UK tabloid hires sacked NBC scribe Arnett

NEW YORK: Veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett, fired by America''s NBC TV network after he said the US war plans in Iraq had failed, has been hired by a British tabloid.
The British newspaper ''Daily Mirror'' said it was hiring Arnett so that he can continue to tell truth about the war.
"Fired By America For Telling The Truth," the tabloid said of Arnett in a front page headline.
Arnett, who said on Iraqi TV in an interview that US war plans have failed because of Iraqi resistance and they are trying to write another, apologised to the American people.
But NBC Television network said it received thousands of e-mails and telephone calls protesting his remarks which were aired twice by the Iraqi television and parts of it were carried by some networks in the US.
Arnett, who had won Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the Vietnam war and reported the first Gulf War for CNN from Baghdad, left the CNN after it retracted a report that the American forces had used sarin nerve gas in Laos and reprimanded him. He was on-air reporter for the piece.
Shortly after his interview aired Sunday, NBC News defended him saying it was given by Arnett as a "professional courtesy." It described his remarks as "analytical in nature" and said they were not "intended to be anything more."
But, NBC issued another statement yesterday, saying "it was wrong for him to grant an interview to the state-run Iraqi TV, especially in a time of war."