Treason charges against Arnett?

The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) is asking the Justice Department to bring "criminal treason" charges against former NBC reporter Peter Arnett, who during a lengthy interview with Iraqi TV claimed that the American military is having to rework its battle plans in response to unexpected Iraqi resistance. This, according to the rightwing fanatics pursuing these ridiculous charges, provided "aid and comfort to the enemy."

But what about Geraldo Rivera? When Rivera carelessly exposed the position of the American unit he was embedded with in Iraq, the Defense Department wanted him yanked from Iraq. So what sets Geraldo, who truly put our troops in harms way, apart from Arnett who merely voiced his opinion? Roger Ailes, the head of FOX News! Ailes is a former (and some would say current) Republican campaign operative who once worked for the Nixon and Bush administrations. Ailes' relations in the Bush Administration helped Rivera. Worried that Geraldo's actions would embarrass FOX News, Ailes called friends in the Bush Administration and Geraldo and Fox were spared major embarrassment.

Of course, this isn't the first time Arnett has had the charge "treason" leveled at him by the rabid reactionary republicans. During the first Gulf War, Arnett revealed that the US bombed a baby milk factory by mistake. George Herbert Walker Bush then claimed with a straight face that is was a chemical weapons lab. Eventually a state department employee came clean in a confidential memo drafted in December 1992, immediately suppressed by Bush the first, and then released later under the Freedom of Information Act. In the memo, this state department employee confirmed that the Abu Ghreib 'baby milk factory' bombed by the Allies during Desert Storm had been a genuine factory for producing powdered milk, and not a military plant. He had found no hidden chambers there, no inappropriate machinery.

Now as it was then, it appears the only "crime" Peter Arnett is guilty of is embarassing a "President" named Bush! And that hardly rises to the level of treason. FOX News minion Geraldo on the other hand...