CNN'S ARNETT: WHO'S HE HELPING WITH COVERAGE?

Reed Irvin and Joseph C. Goulden are writers for the "Accuracy in Media" syndicate, headquartered out of Washington D.C.

TV viewers around the world daily are seeing dictator Saddam Hussein's secret war weapon on CNN the face of balding, blondish correspondent Peter Arnett. As the de facto Voice of Baghdad, reporting only what Iraqi censors permit, Arnett is putting Saddam's propaganda into 105 nations as the dictator attempts to mobilize world opinion against the Allied effort.

"Baghdad Pete" feels that by being in Baghdad, "a capital that is under attack by the United States, our country ... we can prevent events like this occurring in the future. That is my wish. I am sick of wars, and I am here because maybe my contribution will be to somehow lessen the hostilities, if not this time, maybe the next time, Bernie." He didn't say just how his reporting is contributing to lessening hostilities, but it seems to be by trying to erode the U.S. resolve to carry on the fight to a victorious conclusion.

Baghdad Pete is a dream come true for a tyrant trying to win through psychological warfare what he cannot achieve in battle. Arnett identified a bombed-out plant as an infant formula factory when it really produces biological warfare weapons. He aired an interview in which Saddam Hussein appealed to anti-Semitism and thanked the "anti-war" demonstrators. He gave an American peacenik in Iraq a chance to tell the world that the American army is in the Gulf to "steal" oil from the Arab people. He regularly tries to make us feel guilty by showing women and children wounded by our bombing raids.

Saddam Hussein hopes to erode support for the war here and in other coalition countries. CNN and Arnett are cooperating in that effort. They have become an essential part of Iraq's psy-warfare arsenal. The public sees this and is outraged, but our media heap praise on Arnett. In a profile that was just short of five column feet on Jan. 20, the Washington Post called Arnett "The Ultimate War Horse." His friends lined up to praise his bravery, tenacity and for being a man who can see "the larger truth" in a war. Arnett's critics were not mentioned. According to Glenn MacDonald, a Vietnamese War correspondent, many U.S. officials in Vietnam considered Arnett a "`dangerous man' who invented stories out of whole cloth, coloring them with an anti-American bias."

Born in New Zealand in 1934, "Baghdad Pete" showed up in Saigon as a legman for AP correspondent Malcolm Browne in 1962. The next year he got a story that made headlines worldwide the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in Saigon. Arnett later admitted he could have saved the man's life by kicking away the gasoline can, but he said if he had done so, "the secret police would have immediately arrested the monk and carried him off to God knows where." Arnett photographed the monk setting himself afire and rushed it onto the AP wires to help spread the false charge that Buddhists were being persecuted.

In 1965 Arnett quoted a Radio Hanoi charge that South Vietnamese soldiers were using "poison gas." In fact, the soldiers had nonlethal CS, or tear gas, that police routinely use for riot control. Arnett's story mixed in a discussion of lethal mustard gas and didn't mention that the CS was nonlethal until late in the story. Barry Zorthian, press officer for the U.S. Mission, said even a neophyte journalist would recognize the story would have an anti-American impact worldwide, which it did. The furor caused the military to abandon the use of tear gas, even though it was recognized as a humane way of rescuing hostages from the Vietcong.

During the Tet Offensive in February 1968 Arnett incorrectly reported that Vietcong had occupied the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, thus boosting the media myth that Tet was a Vietcong victory. It was actually a military disaster for the communists, but Arnett and other reporters handed them a psychological victory.

During Tet, Arnett produced a famous quote that was seized upon by the anti-war movement. Describing the fight to root the Vietcong out of Ben Tre, Arnett claimed an American major told him, "We had to destroy the city to save it." This came to epitomize what the U.S. was allegedly doing to all of Vietnam. William Touhy of the Los Angeles Times cast doubt on the story, saying that 75 percent of the town survived the battle. He said the U.S. Mission questioned the authenticity of the statement, saying it "sounds too pithy and clever" and didn't ring true.

Rep. Larry Coughlin (R., Pa.) has called the conduct of CNN and Arnett "disgusting if not treasonous." During World War II William Joyce, a British subject, broadcast propaganda for Hitler under the name of Lord Haw Haw. The British hanged him as a traitor after the war. Asked what the difference between them was, Coughlin said Joyce was paid by Hitler and Arnett is paid by CNN. Saddam Hussein thinks Arnett is helping him; otherwise he would pull the plug. He is hurting America, and viewers should tell Ted Turner they are tuning out CNN until it calls Baghdad Pete home.