Stan:
"(...) you have been listening to the "Quagmire" crowd over at the press club"
Indeed.
That's particulary true in the case of the French press.
They've been consistently ignoring and/or minimizing the Coalition's successes, ever since the first Humvee set the first wheel in the Iraqi desert, while at the same time making a mountain out of any dune of the aforementioned desert.
Remember the Iraqi Ministry of Information? Well, he's an amateur compared to Le Monde or Liberation.
The main difference is that he was, at least, involuntarily funny.