The excellent Iranian journalist Amir Taheri has a great piece on the lies and excuses at the hand of French policy towards Iraq. The French media made up its mind about Iraq at the start of the war – it was all about oil, it was all for Halliburton, and it was going to be the next Vietnam. There was no discussion on these topics, they were simply taken to be true, and dissenting opinions were nowhere to be found in the pages of Le Monde, L’express, Le Figaro or the other major French papers. For all the cries of how the American media was so one-sided, even FoxNews carried anti-war voices, while the French media almost never challenged the party line on Iraq.
With such a close-minded atmosphere, the French have begun to believe their own bullshit. They seriously believe that Iraq is a quagmire that cannot be solved without the help of the French. The French media constantly reinforces this idea without even entertaining the idea that Iraq is anything less than some kind of hellhole. The idea that the US has any other interest than oil is also never discussed.
It is based on this single-minded worldview that France is deciding its frankly idiotic policy towards Iraq, a policy that is causing even Germany to begin to balk. The French media is overwhelmingly one-sided, even more so than the media in the US. Without accurate intelligence one cannot make accurate decisions, and French policymakers have apparently begun to believe their own bullshit.
France has never been a very enlightning country anyway…