Quotes from amigo by john sayle12/25/2022 ![]() ![]() His dramatic reports often were accompanied by the sound of air raid sirens blaring and US bombs exploding in the background. During the Gulf War, he became a household name worldwide as the only reporter to have live coverage directly from Baghdad, especially during the first 16 hours. Gulf War īeginning in 1981, Arnett worked for CNN for 18 years, ending in 1999. Later, Arnett would recount the story to journalist Artyom Borovik, who was covering the Soviet side of the war. The trip came to an end when Healy fell into the Kunar River, ruining the pair's cameras. They continued to a Jalalabad hideaway of approximately fifty rebels. With a contact named Healy, he entered Afghanistan illegally from Pakistan both men were dressed in traditional clothing as natives and led by Mujahideen guides. : 305Īrnett wrote the 26-part mini-series documentary, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), produced by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).Īt the time of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Arnett was working for Parade magazine. Occupying soldiers showed him how they had entered the city. In Walter Cronkite's 1971 book, Eye on the World, Arnett reasserted the quotation was something "one American major said to me in a moment of revelation." Īrnett was one of the last western reporters remaining in Saigon after its fall and capture by the People's Army of Vietnam. The New Republic at the time attributed the quotation to US Air Force Major Chester L. US Army Major Phil Cannella, the senior officer present at Bến Tre, suggested the quotation might have been a distortion of something he said to Arnett. Arnett never revealed his source, except to say that it was one of four officers he interviewed that day. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong." The quotation was gradually altered in subsequent publications, eventually becoming the more familiar, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." The accuracy of the original quotation and its source have often been called into question. In what is considered one of his iconic dispatches, published on 7 February 1968, Arnett wrote about the Battle of Bến Tre: "'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a United States major said today. Johnson and others in power put pressure on the AP to get rid of or transfer Arnett from the region. General William Westmoreland, President Lyndon B. Arnett's writing was often criticized by administration spokesmen as negative, who wanted to keep reporting of the war positive. : 274–8Īrnett wrote in an unvarnished manner when reporting stories of ordinary soldiers and civilians. peace activists, including William Sloane Coffin and David Dellinger, on a trip to Hanoi, North Vietnam, to accept three American prisoners of war for return to the United States. In September 1972, Arnett joined a group of U.S. ![]() An American detachment was sent to rescue another unit that was stranded in hostile territory, and the rescuers were nearly killed during the operation. Īrnett accompanied troops on dozens of missions, including the battle of Hill 875, in November 1967. His articles, such as "Death of Supply Column 21," about an event during Operation Starlite in August 1965, resulted in raising the ire of the American government, which had been increasing the number of forces in the region. The reporters were trying to cover Buddhist protests against the South Vietnamese government. On 7 July 1963, in what became known as the Double Seven Day scuffle, he was injured in a widely reported physical altercation between a group of western journalists and South Vietnamese undercover police. ![]() ![]() Eventually, he made his way to Vietnam, which the French had abandoned after being defeated at Dien Bien Phu by communists from North Vietnam.Īrnett became a reporter for the Associated Press, based in Saigon in the South, in the years when the United States began to get involved in the civil conflict and through the Vietnam War. In 1960 he started publishing a small English-language newspaper in Laos. Vietnam ĭuring his early years in journalism, Arnett worked in Southeast Asia, largely based in Bangkok. His first job as a journalist was with The Southland Times. Arnett was born in 1934 in Riverton, in New Zealand's Southland region.
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