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NBC praised Arnett's
"outstanding" reporting from Iraq and said he was trying nothing more than to
give an analytical response to an interviewer's questions. In the interview, Arnett said
his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what
the United States and Britain are doing.
He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for
a week, "and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi
resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."
"Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi
forces," Arnett said during the interview broadcast by Iraq's satellite
television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt.
Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the
war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct. "Our reports
about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back
to the United States," he said. "It helps those who oppose the war when you
challenge the policy to develop their arguments."
The interview was broadcast in English and translated by a green military uniform-wearing
Iraqi anchor. NBC said Arnett gave the interview when asked shortly after he attended an
Iraqi government briefing.
"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,"
NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. "His remarks were analytical in nature and
were not intended to be anything more. His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for
itself."
Peter Arnett was denounced for his reporting about an allied bombing of a baby milk
factory in Baghdad that the military said was a biological weapons plant. The American
military responded vigorously to the suggestion it had targeted a civilian facility, but
Arnett stood by his reporting that the plant's sole purpose was to make baby formula.
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.
He went to Iraq this year not as an NBC News reporter but as an employee of the MSNBC
show, "National Geographic Explorer." When other NBC reporters left Baghdad for
safety reasons, the network began airing his reports.
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