12-30-2003, 05:36 PM
|
#1
|
|
Banned
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: spain
Posts: 19
|
The French �dreamed of an American defeat� in Iraq
Quote:
Writer fired after blasting French war coverage
Book claims media showed anti-U.S. bias over Iraq
The Associated Press
30, 2003
PARIS, France - Reporter Alain Hertoghe�s book accused the French press of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. His newspaper fired him.
The book, �La Guerre a Outrances� (The War of Outrages), criticizes the French reporting for continually predicting the war would end badly for the U.S.-led coalition.
�Readers can�t understand why the Americans won the war,� Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. �The French press wasn�t neutral.�
The book, published Oct. 15, charges French reporters were more patriotic than journalistic and what was written amounted to disinformation.
Book examines five major French papers
It examines daily coverage by five major French dailies, including Hertoghe�s own La Croix, in the three weeks from the first strikes on Baghdad on March 20 to April 9 when Saddam Hussein�s regime fell.
�As soon as there were a couple of wounded, of dead, they were talking about Vietnam, Stalingrad,� Hertoghe said.
In contrast, work by journalists traveling with U.S. troops indicated that �the war was advancing well,� he said.
Hertoghe, a 44-year-old Belgian, said reporters reflected the emotional high in France more than realities on the battlefield, becoming caught up in France�s central role in leading the opposition to the war at the United Nations.
�The French public was so carried away,� he said. The journalists, he wrote in the book, �dreamed of an American defeat.�
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3837168/
|
And the French wonder why Americans view them as an enemy?
This reminds me of what Thomas Friedman had to say in the NEW YORK TIMES back in September....
Quote:
Thomas L. Friedman: France and the United States are at war
It's time Americans came to terms with something: France is not just an annoying ally. It is not just a jealous rival. France is becoming America's enemy
If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding a loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided United Nations than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.
France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened United States will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.
http://www.iht.com/articles/110418.html
|
The French are now the enemy of the United States.
|
|
|
