ree points: they demonized the Bush and Blair administrations, approved the diplomatic line of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, and communed with the pacifist movement. And journalists reported the war they would like to see rather than the war that was.
On the way some French coverage emphasised US brutality:
The American strategy of very quick efficient raids made the regime collapse. I think those journalists were so astonished, the only explanation they gave was that the GIs were brutal, they had no consideration for civilians. The best example of this is what Rémy Ourdan wrote about Saddam’s fedayeen. These were the dictator’s most oppressive guards, they were like his SS. Ourdan said the fedayeen didn’t fight because they were so frightened by the way the GI’s were killing everybody, and a lot of civilians, so the fedayeen didn’t want to defend them so the Americans wouldn’t kill so many civilians. It’s a joke.
The whole interview is worth reading, and has echoes with the way the war was reported in some quarters here.
Leave a Reply