Veteran journalist says war plan failed
American journalist Peter Arnett, covering the war from Baghdad, has told state-run Iraqi TV the US-led coalition’s first war plan had failed because of Iraqi resistance and said strategists are “trying to write another war plan”.
Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN.
He is reporting from the Iraqi capital now for NBC and its cable stations.
The interview could make Arnett a target of the war’s supporters.
The first Bush administration was unhappy with Arnett’s reporting in 1991 for CNN, suggesting he had become a conveyor of propaganda.
He 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.
NBC, in a statement last night, 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.
