Naturally enough, Le Monde's front page is devoted to the fate of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of America's special-op forces (Bottom of this post: The full-body portrait from which Le Monde's front page headshot was cropped).But, as usual, Plantu manages to muddy America's image by suggesting not only that the head of Al Qaeda was the target of a vulgar assassination attempt but he does so in a cartoon that recalls the infamous Eddie Adams photo of a Viet Cong prisoner — bound, helpless, and incapable of defending himself — being shot point blank in the head by an (ally of the) American(s) without having had the benefit of a trial beforehand.
In the cartoon, one sees the slug coming out the other side of the victim's head — just like in the Pulitzer prize-winning photo, when examined carefully. Although the circumstances have to some extent vindicated Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (as the captain of a terrorist squad during the Tet offensive, the captive had wiped out the family of one of the police chief's deputy commanders), the shot (sic) is still regarded (certainly by the mainstream-media-fed public) as the uncalled-for assassination of a harmless prisoner and as (allegedly) depicting the concomitant heinous, barbaric, fascistic (etc, etc) behavior of an evil imperialist, colonialist Western government (and of its local allies, the traitorous, collaborative, and human rights-deficient poodles) arraigned against the resistance of brave Che Guevara-like freedom fighters.
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