This is so delicious. Here’s the beginning of the article from the Independent:
There is no French equivalent for “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. The puerile insult that has crossed the Atlantic after years of trying has no resonance there. France does not regard its hostility to Anglo-US unilateralism as cowardice. But, last Thursday, the French media did, briefly, perceive a need for attitude-adjustment.
Until Saddam was vanquished, headlines such as “The tragedy”, in the weekly news magazine Le Point, were ubiquitous. Even L’Actu, an educational newspaper for teenagers, got in on the act. Last Wednesday’s edition carried a cartoon depicting a GI firing at an Iraqi civilian under the caption: “I am feeding Iraqis.”
Then doubt set in. An editorial in Thursday’s Le Figaro admitted, “The Americans have won the war – in only three weeks. It is a victory for George Bush.” Le Monde, too, adopted a less Gaullist tone. “The dictator who terrorised Iraq” was the title of a two-page spread, one of many items in newspapers and on television that itemised the cruelty of the defeated regime….