What exactly did he do that was so bad? Everyone has an opinion, and he gave it in an interview. Just because it's an unpopular one means he should be fired?
What did he do that was so bad? Nothing.
Mr. Arnett has been in Iraq for many years. He was in Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf war. The one where the USA actually took the time to build a coalition before invading Iraq.
Mr. Arnett was asked by Iraqi TV for an impromptu interview. He agreed. He said nothing that several current and retired Pentagon generals aren't saying. The US invaded Iraq without the troop strength the Pentagon wanted. If anyone takes the time to investigate they will find that Rumsfeld and his group of neo-conservative chickenhawks micro-managed the troop deployment. These are civilian Pentagon personnel who have NO experience in troop deployment and never served in the military telling the experts, the US military's top ranking experts, when and how to deploy troops to fight a war in Iraq.
The problem isn't what Arnett said. The problem is a few ideologues, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle (and Cheney who is their stealth leader) have hijacked US foreing policy and endangered our troops by acting on their ideas instead of letting the men who know how to do the job, do the job in a nuts and bolts operation. Arnett said what many people know and the people he offended by tellling the truth have the power and connections to see that Arnett doesn't have the chance to tell the truth about them again. At least not at NBC, MSNBC or National Geographic.
Rumsfeld made the circuit of all the morning talk shows Sunday swearing he had nothing to do with the deployment, "This is Tom Frank's plan." Pentagon sources who remain nameless, lest they suffer the same fate as Arnett, and several retired US military generals have said Rumsfeld is lying. Rumsfeld wouldn't even let a 62 man maintenance unit deploy without his approval. His lack of experience in troop deployment left some of our troops with only 5 to 6 days to tie up all the loose ends before they were shipped out. His original plan was to deploy only 50,000 to 60,000 ground troops. The Pentagon military leaders had to fight tooth and nail to get the current level of ground forces deployed. And we're seeing the result of that deployment. Our troops are now waiting for another 120,000 ground troops to finish the job. If Rumsfeld and Co. had ever heard of the Powell Doctrine they could have avoided putting our troops in danger during an unnecessary several extra weeks or months of fighting.
As always the spin doctors look for an easy target, and Arnett is it. But between tossing Al Jazeera out of the NY and American stock exchanges, and now journalists being fired for expressing their opinions it's clear the regime we have in Washington is in some ways no better than the regime they are trying to depose in Iraq. Freedom of the press so long as the administration controls the press.
To be fair there are some important differences between Bush and Hussein. If you give an opinion that is unpopular here, ie against the Bush regime, you lose your job and maybe the right to return home. In Iraq if you give an opinion that is unpopular, ie against the Hussein regime, you don't have to worry about your job or your citizenship, where you're going they wont matter. But in Hussein's regime you know this from the get go. In Bush's regime they claim to support free speech and our rights. That's hypocrisy.
The 4th Army Division is beginning to arrive in Kuwait. They are the best equipped fighting force in our armed forces. If they had been deployed at the beginning of this war it would more than likely be over by now. The men and women who are put in harms way because of this are the brave GI's on the ground fighting and praying they survive to return home to their families. Not the ideologues who are using their power to experiment with their ideas on troop deployment and war in the 21st century, and the lives of our troops.