so as to ensure the success of the premier of "NewsStand," Marzullo said.

According to Marzullo, WorldNetDaily’s editor, Joseph Farah, broke the story and, within weeks, the fragile bubble of the leftist fantasy Arnett had created, burst.

"In the aftermath, Arnett was ignobly consigned to a bare desk while internal CNN reviews, lawsuits and governmental investigations ground on and on, until it was more cost-effective for CNN to spend the big bucks to buy out his contract rather than risk putting him on the air again," he said.

"The aftermath of that phony nerve-gas story was not only that CNN was virtually ruined from an integrity standpoint (not that Peter really cared), but that was the straw that broke the back of the fragile international consensus that kept the United Nations’ weapons inspectors in Iraq. For it was Arnett’s little introductory speech for that pack of calculated lies that asserted that now the United States had no moral position to deny Iraq chemical weapons."

Pro-Iraqi sentiment ultimately prevails over professionalism

Still another stinging example of Arnett’s pro-Iraqi sentiment is when he started on MSNBC’s National Geographic Explorer in February 2003. Arnett’s first airing of his self-proclaimed "Peter Arnett’s Baghdad Diary" presented an Al-Jazeera broadcast of U.S. Iraqi students denouncing "U.S. treatment of Iraq."

In fact, one Iraqi student claimed that "my mother, sister and brother were burned to death in the Alamaria shelter. I want to ask the American people is this the human touch and love letter your government has sent to other people?!"

What’s more, one woman who moved from Colorado to Iraq said: "This war is about more than just weapons of mass destruction. It’s about our right to choose the way we live. I mean nobody has the right to impose their values."

Plus, after an American student worried about the "pain" the U.S. caused Iraq, Arnett lamented that "it's a pain some Iraqi students might have to suffer again." An Iraqi then promised: "We’re not looking for war. But if war is coming we will fight, fight, fight!"

Clearly, Arnett was more concerned about conveying the Iraqi side then reporting BOTH sides of the current war. Arnett was so interested in propagating his own tainted pro-Iraqi version that it actually colored his reporting and made it difficult for him to separate fact from illusion. Arnett systematically became discombobulated between what was fantasy and what it really meant to do objective news reporting.

In fact, Arnett’s disorientation between reality and fantasy became so blurred during his time covering the Gulf War that Senator Alan Simpson referred to Arnett as "an Iraqi sympathizer," and eventually spoke out against him. The account ultimately became part of Thomas McCain and Leonard Shyles’ book "The 1,000 Hour War: Communication in the Gulf."

For example, McCain and Shyles purported that the difference between journalists who attempted to present a balanced view of the war and those like Arnett, who only wanted to use the camera as a pulpit to voice the enemy’s propaganda, became abundantly clear.

In fact, journalists who wanted to present a fair and balanced side of the Gulf War were seen as the enemy; however, those such as Arnett, who consistently appeased the enemy by routinely presenting an apparent pro-Iraqi bent, were seen as friends.

In the account, McCain and Shyles said:

"Evidently, CNN will be praised for its coverage of Desert Storm and never castigated for allowing Peter Arnett and, in return, themselves to be used by Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine…If there was ever any doubt that Saddam Hussein was planning to copy the successful strategy of Ho Chi Minh, his January 28 interview with Peter Arnett should have removed it, aired on CNN," said the authors, further exposing Arnett’s pro-Iraqi slant, as well as CNN’s bias.

"Saddam Hussein appreciated what the media was doing on his behalf. Because it fit his strategy, he permitted CNN to keep Peter Arnett in Baghdad and allowed them to bring in expensive equipment needed to transmit his reports by satellite. CNN served as the Voice of Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein didn't even have to pay one penny of the costs. We have embargoed his oil and other exports to keep him from earning dollars, but we permitted him to earn dollars from the airing of his propaganda to the 105 countries that can pick up CNN transmissions."

Anti-American, Bush-hating British tabloid hires Arnett

But despite the well-documented chronicling of Arnett’s calumnious reporting tactics, subsequent firing and half-hearted apology for his anti-U.S. statements, he won’t be leaving Baghdad anytime soon.

According to Newsmax.com, the anti-American, Bush-bashing British tabloid, the Daily Mirror, has actually hired Arnett to be their Communist mouthpiece.

Newmax.com said Arnett was hired after he promptly retracted the pseudo-apology he issued Monday on "Today," one of America’s own leftist propaganda machines.

"I am still in shock and awe at being fired," Arnett wrote for the tabloid, a big foe of the war, to Saddam Hussein's delight. "I report the "truth" of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologize for it."

For Arnett, writer Carl Limbacher concluded, truth is apparently Clintonesque relativism.

"Recall that CNN fired him for making up a story in 1998 about U.S. forces supposedly using nerve gas against American defectors in 1970 Vietnam. So why did red-faced NBC ever hire him?" Limbacher wrote Tuesday.

"And when…is CBS going to fire useful idiot Dan Rather for being an even bigger mouthpiece for [Saddam]?"

Good question.


"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Doug Schmitz is a free-lance journalist and media commentator. He holds a master's degree in journalism and is currently writing a book on media bias. He is a regular columnist to Ether Zone.

Doug Schmitz can be reached at: doug_schmitz@yahoo.com

Published in the April 2, 2003 issue of  Ether Zone.
Copyright © 1997 - 2003 Ether Zone.

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