posted June 30, 2004 10:16 AM            

quote:

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Let's give it a rest.

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That is merely a suggestion isn't it? Good

Moore needs all the coverage we can give him. Seldom does a more corrupt individual come to the attention of the public. And then, there's the fact his delusional fantasy did beat out the masterpiece of film making "White Chicks" in the weekend ratings. Very important film.

BTW, why do you object to the truth being told about Michael Moore?

Thanks for starting another Fahrenheit 9/11 thread.

Radical Democrats Back Moore
David Horowitz
Monday, June 28, 2004

Of all the commentaries on Michael Moore’s propaganda film Fahrenheit 9/11, the most acute comes from the New York Times’ David Brooks. Brooks begins his facetiously titled column, “All Hail Moore,” with this tongue-in-cheek observation: “In years past, American liberals have had to settle for intellectual and moral leadership from the likes of John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. But now, a grander beacon has appeared on the mountain top, and, from sea to shining sea, tens of thousands have joined in the adulation.”

Moore’s “documentary” is at the top of the box office, out-grossing on its opening day (Friday)“White Chicks,” “Dodgeball,” Stephen Spielberg’s new pic, “Terminal” and “Shrek 2.”

The source of this impressive reception lies in its maker’s success in capturing the imagination of the Democratic Party’s activist core, not to mention its heart and soul. This is the really significant dimension of the Michael Moore moment. Others have focused on the fact that the Pied Piper of Flint is a cynical manipulator of audience emotions, an irresponsible auteur and a compulsive liar.

Beyond that – as Christopher Hitchens has shown in a blistering review in the liberal magazine Slate – Moore is also a world class phony, attacking the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq for derailing the War on Terror despite the fact that Moore is on record as opposing the attack on the Taliban as fiercely as he does the war on Saddam.

What is momentous in the Moore phenomenon is that the Democratic Party – or at least its political core - has embraced a piece of Marxist agitprop and made it an election campaign spot. David Brooks provides readers unfamiliar with the Moore Weltanschauung with some chillingly precise quotes. According to Moore: “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy.’ They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow – and they will win.”

In other words, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the beheader of Nicholas Berg, is not really America’s enemy (unless you are misled by the deceiver in the White House); he is actually an Islamic reincarnation of Ethan Allen or Paul Revere, a harbinger of a new global freedom which will only be achieved by the overthrow of the Great American Satan. This obscene fantasy is of course just an excessively vulgar version of the same Marxist fantasy that radicals like Moore (and Kerry) were peddling in the 1970s about totalitarians like Ho Chi Minh, prior to delivering their Vietnamese allies to the Communist gulag from which they have not yet escaped.

Not surprisingly, Moore’s “analysis” of the rationale for the war is a vulgar Leninism (if that is not a redundancy). In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, cited by Brooks, Moore explained: “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.”

In other words, the war in Iraq is “blood for oil,” from the slogan made popular by the North Korea-aligning Workers World Party which – as it happens - was responsible for all the early mass demonstrations against the war in Iraq.

What is disturbingly new in this political season is not that there exists a large radical culture which has learned nothing from the fall of Communism and which identifies Americans as agents of evil and George Bush as their Fuehrer-in-Chief. What is new is that they have been joined in this electoral campaign by the Democratic Party establishment along with sensible anti-Communist veterans from the Cold War era like Arthur Schlesinger and Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen, both of whom attended Moore’s Washington opening along with Senators Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer and DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe.

It is fair to ask how far has this group derangement progressed. Well, Salon.com, an Internet journal which, unlike Moore, supported the war on the Taliban, now compares Moore favorably to Solzhenitsyn, Dickens and (of course) Bruce Springsteen.

These eye-popping developments have been progressing with disturbing velocity since the moment American troops entered Baghdad after a three-week war and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi complained that the liberation of 25 million Iraqis was already “too costly.”

It has proceeded with alarming speed from this high ground to underhanded – not to say reckless - accusations that the President has betrayed his country, concocted lies to lead Americans into a war for the benefit of Texas corporations, and wasted the lives of American youth in uniform, while killing and abusing innocent Iraqis for no particular reason – a point Moore pounds home with all the subtlety of a cluster bomb.

The impact of these irresponsible and poisonous attacks not only on the tenor of America’s political discourse, but on the war itself has been profound. As a result of the left’s propaganda war against the war, the American government is now almost as hamstrung as it was during the post-Vietnam era (when it could not send troops to Afghanistan to block the Soviet invasion) – and until the War on Terror.

The Bush Administration, realistically speaking, cannot raise another 100,000 troops even if that should be required to pacify Iraq or deal with other terrorist threats without threatening to bring the political house down. The world’s most powerful nation state cannot threaten, let alone invade, Syria or Iran – even if these terrorist regimes were shown to have hidden Saddam’s weapons or were engaged in plotting a terrorist attack on the United States. If the commander-in-chief went before the American people to request such authority, who would believe him now?

Nor can the United States rescue hundreds of thousands of black Africans being slaughtered by the Muslim Arab government in the Sudan. That would be an unwanted exercise of imperial power and undoubtedly “too costly” as well. Michael Moore and his “liberal” friends and their campaign of reckless distortion and phobic insinuation have seen to that.

In this election year, it is unlikely that the “popular front” between once sensible liberals and mischievous leftists can be broken by any argument. The power stakes are simply too high. But if there’s a way to induce any second thoughts it is to confront those in the Moore audience who are still possess their faculties with the absurdity of the fundamental premise of their argument.

This premise is succinctly summarized in an intelligent but ultimately tortured review of Moore’s film by David Edelstein, which also appeared at Slate.com. Edelstein shows that he understands the squalid duplicity of Moore, but nonetheless can’t extricate himself from the seduction of the idea that the ends of this film – sabotaging the current war effort/dethroning the Prince of Deceives - justify the disreputable means: “[Moore’s film] delighted me. It disgusted me. I celebrate it. I lament it.”

The crux of Edelstein’s cave-in to bad sense is encapsulated in this sentence: “Farenheit 911 must be viewed in the context of the Iraq occupation and the torrent of misleading claims that got us there.”

The attacks on the rationale for the war are the real bad faith in the debate over Iraq - not anything that George Bush or Dick Cheney are alleged to have claimed. First, because none of the allegedly misleading claims as identified by the left are claims that actually “got” us into the war. Specifically, the rationale for the war was not WMDS, or an al-Qaeda connection, or an imminent threat (Bush actually said that confronting Saddam was necessary to prevent the development of an imminent threat). The rationale for the war was a unanimous Security Council Resolution (1441), which was drawn up in the form of an ultimatum that passed on November 8, 2002 and that instructed the regime in Iraq that it would have to provide proof to the U.N. by December 7 that it had destroyed its Weapons of Mass Destruction “or else.”

There is not the slightest question that Saddam failed to meet this ultimatum, and indeed that he tried to deceive the Security Council by providing a false report on his WMD arsenal. Even Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector concedes this in his recent memoir Disarming Iraq.

In fact, we know that there were WMD (and have found some). Even if there were none, this was not a “deception” of the Bush Administration, but a contention of the intelligence agencies of the western world, the UN inspection team, the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party nominee, John Kerry, as well. Nor was the war initiated by an Administration determined to pursue a unilateral policy. The war deadline was imposed by a multilateral coalition of nations acting through the UN Security Council. This was a war sanctioned in its legality by the international community, which proved too cowardly and too corrupt to carry it out.

It is true that the UN Security Council failed to enforce its own deadline, but we also know now that $10 billion in Oil-for-Food money stolen by Saddam with the collusion of UN officials was used to bribe the nations who withheld their final votes.

We know and have established that there is indeed a link between Saddam and the War on Terror, although the left would prefer to argue about “operational” links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, an exercise in election year scholasticism inappropriate to a matter as serious as war and peace. The question of Saddam’s links to al-Qaeda at whatever level is largely irrelevant to the question of whether Iraq was part of an Axis of Evil behind the war on the terror, because al-Qaeda is only one organization dimension of this war.

Nonetheless, in addition to 10 years of provable links between the Saddam regime and al-Qaeda and the testimony of the Clinton Administration, which identified both as parties to the bombing of two U.S. embassies in 1998, there is the presence of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, as the commander of the terrorist forces in Iraq. If Zarqawi – an international terrorist linked to al-Qaeda but more importantly to Islamic jihad – is heading the resistance in Iraq, then Iraq is the central front of the war on terror, just as Bush insists. Is there anyone in the sensible opposition that would like to argue that it is a bad idea for the United States to have a military base and a very large CIA station in Iraq, which is centrally located in the terror heartland, rather than the regime of Saddam Hussein? If so, make the case.

Notwithstanding the emptiness of the left’s arguments against the Bush Administration’s rationale for the war in Iraq, they are irrelevant to the question of whether to support the war (now that we are in the war) and the Administration that launched it. To make this absolutely clear: the rationale for the war (which is the focus of the entire political debate) is irrelevant if the war is just.

Do David Edelstein and all those who are now engaged in this unseemly dance with a Leninist crank want to argue that the war itself was unwarranted and unjust? Do they want Saddam back in power? Do they think it’s a bad thing that America now has a military platform and a very large intelligence facility bordering Syria, Afghanistan and Iran? Do they want the President to pull American forces from this front? If so, let them say so, and we’ll know who we’re dealing with. Otherwise they need to stop talking about the “justification” for the war as though it was a substantive issue or even something that mattered.

Franklin Roosevelt claimed that Pearl Harbor was a “sneak attack.” Yet the United States had broken the Japanese code and therefore should have known the attack was coming. Would it make a difference to anyone if Roosevelt had known? Would that have justified a massive assault on Roosevelt as a liar and a traitor in the midst of the war to employ the language that Al Gore has used against George Bush? Suppose Lincoln had clandestinely sent a special force of Union soldiers to attack Fort Sumter and blame it on the Confederacy. Would that change liberals’ view of the Civil War that freed four million slaves? Would reviewers like David Edelstein celebrate (while also lamenting) a scurrilous propaganda effort by a pro-slavery miscreant like Michael Moore, defaming Lincoln and attempting to turn the free states against the war?

posted June 30, 2004 10:51 AM            

Let's get straight to it. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a despicable film, and Michael Moore is a despicable man.

I've spent considerable time decrying the often baseless attacks of today's political discourse, so I have a duty to back that up. Much of my work has already been done spectacularly by others. Writers and Web sites from coast to coast have obliterated such deceptive Moore assertions as:

• President Bush was invalidly elected.

• Key members of Osama bin Laden's family were allowed to escape FBI interrogation on a special flight before anyone else could fly (thanks to Moore hero Richard Clarke for exploding that whopper).

• Baghdad was a peaceful, idyllic garden that was blasted to smithereens by an American attack that wantonly targeted the innocent.........

posted June 30, 2004 01:03 PM            

26Taurus, maybe you could do a bit of research and prove where he is actually telling the truth and the "right wing conspiracy" is just fabricating those allegations.

Telling us to give it a rest when we are 1) voicing our right to free speech and 2) trying to show that the overly gluttoneous, in need of a major diet Moore is simply an "Emperor with NO clothes".

posted June 30, 2004 02:28 PM            

And there have been numerous allegations against Moore - but again - it is a movie- but I will lay money that at some point he WILL be the respondant to a case against him for slander.

My reasoning for posting against him is mostly due to the posts that extol his praises as though he was a god, when in fact he is nothing more than a greedy capitalist that he so often rails against.

If people wish to list his movie as fact, then I think they should also be able to counter the allegations and real facts that have been posted against his lies.

posted June 30, 2004 04:25 PM              

Will Michael Moore's Facts Check Out?

[....]Mr. Moore is readying for a conservative counterattack, saying he has created a political-style "war room" to offer an instant response to any assault on the film's credibility. He has retained Chris Lehane, a Democratic Party strategist known as a master of the black art of "oppo," or opposition research, used to discredit detractors. He also hired outside fact-checkers, led by a former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran member of that magazine's legendary fact-checking team, to vet the film. And he is threatening to go one step further, saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation.

"We want the word out," says Mr. Moore, who says he should have responded more quickly to allegations of inaccuracy in his Oscar-winning 2002 anti-gun documentary, "Bowling for Columbine." "Any attempts to libel me will be met by force," he said, not an ounce of humor in his familiar voice. "The most important thing we have is truth on our side. If they persist in telling lies, knowingly telling a lie with malice, then I'll take them to court."

--------------------------------------------

Washington Post: Fahrenheit 9/11 Slices and Dices Bush's Presidency into 1,000 Satirical Pieces

'Fahrenheit 9/11': Connecting With a Hard Left
By Desson Thomson / Washington Post

CANNES, France -- "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's most powerful film since "Roger & Me," slices and dices President Bush's presidency into a thousand satirical pieces. It's a wonder the chief executive -- at least, the one portrayed in this movie -- doesn't scatter to the four winds like Texas dust.

Judging by the spirited pandemonium that has greeted this documentary at the Cannes Film Festival, "Fahrenheit 9/11" not only is the film to beat in the competition for the Golden Palm, it also has the makings of a cultural juggernaut -- a film for these troubling times.

With an ironic narrative that takes us from the Florida debacle that decided the 2000 presidential election to the current conflict in Iraq, Moore has almost endless fun at the president's expense. And he frequently uses the president as his own tragicomic scourge -- in other words, hanging him with his own words and facial expressions.

In one of the film's most dramatic moments, we watch the president attending an elementary school class on that ill-fated morning of Sept. 11. An aide whispers to him news of the plane crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The look on Bush's face is stunned, as any person's would be. A clock ticks away. The president looks as though he'll never get up from that seat. The minutes tick by.

"Was he wondering if he should have shown up to work more often?" Moore says in voice-over, this comment connecting with glimpses earlier in the movie of Bush's frequent stays in Texas to clear brush and play golf. The president stares at the children's book he's holding. It's called "My Pet Goat."

But there's more to "Fahrenheit 9/11" than partisan ridicule. Just before that scene, we have confronted the unspeakable: When those two planes hit the twin towers in Manhattan. Moore shows only a black screen. We hear the buzzing of the aircraft. We know what's coming. We hear the impact and, a second later, the agonized cries and gasps of the witnesses.

Then comes the second crash. Only then does Moore cut to the faces of those watching. A tearful woman cries out to God to save the souls of those leaping from the windows. Another, devastated, sits down on the sidewalk. We don't see the jumpers. But we feel we do.

What's remarkable here isn't Moore's political animosity or ticklish wit. It's the well-argued, heartfelt power of his persuasion. Even though there are many things here that we have already learned, Moore puts it all together. It's a look back that feels like a new gaze forward. The movie points to social and financial connections between the Bush family and wealthy Saudis, including the royal family, Prince Bandar (the Saudi ambassador to Washington) and the bin Laden family.

It shows startling footage taken by camera crews who were embedded with the American forces in Iraq. And it spends time with such people as Lila Lipscomb, a Michigan mother who changes from patriotic support for the Bush administration to heartbroken despair after she loses a son to the war.

There are so many powerful moments to point to, all for different reasons: the visceral terror of a household in Baghdad, as young American soldiers break in to arrest someone; the candid testimony of American soldiers who express their disgust at the situation there; interviews in Michigan with impoverished African Americans, a social group that has been a breadbasket for U.S. Army recruitment.

To watch this movie yourself is to realize with dawning appreciation that the director of "Bowling for Columbine" has finally learned to put his movie where his mouth is.

posted June 30, 2004 04:28 PM              

Rupert Cornwell
June 30 2004

Washington - George Bush's battle to return to the White House has been dealt a severe blow with the release of a poll showing his job rating was at its lowest point ever.

According to the latest New York Times/CBS poll released on Tuesday, the US president's job rating has fallen to its lowest of his term, with just 42 percent approving of his performance, compared to 51 percent who disapprove.

And while Bush was making a speech on the sunlit shores of the Bosphorus in Turkey extolling the virtues of a free and democratic Iraq, a separate survey showed that the transfer of power in Baghdad is regarded by Americans as a failure rather than a success.

A CNN/Gallup poll found six out of 10 people believed that Monday's hasty handover - at a moment when Iraq remained so perilous - was a sign of failure. Just a third regarded it as a sign of success.

20% considered Bush was 'mostly lying'
Major questions still remain about Bush's handling of the war, challenging his image of straight-dealing and plain talking.

Of those polled by the New York Times and CBS, 59 percent said Bush was hiding something in his public statements on Iraq, compared to 18 percent who thought he was telling the full truth.

A further 20 percent considered the president was "mostly lying".

By a more than three to one margin, Americans think the risk of terrorist attacks against the US has increased, rather than decreased, as a result of the March 2003 invasion - flatly contradicting Bush's assertions that the removal of Saddam Hussein had made the world a safer place.

By a similar margin, they say the US involvement in Iraq is breeding, not eliminating, terrorists.

But Bush's sagging approval ratings - now on a par with those of other incumbent presidents defeated since 1950 - do not mean the poll is a hosanna to his Democratic challenger, John Kerry.

Almost 40 percent of those surveyed have no opinion of Vietnam War veteran Kerry.

Among those who do, more disapprove of Kerry than approve - a sign that the barrage of negative advertising by the Bush/Cheney campaign, depicting him as an untrustworthy flip-flopper, has had an impact.

posted June 30, 2004 05:22 PM            

A Synopsis with a side of onions does not count evidence of valid rebuttals to the challenges to allegations to Moores twisted facts.

We already KNOW that MM is going to hire a ton of lawyers to help protect him against the inevitable suits against him for slander- but he should have already anticipated challenge and therefore had answers ready to refute the allegations. That would have been the intelligent way to go being he is one of those fire starters.

Think of someone like Ann Coulter, who must make the rounds again and again, with factual information in hand to defend the points in her books. She is just one of the many conservatives that must have the facts at hand when the left starts to alledge wrong doing. The same standard should be held with Mr. Moore.

posted June 30, 2004 06:25 PM            

FACT:

Etymology: Latin factum, from neuter of factus, past participle of facere
1 : a thing done: as a obsolete : FEAT b : CRIME <accessory after the fact> c archaic : ACTION
2 archaic : PERFORMANCE, DOING
3 : the quality of being actual : ACTUALITY <a question of fact hinges on evidence>
4 a : something that has actual existence <space exploration is now a fact> b : an actual occurrence <prove the fact of damage>
5 : a piece of information presented as having objective reality
- in fact : in truth

OPINION:

Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin opinion-, opinio, from opinari
1 a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter b : APPROVAL, ESTEEM
2 a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b : a generally held view
3 a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert b : the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

An Opinion is valid when it is based on documented FACTS a fact is not valid if it is based on an OPINION.

Fact: Water is made of one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules

opinion: water tastes yummy

A LIE:

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati
intransitive senses
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies <lied his way out of trouble>

Pay special attention to point number 2- which is what is mostly being alleged against Moore's film - which is nothing more than useless onions being spouted by a greedy glutton. Hmmm, MM..GG Michael Moore- Greedy Glutton. That sounds cool

posted June 30, 2004 06:46 PM              

I really could care less about changing others opinions, and I don't like others trying to chane mine. That is why I TRY to avoid this forum. Like I said before I'll make up my own mind.

I could be back here at any point, I don't set rules for myself. I'm rambling now.
And I know some might start quoting me and pick what I'm saying apart and let me know how I'm "wrong" again. But, don't waste your time.
You are "right" I'm "wrong". Happy now?
(this isnt directed specifically at you Pidaua)

posted June 30, 2004 07:20 PM            

For instance, I read every article I post and if I see something there that isn't true, I don't put it up...even if the part that isn't true doesn't bear on the main theme of the post.

This is only one example of what you've posted today that isn't true so when you talk about facts, I have to wonder what definition you're using for the word.

So note the date on this article I posted which is December 11, 2003 and note the discussion is about the handover of sovereignty of Iraq to Iraqis and that the documents were signed on November 15, 2003. Note further that the Council will not exist past July 1, 2004 because a new Iraqi government will take power on June 30, 2004.

Now, reconcile all that with a statement in an article you posted that there was a hasty handoff of power by the Bush Administration.

quote:

---

A CNN/Gallup poll found six out of 10 people believed that Monday's hasty handover - at a moment when Iraq remained so perilous - was a sign of failure. Just a third regarded it as a sign of success.

---

This is the fact 26T. Bush had the plan fleshed out and signed on November 15, 2003 to hand over sovereignty of Iraq to Iraqis on June 30.

Question, how does 7 and a half months qualify as hasty? Or does the truth matter to you?

Iraq Council May Not Exist Past July
Thursday, 11-Dec-2003 3:14AM

The U.S.-appointed Governing Council will not be allowed to exist beyond July 1, when a provisional Iraqi government with full sovereign powers takes office, coalition officials said, despite the desires of most council members to keep it going.........
http://www.softcom.net/webnews/wed/ag/Airaq-politics.REE9_DDB.html

Yep you knew I wouldn't take your suggestion but I'd be a lot more impressed with your psychic powers if you'd announced that before the fact instead of after.

posted June 30, 2004 07:41 PM              

Fact: you are annoying. I know, I know that's an opinion.

My definition of fact? Simply:
FACT n. deed; reality

Your reality is YOURS. Have fun in it. I dont feel like arguing with you. Its pointless. We do not agree. Like I said before, get over it. I have. And I've got better things to do than read all of the articles you post. Thanks for trying though. I respect your views, and the fact that we don't agree on things. That's okay. Really it is.

posted June 30, 2004 08:58 PM            

Not too surprised you don't bother to read what's posted that isn't in agreement with what you think. Some people just don't want to be confused with facts. Facts......don't need no stinkin facts eh?

True, judging from what you've posted we do not agree and aren't likely to do so.

to you too.

posted July 01, 2004 12:15 AM            

Michael Moore is a lying twit and he knows he's a liar. He isn't confused about the issues he speaks to, he just lies about them for political reasons and financial gain.

All this information was available to Michael Moore before shooting off his mouth and then making a lying, twisted movie castigating the Bush Administration and the President. The lone exception may be that Moore didn't know Richard Clarke of the NSA released the Saudis to leave the US when he made the allegation that the President let the Saudis leave the US in the days after 9/11 but Moore even lied about that. America's skies were not closed to commercial airline flights as Moore claimed when the Saudis left.

Some of you need to face facts. Michael Moore is a serial liar. If we can't agree that when someone says something they know is not true, they're a liar then there's no reason whatsoever to interact with each other at all. That's pretty damned basic.

Newsweek: Moore Distorted Bush Saudi Ties
NewsMax Wires
Thursday, July 01, 2004

A central theme of Michael Moore’s controversial documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a bare allegation that Saudi Arabian interests provided $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush.

However, as a special Newsweek investigative report notes, there is really less – not more – than meets the eye re the dramatic Moore claim:

Nearly 90 percent of that claimed amount, $1.18 billion, comes from contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard.

The “Bush” connection: The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board once included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

But, points out Newsweek, former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998 -- five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm.

As for the sitting president’s own Carlyle link, his service on the board ended when he quit to run for Texas governor -- a few months before the first of the Saudi contracts to the unrelated BDM firm was awarded.

The Carlyle Group is hardly a “Bush Inc,” noted Newsweek – but rather features a roster of bipartisan Washington power figures. “Its founding and still managing partner is Howard Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas “Mack” McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Cannard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.”

According to the report, the movie neglects to offer any evidence that Bush White House intervened in any way to bolster the interests of the Carlyle Group. In fact, the one major Bush administration decision that most directly affected the company’s interest was the cancellation of a $11 billion program for the Crusader rocket artillery system. The Crusader was manufactured by United Defense, which had been wholly owned by Carlyle until it spun the company off in a public offering in October, 2001. Carlyle still owned 47 percent of the shares in the defense company at the time that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld canceled the Crusader program the following year.

As Moore’s dealings with the matter of the departing Saudis flown out of the United States in the days after the September 11 terror attacks, the 9/11 commission found that the FBI screened the Saudi passengers, ran their names through federal databases, interviewed 30 of them and asked many of them “detailed questions." “Nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country,” the commission stated.

posted July 01, 2004 12:41 AM              

That's it I'm through.

posted July 01, 2004 12:42 AM            

I don't care what people think about the President in general, like him or hate him but lying about him.....

26Taurus, there's a lot of things you don't know and one of those things seems to be that public figures cannot sue people who tell lies about them or otherwise slander or libel them.

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 11:59 p.m. EDT
Richard Clarke: Big Part of Moore's Movie 'a Mistake'

Former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke, who served as a principal source for conspiracy filmmaker Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," said this week that the central premise of the film is "a mistake."

In an interview with the Associated Press, Clarke took issue with Moore's criticism that President Bush allowed prominent Saudis, including members of Osama bin Laden's family, to fly out of the U.S. in the days after the 9/11 attacks.

Saying Moore's version of the episode has provoked "a tempest in a tea pot," Clarke called his decision to make the bin Laden family flyout a big part of the film's indictment against Bush "a mistake."
"After 9/11, I think the Saudis were perfectly justified ... in fearing the possibility of vigilantism against Saudis in this country. When they asked to evacuate their citizens ... I thought it was a perfectly normal request," he explained.

In May, Clarke confessed that he and he alone made the decision to approve the flyouts.

"It didn’t get any higher than me,” he told The Hill newspaper. "On 9/11, 9/12 and 9/13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”

Clarke told the 9/11 Commission the same thing in March, after first detailing the episode for Vanity Fair magazine last August - leaving plenty of time for Moore to adjust his film to the facts as recounted by his primary source.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/7/1/00111.shtml

posted July 01, 2004 01:12 AM              

Most of us in the Pacific Northwest are Liberal.

A Better Reason to Ban Moore - hint: the Saudis don't run NORAD

Moore's 2003 book "Dude, Where's my Country?" included severely deficient analysis of 9/11 that provides (hopefully) inadvertent support for the US's next war - the invasion of the Saudi oil fields, the largest on Earth. [on top of that, Moore PROTECTS the home grown US government terrorists by not touching the most obvious aspects which expose the 9/11 lie - the physical evidence of the collapses of the towers, among many other details]
Hint to Michael Moore : the Saudis don't run NORAD

http://www.oilempire.us/michaelmoore.html
Michael Moore, Wesley Clark, Mumia, Fahrenheit
9/11 and the US Invasion of Saudi Arabia

[Also see:
http://wtc7.net
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/index.html ]

on this page
Michael Moore blames the Saudis (who did not run NORAD on 9/11)
Michael Moore proclaims Mumia abu Jamal guilty
Michael Moore flacks for war criminal Wesley Clark
Michael Moore's next film - Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore is one of America's most famous
dissidents. He first received notoriety for his
film "Roger and Me," a biting commentary on the
General Motors corporation, "downsizing" jobs,
and elite indiffierence to the destruction of
working class communities such as Moore's native
Flint, Michigan. Roger and Me propelled him into
fame, with TV shows (mostly aired in Britain),
and several other films, including "Pets or
Meat," "The Big One," and the Oscar award winning
"Bowling for Columbine."

Moore's 2003 book "Dude, Where's my Country?"
included severely deficient analysis of 9/11 that
provides (hopefully) inadvertent support for the
US's next war - the invasion of the Saudi oil
fields, the largest on Earth.

The thesis that Moore puts forward is essentially
this: the Saudis attacked the US on 9/11, Bush
has business ties to the Saudis, therefore, Bush
must be replaced in 2004. While elements of this
are true, the claim that the Saudis perpetrated
9/11 is reminiscent of similar claims that the
Mafia killed President Kennedy. In neither case
did the Saudis nor the Mafia have the power to
turn off the normal protection (of New York or of
the President).

see http://www.oilempire.us/saudi.html for
detailed reasons why the "blame the Saudis"
campaign is really a sophisticated effort to lay
the ground work for the forthcoming US invasion
of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were merely a
subcontractor in 9-11 (at most), since they do
not control the Air Force and NORAD's fighter
planes that are supposed to intercept off-course
jet liners within minutes. While it is unknown
whether Moore realizes that he is playing into
the "Project for a New American Century"
strategists (who seem eager to declare Saudi
Arabia an enemy of the US and put it toward the
top of the "Countries We Must Invade" list), his
next film "Fahrenheit 9/11" will certainly be
seen as the "dissident" view of 9/11. What
remains to be seen is whether the film will
actually probe into the complicity of the Bush
administration in the event, or whether it will
be a "Limited Hang Out" that blames Bush for
"intelligence failures" and points out
(accurately) that the Bush and Bin Laden families
have business ties that date to the 1970s.

see also http://www.oilempire.us/limited.html -
Limited Hang Outs (fessing up to a small crime to
avoid the deeper crime - understanding the
mechanisms of coverups)

see also http://www.oilempire.us/saudioil.html -
Saudi Arabia's oil is almost entirely
concentrated in the minority Shia part of the
country, demographics and geology

A September 2003 article in In These Times by
Seth Ackerman, a contributing writer to FAIR,
focused on the "intelligence failures" of 911 and
how the Saudi hijackers were able to bypass US
intelligence. He concluded that the
"incompetence" theory was plausible, and "it
ought to be possible to steer a middle course
between wild speculation and cynical whitewash."

While it's obvious that the Saudis played a role
-- they've supported US terror in Nicaragua,
Lebanon and Afghanistan -- they weren't in charge
of air defense over Washington and New York.
Perhaps their role was similar to the Mafia in
Dallas in 1963 (JFK), a subcontractor who helped
with the technical aspects, but they weren't in
charge of the main event, nor running the coverup
afterwards.

Maybe for the next war, the liberal peace
movement will talk about the relevance of "peak
oil" and the Bush strategy of intentional
deceptions to prepare the public for war. (WMD is
a much smaller deception than 911.) The
proclivity of some on the "left" to blame the
"Saudis" for 911 - and complain about the Bush -
Saudi connections - is an unintentional statement
of support for the US attack on the ONLY country
that could have significant increases in daily
oil extraction rates.

While it is true that the Bush and Bin Laden
clans have had business connections for over two
decades, the Saudis did not, could not, ensure
the "stand down" of the Air Force on 9/11. Nor
would have a Saudi air force pilot (let alone the
official claim that a flight school drop out was
responsible) have chosen the nearly empty, under
reconstruction section of the Pentagon as a
target. See http://www.oilempire.us/remote.html
for evidence that remote control software was
used to ensure that the Pentagon was hit in the
one section that would cause the fewest
casualties (the plane that hit the building is
reported to have gone in a 270 degree spiral
around the complex to line up with the part of
the Pentagon where it would cause the least
damage, thereby bypassing Donald Rumsfeld's
office).