New York Post Online Edition | Editorials that Show the State of the American Mind

Anyone familiar with the situation in the Ivory Coast knows that the forces stationed there, mostly French, are under UN mandate on a peacekeeping mission to stop the civil war. Most recently, the central government in the Ivory Coast used its few military jets to fire missiles on the French peacekeeping forces, who then retaliated by destroying the Ivory Coast military aircraft. There were only a few of them, so this was easy to do, but they had to be put out of commission as they were going to be used again. The UN Security Council agreed with France's actions, although they have yet to approve the arms embargo that they requested.

With that background, it is instructive to read the thick layer of lies in the Murdoch-run NY Post:

"What Western power bypassed the U.N. recently, ignored the inter national community and launched a pre-emptive attack against the forces of a sovereign foreign government?

Why . . . France, of course.

That's right: French forces, acting unilaterally, deployed troops to strike the Ivory Coast's air force and took up strategic sites in the country's commercial center of Abidjan last Sunday.

Indeed, in what is being called a complete 'overreaction,' the French virtually wiped out the West African cocoa-producing nation's entire combat air fleet.

(True, that included just a few old Russian jets and some choppers. But what do you expect from the French?)

And, so far, the closest thing to WMDs that's been found is . . . chocolate. (It can lead to deadly obesity, n'est-ce pas?)

Which raises a question: Did that cowboy, Jacques Chirac, fear President Laurent Gbagbo's forces would attack Paris?"

If you wanted to read something journalistic on the subject, you'll have to look outside of the US. The Turkish press seems better placed:


The Security Council on Saturday upheld the right of French and UN forces to prevent "any hostile action," and the head of UN peacekeeping said that the French deployment had been made in coordination with the United Nations.


Destroying military aircraft is a prevention of hostile actions. Pretty restrained response by American standards.

The real story is the major news corporations that feed this sort of nonsense on a steady basis to American voters. Little wonder that they vote for Bush as a consequence.