March 27, 2003

Le Monde Watch From a

Le Monde Watch

From a Richard Bernstein piece in the NYT:

"Le Monde, France's most prestigious newspaper, published a front-page cartoon by its caricaturist, Plantu, that showed an American soldier with an American flag marching over a heap of Iraqi corpses. The soldier says, "This sandstorm is terrible!"

See the cartoon here (scroll halfway down page). UPDATE: This cartoon has been removed (replaced with another anti-american one, however). I'm sorry I don't have a direct link to the original one described in Bernstein's piece.

Meanwhile, in a story on Syria, Le Monde reverses the September 12th, 2001 headline "We Are All Americans Now" with (from the Damascene perspective, bien sur) "We Are All Iraqis."

Speaking of Syria, Bashar Assad is ratcheting up the rhetoric. I suspect this is mostly for domestic consumption--the U.S. and Syria have been cooperating quite intensely since 9/11 on intelligence sharing related to al-Qaeda. Sure, it is a very difficult relationship, but not so bad (at least at the present juncture) that Bashar would credibly fear that he is "next."