Peter Arnett deserved to be fired for his propaganda boost to the Iraqis:
“The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance….Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces.”
Furthermore, Peter Arnett is wrong about US problems. Seymour Hersch, in the April 7 New Yorker, has the ugly details:
According to a dozen or so military men I spoke to, Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. He put Army and Marine units in the field with few reserves and an insufficient number of tanks and other armored vehicles….Much of the supply of Tomahawk guided missiles has been expended. “The Marines are worried as hell,” the former intelligence official went on. “Theyre all committed, with no reserves, and theyve never run the lavs”light armored vehicles”as long and as hard” as they have in Iraq. There are serious maintenance problems as well. “The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements come.”
Hersch’s article details how Rumsfeld gave our trained military leaders the same rude brush-off he handed to France and Germany. Rumsfeld’s arrogance endangered our troops much more than Arnett’s idiocy–and Rumsfeld deserves to be fired just as publicly as Arnett.
Shoshana Nyree Johnson signed up for the US Army as a cook. While Shoshana and her unit prepared to risk their lives in Iraq, Dennis Hastert and other Republicans on the House Budget Committee raced to show their support by funding those tax breaks for stockholders with billions of dollars in cuts from Veterans’ benefits. An outcry from veterans’ organizations saved their benefits–for now. Dennis Hastert treated US soldiers and their families like dirt–and Hastert deserves to be fired just as publicly as Arnett.
Dennis Hastert and Donald Rumsfeld still hold their comfy jobs. Peter Arnett has a new, less-comfy job with a British tabloid. Shoshana Johnson is a POW. In El Paso, Texas, her two-year-old daughter is waiting for mom to come home.