] Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Peter Arnett is
] accustomed to the sounds of war.
]
] "It was horrendous, it was thunderous," Arnett says of
] this war's first waves of Baghdad bombing. "But the point
] is, it was a half-mile away."
]
] For him, that's a comfort zone. By his own count, Arnett,
] 68, is covering his 20th war.
]
] "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else," he said Tuesday,
] by phone from his $40-a-day hotel room in Baghdad. "I
] like being at the big story."
]
] Now he's busy again. Sent to Iraq to do features for
] "National Geographic Explorer," Arnett has instead been
] featured on NBC and MSNBC. He remains in Baghdad %u2014
] even though his old network, CNN, was expelled.
]
] "It is particularly ironic because CNN is not here,"
] Arnett says. "I do get a perverse pleasure out of it."
]
] In 1991, CNN was still struggling for attention. It had
] Arnett, Bernard Shaw and John Holliman in Baghdad when
] the first Persian Gulf War began.
]
] "Peter (was) the best war reporter of his generation,"
] Reese Schonfeld, a CNN founder, wrote in "Me and Ted
] Against the World" (HarperCollins, $26). "All of them
] (were) in the right place at the right time ... CNN
] caught lightning in a bottle."
]
] Those three reported live for the first 17 hours of the
] 1991 war. Arnett stayed on, winning a Pulitzer Prize and
] propelling CNN to