Referring to Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" phrase (in its main article's final sentence) and thus, directly or otherwise, to the heinous crimes of the Nazi era, Le Monde reveals that it is among the newspapers and/or associations involved with the latest WikiLeaks "spill" of Pentagon documents on the Iraq War.Le Monde, conjointement avec le New York Times, le Guardian, le Bureau of investigative journalism et le Spiegel, a pu consulter en avant-première 400 000 rapports de l'armée américaine en Irak, rendus publics ce vendredi par le site Wikileaks, spécialisé dans la publication de documents confidentiels. Il s'agit des rapports d'incidents, rédigés par les officiers sur le terrain, qui constituent le fichier SIGACTS ("significant activity") des forces américaines de janvier 2004 à décembre 2009. Une masse de documents qui décrivent, jour à près jour, les attentats, les échanges de tirs, les fouilles de caches d'armes, les arrestations, et les violences contre les civils.
Le Monde's team of reporters — Patrice Claude, Yves Eudes, Rémy Ourdan, and Damien Leloup — also has articles on Iraqi policemen's use of torture and on civilian deaths at military checkpoints, along with a graph of the conflict's victims.
The first thing to notice is that the leftist media still has no idea about what a country at war — never mind a country (previously) run by a bloodthirsty psychopath — is.
Les violences des soldats américains, notamment lors de l'arrestation des suspects, est aussi évoquée par les 400 000 fichiers."The violence of the American soldiers, notably during the arrest of suspects, is also mentioned in the 400,000 files." Le Monde speaks of "suspects" as if they were lethargic Amsterdam marijuana users and not heavily-armed fanatics ready, and eager, to use their weapons.
But most revealing, perhaps, is how all the violence is attributed to the Americans and/or to their allies (Iraqi or foreign) and to the very fact of their presence in Iraq. The money quote of blame by association remarks goes to the following sentence, in the main article, whose passive tense suggests that Yank soldiers are to blame for the "victims of summary executions" by the very fact of… simply discovering the "corpses of thousands of women and men"!
Les cadavres de milliers de femmes et d'hommes, victimes d'exécutions sommaires, ont été découverts par les soldats américains.To hammer the blame by association home, the article immediately segues into the sentence "ading" that "in the span of six years, those same soldiers [!] killed at least 600 civilians at checkpoints"
Ces mêmes soldats ont tué au moins six cent civils en six ans aux checkpoints, ou en ouvrant le feu sur des véhicules pris pour une menace.(Ain't it nice to know how nicely our French allies treat their American friends?)
The blame by association is shown again in the article referring to the graph of the conflict's victims, which opens with a sentence stating that those who — "by far" — have paid the heaviest price in the war are "civilians, victims of political and criminal assassinations as well as of attacks and 'collateral damage' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police".
Les civils, victimes à la fois des assassinats politiques et crapuleux, des attentats et des "dégâts collatéraux" provoqués par l'armée américaine et la police irakienne, ont payé de très loin le plus lourd tribut à la guerre.Notice the wording? "Civilians, victims of political and criminal assassinations" — oh yes, when we are speaking of political and criminal assassinations, i.e., crimes by other Iraqis (more than a few of who must be members of Saddam Hussein's former Ba'athist party), we do not hear who the perpetrators are — "as well as of attacks and 'collateral damage' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police" — but when the damage is done by the Americans and their Iraqi allies, then, by all means, we must hear (all) about it, we do hear (all) about it (and how!)…
And as this part of the sentence comes in second and last (if it was really felt to be necessary not to mention the legions of Iraqi killers, it would have been more honest to turn the two phrases around, so that the sentence read "civilians, victims of attacks and 'collateral damage,' provoked by the American army and the Iraqi police, as well as of political and criminal assassinations"), it follows that Americans and their Iraqi allies are viewed as responsible (as guilty?) for all the violence…
There is another "by far" — see below — but, because it doesn't reflect badly on the Americans and because it doesn't make the Iraqi population look like poor harmless victims, nowhere does Le Monde specify this statistic. At least the New York Times does so:
The reports make it clear that most civilians, by far, were killed by other Iraqis.Update: Needless to say, the French mention nothing about the bogus, trumped-up figures of lost Iraqi lives along with the discovery of, yes, WMDs in Iraq…
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