Jacques,

For me, one of the most disturbing things about the Iraq war (and the Gulf War) was how it was treated by the media. Equally disturbing was how the American public accept what they hear from our "super bowl" style news coverage as the one truth. In today's age of global connectivity and the many perspectives available on the internet, I was amazed at how few sought to look beyond the spin that Fox News or CNN put on the stories.

I was in Mexico when the war began. No electricity. No TV. I learned via word of mouth. When I arrived back at a city with TV, the stations available were Mexican, German, and the BBC. There was quite a contrast to the coverage folks were watching at home in the US.

Let me follow up by saying that I am an eight-year veteran of the Air Force. I enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam war. Following that, I spent 10 years working in a government office. Additionally, I spent time working as part of a US sponsored consulting team in the Gaza strip following the 1993 Oslo peace agreement. (I was working in Gaza when Arafat returned from exile in 1994.) During those experiences I had plenty of opportunity to compare the media view with my own perception of events on the ground. I can assure you that what you see on TV news channels does not accurately portray reality.

As to the question of how much Maughan knows about the French Algeria relationship . . . well, even in the ivory tower, the learning is not always hands on. (History is written by people, with their own cultural biases. Hence, you can study the same topic from universities on opposite sides of the world and get completely different views.)

The moral of the story is, if you can't be there yourself (and even if you are), remain open to a variety of perspectives. There's more to what's happening than what's being portrayed by the major news networks (that are tied very closely to business and political interests).

Drawing a phrase from the culture of my youth, "Peace, man."