Ramirez Distorts French Views Past and Present

I regret to take strong exception to a cartoon by Michael Ramirez, published on Oct. 31. This outrageous cartoon shows a highly improbable Gen. Charles de Gaulle during a wartime conference with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill stating in distorted English, supposed to imitate our French accent, that Hitler was not “zat bad” (if he had had oil).

Ramirez has gone too far. Besides being historically unwarranted and insulting to Gen. De Gaulle’s memory and to my country, this drawing unfortunately shows that your newspaper does not seem to care much about the reality of our position regarding Iraq. On Nov. 8, after intense but fruitful debates, France, which has long advocated a resumption of free and unfettered inspections aimed at disarming Iraq, adopted, along with the U.S. and the other 13 members of the U.N. Security Council, Resolution 1441, which sends a strong message to the Iraqi regime.

I would like to make one additional remark: In 2001, according to United Nations and International Monetary Fund statistics, France was only the fourth-largest buyer of Iraqi crude oil. It could be useful for Ramirez to know, given his interest in oil, that the U.S. then ranked first.

Jean Luc Sibiude

French Consul General

Los Angeles