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Gulf War I for merely reporting from Baghdad,
has aroused their ire again for saying U.S. war
planners have misjudged the situation, and for
thanking Iraqi officials for “the degree of freedom”
that U.S. journalists enjoyed. Arnett has
now rejoined their axis of evil.
While the NY Post trashed him today, yesterday
The New York Times wrote about him sympathetically.
Frank Rich quoted him: “It’s déjà 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,” he said from
Baghdad when I spoke with him by phone last
week. Unlike many of his peers, he had been
there to see the early burst of optimism in Persian
Gulf War I, which he covered for CNN. “This
is going to be tough,” he said just before it
became tough. “When I interviewed Tariq Aziz
two weeks ago, it was not put on the network, he
said: “You’ll have a hard time tearing us down.
We’re ready to be martyrs. Whatever you think
about Saddam Hussein, there is a sense of
nationalism here. The Iraqis like American culture
and American movies and pop songs. But
are they really going to like American tanks?”
For sentiments like this, Arnett is likely to be
targeted even more. The Guardian predicted
that his comments “are likely to make Arnett a
renewed target of Republican lawmakers, many
of whom already contend that his reporting is
slanted in favor of the Iraqis.”
“Nauseating”
EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
IRAQI TV showed the interview at least twice on
Sunday afternoon. CNN and Fox News Channel
showed excerpts of it last night. Republican
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen told Fox News Channel she
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found the interview “nauseating.” She added,
“It’s incredible he would be kow-towing to what
clearly is the enemy in this way.” So far, MNBC is
sticking with their free lancer.
As for Fox News, I just loved watching convicted
perjurer, Ollie North, reporting for Fox
from the field. The man who lied to Congress,
who sold arranged arms to Iran during the bad
old days of Iran Contra, is a correspondent in the
field. Fox anchors referred to him reverentially
as “Colonel” and “Sir.”
Wolff shows no mercy
LAST week I reported on the question raised at
the CENTCOM briefing in Doha by New York
magazine media columnist Michael Wolff who
asked briefer General Brooks why anyone
should even go to these briefings. Now Wolff has
written about his experiences. The Guardian
picked up his report, which will probably also
appear in New York, although they don’t say so.
Wolff calls himself an embed:
“I have embedded myself in the million-dollar
press center at General Tommy Franks’ central
command (CentCom) forward headquarters in
Doha, Qatar. Camp as-Sayliya, where the press
center is safely stowed, is far enough from the
center of Doha that you get a clear and eerie
sense of what Qatar was like before it became oil
rich and development-happy two generations
ago.
“It’s pure moonscape. Not a tree, not a bush.
Hardly a structure. Just a horizon of flat limestone.
And then you come upon the U.S. base –
really just a ring of wire and then a no man’s
land behind which there is the base.
“It takes about 48 hours to understand that