F 9/11

[Eddie Haskell]

Where the hell are the ultra-conservatives on the new format. I guess there having a little trouble with any change at all. Have you guys noticed how the new format is absent the neocons. Are moderates like StevieD, Kosar, Bjfineste, and moi the only ones able to negotiate change and the new format. Where the hell is DJV?

Gardenweasel is the only member of the Hitler youth who has made an appearance on behalf of the draconians.

Ed

P.S. Sorry I left Bobby and auspice out.

 

[gardenweasel]

stevie asks...

stevie asks...

and stevie shall receive....

Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT



Moore: Trying to have it three ways

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

 

[dawgball]

I don't know where I rank in the supposed Fourth Reich, but I don't see how anyone could garner Moore with the genius tag. To me, he is the anti-thesis of Rush. Neither are anything more than propoganda pushers for their own personal financial gain.

I will probably watch F 9/11 because my life is so great right now, I need something to darken my mood.

 

[gardenweasel]

part 2

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.


Recruiters in Michigan

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

 

[Eddie Haskell]

GW:

"herbivorous";
"lugubrious"; and
"turgid".

Are you sure Buckley didn't write this piece?

Eddie

 

[gardenweasel]

part 3

part 3

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

 

[gardenweasel]

part 4

part 4

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.


Trying to talk congressmen into sending their sons to war

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

 

[gardenweasel]

part 5

part 5

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.



hope you enjoy,stevie......

your "obsequious"(how`d you like that one,counselor?) co-poster.....gardenweasel.....or as my nazi friends call me,gartenveetzel...

 

[Eddie Haskell]

GW:

Would this be the same Christopher Hitchens that made a film about Mother Theresa calling her a self promoting scumball worth in excess of 50 million? Not that it matters, but I just want to know who you are quoting.

Eddie

 

[gardenweasel]

edward....

edward....

the very same.....also the author of "not even a hedgehog....the stupidity of ronald reagan".......in which he claims that "reagan was as dumb as a stump".....that should warm the cockles of your heart....

an independent thinker......isn`t afraid to speak his mind....whether it`s considered appropriate or not....

that`s why he`s worth reading.....he`s not moore....he`s not rush....this guy thinks for himself...makes his own decisions....

he`s something very unique....he`s interesting...

 

[StevieD]

GW, for a piece as long winded at that it really doesn't offer any proof that any of the allegations made in the film sre false. I was pretty disappointed that I had to read all that to find out that this nitwit really doesn't like Moore. As I said he offers no proof.

 

[gardenweasel]

stevie

stevie

i didn`t expect the article to change partisan minds.....

you just get tired of hearing stuff like,....."Moore is a genius. And if this stuff was a lie you can bet the Bush people would be all over Fox News telling us exactly what is false."


so i posted a dissenting view,not having seen the film myself...

some people still think faye resnick`s dope fiend friends killed nicole simpson....evidence didn`t matter.....bias ruled the day...

if you think everything in moore`s movie is absolute fact....that the truth isn`t stretched...that important responses aren`t edited out....that things aren`t stated out of context..............

that moore is objective.....

fine....

 

[Chanman]

Bravo gardenweasel! Encore, Encore! Stupendous, no marvelous. Excellent. Speech Speech!


I saw it Saturday Night. Very good. Moore is a genius. And if this stuff was a lie you can bet the Bush people would be all over Fox News telling us exactly what is false- by StevieD.


As always SD, respect your opinion, BUT I think the facts ARE out there. I don't mind the film showing at all, or the $ it makes. (I'll forego the usual jokes as to why some would be drawn to a movie theatre by a large, hairy fat man and just try to post something relevant). Ergo:

Dude, Where's My Intellectual Honesty?
By Bryan Keefer
October 16, 2003

In his latest book Dude, Where's My Country? -- a polemic against President Bush -- liberal gadfly Michael Moore again demonstrates why he has a reputation as a slipshod journalist who has trouble getting his facts right.

Moore established his reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth in his first film, the 1989 documentary "Roger and Me," centering on General Motors layoffs in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. As the New Yorker's Pauline Kael wrote at the time, he manipulated the chronology of his film, implying that certain events were a response to GM's large 1986 layoffs when in fact they had occurred years before.

Moore's best-selling book Stupid White Men was no less factually challenged. In it, he made a number of mistakes, ranging from the sloppy (suggesting that the multiyear cost of a new fighter plane was all being spent in 2001) to the outright ridiculous (reprinting an outdated list of attacks on Bush from the Internet virtually unedited). "Bowling for Columbine," for which Moore was awarded last year's Academy Award for best documentary feature, continued the pattern. Critics, including my co-editor Ben Fritz and Dan Lyons of Forbes, documented how Moore repeated a well-debunked myth about supposed US aid to the Taliban, falsely portrayed a scene in a Michigan bank to make it appear as though one could open an account and walk out with a gun, and altered a Bush-Quayle '88 campaign ad, among numerous other distortions.

Moore has generally brushed aside such criticism with suggestions such as "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" as he put it to Lou Dobbs on CNN's "Moneyline." More recently, however, he has gone on the offensive, going so far as to suggest critics of "Bowling for Columbine" are "committing an act of libel" in an August 19 appearance on MSNBC. And in a long article posted on his web site, he denounces criticism of the film as "character assassination" and "make-believe stories."

Despite repeatedly dismissing his critics, Moore has recently acknowledged some of his errors. For instance, in the DVD release of "Bowling for Columbine," he changed the caption he inserted over a Bush/Quayle '88 campaign ad, making the text more accurate (although the viewer still is unlikely to realize that the text wasn't in the original ad in the first place). One his web site, Moore explicitly admitted making this correction in the film.

In two places in Dude, Where's My Country?, Moore implicitly acknowledges mistakes in his earlier works. On several occasions over the past two years, Moore has asserted that (as he put it on "Politically Incorrect") "the Bush Administration gave $43 million in aid to the Taliban in part to -- give money to the poppy growers for the money they would lose because they can't grow heroin anymore." "Bowling for Columbine" continued the canard, asserting that the US gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Both of these are false; the aid, intended to help relive famine, was given to non-governmental organizations, not the Taliban. In his latest book, Moore finally gets it right, noting that the aid "was to be distributed by international organizations." (page 34)

Moore also implicitly corrects himself about what was manufactured at a Lockheed plant in Littleton, Colorado. In "Bowling for Columbine," Moore implies that the plant made nuclear weapons at or immediately before the time he visited. Actually, while the plant was involved in nuclear missile production years before, it now makes rockets that are used as space-launch vehicles for military and civilian satellites. In his newest book, Moore sets the record straight, writing that "Lockheed Martin, the biggest arms maker in the world, built rockets that carried into space the special new satellites that guided the missiles fired into Baghdad" during the recent war in Iraq. (page 74)

At least Moore is finally telling the truth about the US aid and Lockheed. Most other subjects come in for much more dubious treatment in the book. For example, Moore misstates the details of how members of the Bin Laden family left the US after Sept. 11, claiming that "while thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in U.S. history, you got a free trip to gay Paree!" (page 20) Yet a few pages earlier, Moore himself quotes a November, 2001 New Yorker article by Jane Mayer which notes that "Once the FAA permitted overseas flights [after Sept. 11], the jet [with the Bin Ladens] flew to Europe." (page 4) As this and other reports have made clear, the Bin Ladens did not leave the US until after the resumption of commercial flights. And a Boston Globe article of September 20, 2001 quotes a Saudi government official stating that the Bin Ladens chartered their own plane - hardly a "free" trip as Moore suggests.

Moore's penchant for conspiracy theories often leads him to stretch the facts or make laughable claims. Bashing the proposed Terrorist Information Awareness project, he writes that "There is usually very little in the way of an electronic or paper trail when it comes to terrorists. They lay low and pay cash. You and me, we leave trails everywhere - credit cards, cell phones, medical records, online; everything we do. Who is really being watched here?"(page 110, his italics) In Moore's fervor to indict the TIA system, he forgets about the credit cards used by the 9-11 hijackers, which were used to help retrace their steps.

Moore also repeats a well-debunked myth about Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark. According to Moore, "Clark has said that he received phone calls on Sept. 11 and in the weeks after from people at 'think tanks' and from people within the White House telling him to use his position as a pundit for CNN to 'connect' Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein." (page 53) Moore cites a June 15, 2003 interview with Clark on NBC's "Meet the Press." Despite somewhat ambiguous phrasing in that interview, however, Clark, has subsequently been consistent in his claim that it was a member of a think tank who contacted him, not the White House, a fact buttressed by a recent report that identified the man who made the call. And Moore pluralizes the single call Clark refers to in the "Meet the Press" interview to "calls" - a claim Clark has never made.

In addition, Moore attacks the Patriot Act with an array of examples that have nothing to do with it. He introduces the list by writing that "To date, there are at least thirty-four documented cases of FBI abuse under the Patriot Act - and at least another 966 individuals have filed formal complaints. Many of these people were just minding their own business, or seeking to partake in our free society. Consider these examples." (page 111) Moore lists an anti-globalization activist who was questioned by "immigration officials" and a "State department agent"; a New York judge who asked a defendant if she was a terrorist; French journalists detained at the Los Angeles Airport; a local police officer in Vermont entering a teacher's classroom to photograph an anti-Bush art display; a college student questioned by Secret Service agents about "anti-American" material; and a Green Party activist questioned on his way to Prague. None of the incidents he lists, however, happened as a result of the Patriot Act, nor did any of them involve the FBI (the French journalists were detained for improper travel documents, and the Green Party activist was questioned by the Secret Service, as Moore's own sources note).

Bush's policies towards Iraq come in for particular criticism - and, in several cases, gross distortions. Moore writes that "There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq's leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports. That's $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator." (page 69) In reality, that "trade" was done under the auspices of the United Nations oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil to purchase humanitarian supplies. (For details on the program, see this report to Congress.) One can only imagine what Moore would have said if the U.S. refused to purchase Iraqi oil and allowed its citizens to starve.

 

[Chanman]

At another point, Moore attacks Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement to the United Nations that "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." According to Moore, "Just days earlier, Powell apparently was not so sure. During a gathering of CIA officials reviewing the evidence against Saddam Hussein, Powell tossed the papers in the air and declared: 'I'm not reading this. This is bullshit.'" (page 82) Moore makes it appear as though the speech Powell gave at the UN included the evidence he had called "bullshit." In fact, the US News & World Report article that Moore cites does note Powell's exclamation, but it details the process by which Powell winnowed out pieces of evidence he was uncomfortable presenting. The article concludes "And plenty was cut [from Powell's speech]. Sometimes it was because information wasn't credible, sometimes because Powell didn't want his speech to get too long, sometimes because [CIA Director George] Tenet insisted on protecting sources and methods."

Nor is Moore above twisting facts to attack the Bush administration's tax cuts. Moore criticizes the 2003 Bush tax cut for reducing revenue to the states. As one example, he writes, "Take the kids in Oregon, whose schools were shut down early this year because they ran out of tax money." (page 160) While Moore makes it appear as though the 2003 Bush tax cut shut down Oregon's schools, Oregon actually passed a law in May 2003 decoupling its state income tax system from the federal government's, insuring that the 2003 tax cut would have no impact on the state's budget. Moreover, as an article from the June 8 New York Times Magazine - one of Moore's own sources - notes, Oregon voters had rejected a referendum earlier in the year that would have raised taxes to pay for schools and other spending.

In a recent interview with Bookreporter.com, Moore was asked if he made a special effort to fact-check his new book. "All my work goes through a thorough fact-checking process," he said. "I hire three teams of people to go through the book and then two separate lawyers vet it. There is a reason that I have never been sued over anything in my three books -- that's because everything in them is true." Apparently, Moore needs to hire himself some new fact-checkers. Regardless of the supposed rigors of its vetting process, Dude, Where's My Country? cements Moore's reputation as one of our nation's sloppiest commentators.

[Note to readers: Be sure and check out the companion piece to this article, listing all the errors we found in Dude, Where's My Country?.]




Research assistance by Davis Bell and David Mishook.

Last, but not least...

Americans "Possibly the Dumbest People on the Planet"

Michael Moore continues to have unkind words for his fellow countrymen. On his international book tour, the author of ?Dude, Where?s My Country?? was asked what he thought of Americans.

QUOTE
?They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet ... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks,? he replied. ?We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don?t know about anything that?s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.?


Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/970612.asp?0cv=CB20&cp1=1
added 11/04/03

At least he likes the U.S. a little


QUOTE
?I like America to some extent.?


Source: http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=shukan&id=176 (4/21/03)

Bush did it for cheap Arab labor


QUOTE
?The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich. The U.S. government claims to bring democracy to Iraq; however, no country in the world takes such an assertion seriously. It is an illusion."


Source: http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=shukan&id=176 (4/21/03)


Your Peers Are Turning Against You, Mr. Moore

Moore's acceptance speech at the 75th Annual Academy Awards, for which he was roundly booed:


QUOTE
"On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this.

"I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to ? they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction.

"We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times.

"We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president.

"We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

"Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush.

"Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you.

"And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.

"Thank you very much."


Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ar_iraq_moore_1

 

[Chanman]

More Absolute Stupidity from Moore on the Eve of War

There is so much nonsense the "Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War" that you have to read the whole thing. But here are some of the quotes:


QUOTE
"So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I could take much more."


(Lying and conniving? No one does it like Michael Moore.)


QUOTE
"There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one."


(Trust you? As of the time you wrote this, polls showed two-thirds of Americans supported the war in Iraq.)


QUOTE
"Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either!"


(Did you ask Bill Clinton to send Chelsea to Bosnia? Why not? And, do you not understand the concept of a all-volunteer army. Would you like the draft to come back? Huh, Mikey?)


QUOTE
"Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? ... And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once."


(They also taught the world how to surrender and stand for nothing.)

Source: http://michaelmoore.com/words/message/

9/11 Bush's Fault?

What a damn idiot! Eight months into office and Moore thinks they did it to get back at Bush! It is reported that the hijackers planned this for two years--well before Bush was in office. And, what about the attempt at bringing down the World Trade Center in 1993? Gee, who was president then? Hmmm...are you blaming Clinton for that one, Michael?


QUOTE
"Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California--these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"


Source: http://www.refuseandresist.org/normalcy/09...91401moore.html

Repugnant, Mr. Moore

Remember the heroes of Flight 93--Jeremy Glick, Edward Felt, Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer and the rest of passengers--who died while taking down the hijackers and ultimately the plane itself? These are not heroes to one of America's premier idiots, Michael Moore. Here is a rant from his ?comedy act? at a London club. I hear that he has repeated this at several venues:


QUOTE
?the passengers were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes."


Source: http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030111-6357097.htm

Stupid White Moore

From Moore?s book, Stupid White Men:


QUOTE
"There is no recession, my friends. No downturn. No hard times. The rich are wallowing in the loot they've accumulated in the past two decades, and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie."


Source: http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020403.html

The Mantra


QUOTE
?You know he's [Bush] there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida.?

?? we know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush.?


Source: http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/0...ore_031302.html

Yeah, Mike, Nader Won?t Screw it Up for Gore


QUOTE
?Democrats should be on their knees thanking Ralph [Nader] for running. Rather than taking votes from Gore, Ralph's going to be the one responsible for turning the House back over to the Democrats.?


Source: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/RalphN...MooreNader.html

Bush Addicted to Bubbling Crude that got him Elected


QUOTE
?The United States is continuing to fake evidence against Iraq.

"If our government won't represent us, then we must rely on other governments to do so, and we need the help of people all over the world."

"'President' Bush is hell-bent on going to war in Iraq and killing tens of thousands more innocent Iraqi civilians. He is putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops at risk, and for what? A twelve year old grudge from his father's administration and a disgusting addiction to the bubbling crude that got him 'elected.' He justifies this war with unproven claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, plagiarized and dated 'intelligence reports' taken from magazines and grad students, and conveniently timed audio tapes from Osama bin Laden."


Source: http://www.michaelmoore.com/homeland/index.php

Wants Bush "Paraded in Handcuffs Outside a Police House as a Common Criminal"


QUOTE
"So what do you tell his parents, hmm? What did he die for? To protect America? No. So what's the reason? What would Haliburton (the US oil giant formerly run by Vice-President Dick Cheney and now helping to rebuild Iraq) say if they knocked at the door? 'Sorry your son died, but I think we're going to get that oil as a result of it. So hey, come on, cheer up. At least Arnie can fill up his Hummer now.'

"It's so disgraceful and so disgusting."


Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/conte...-name_page.html
added 11/03/03


QUOTE
He has just finished a sell-out stand-up tour across the States. The chant that goes up when Moore gets on a roll is: "Impeach Bush." But that's too lenient: "I want him paraded in handcuffs outside a police house as a common criminal because I don't know if there's a greater crime than taking people to war based on a lie. I've never seen anything like Bush and his people. They truly hate our constitution, our rights and liberties. They have no shame in fighting for their corporate sponsors.

"I honestly believe they are putting their toe in the water to see if people will go for martial law. After 9/11 we had hundreds of Arab-Americans rounded up and put in prison with no charges. You know, there's an undercurrent of feeling that we may not even have an election next year. If there is another 9/11 a justification may be used to call it off and instal martial law."


Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/conte...-name_page.html
added 11/03/03

 

[THE KOD]

Just a side note Moores movie made 23.9 million dollars this weekend.

the fat bastid

 

[MrChristo]

Unfortunately the film doesn't open here in Oz for another 3 weeks, but am obviously quite keen to see it. Looking forward to some kind of review, Eddie.

As for Moore himself, I have no real opinion on the guy. (ooh...he's sooo fat!! Damn, it's a good thing all those senators running the place are so trim and athletic! :142lmao: ).
I wasn't all that impressed with Bowling For Colombine....Actually thought he went around in a big circle and ended up 'confusing' himself as to what he was trying to 'prove'. (He had Charlton Heston absolutely hung out to dry before he changed tack at the end and went on about the kid that got shot and kept showing him the photo....He kind of lost his own plot, imo.)
BUT, no-one can deny that he does raise some very interesting points, and definately makes you THINK while watching his material. (Foreign concept to some people, I know, thinking at a film!!). Whether you agree or disagree I think it's always a good think to question why certain things happen/ed.
As for the money issue....My view is this: If he is doing it for the $$ then he is a hypocritical tosspot...If the cash is simply a bi-product of his 'success' then so-be-it....Unfortunately it is impossible to know the truth without knowing the man personally.
Besides....Even in his 'extreme left' ( :142lmao: ) views, I'm pretty sure he has never advocated Commuinism.
Looking forward to a peek.

 

[Chanman]

Good post MC. For me Moore is the polar opposite of Limbaugh w/same points, makes you think, makes $, etc.etc. Look forward to your take after Edwards. :shade:

 

[Blitz]

Are moderates like StevieD, Kosar, Bjfineste, and moi the only ones able to negotiate change and the new format.

Moderates? Now that's funny!!! :142smilie :142smilie :142smilie

 

[kosar]

You see the movie, blitz? If not, you outta check it out, bro. Some of us moderates have commented on it, or will comment on it. I'd like to see what a neocon thinks of it. Book reviews from a year ago are nice, but how 'bout the movie?