Thoughts on Farenheit 911...(m)

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Thoughts on Farenheit 911...(m)
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Tue, 07-06-2004 - 10:58am
From those who actually SAW it...This is my critique from the Politics board.

Just got back from the theater....A very good documentary or what ever you want to consider it. I laughed ALOT which actually in itself is kind of sad. I also cried a little. Did I walk away angry? maybe a little. What did I learn that I didn't know before? The extent of the Bush family and their ties to the Bin Ladens and Saudi Arabia. If we don't question this as citizens of this country then we live with the consequences. If what Michael Moore says is untrue than why don't they sue him??? I have heard nothing from them at all. After seeing this movie I was surprised that the best argument that I have seen that this movie is made up is the part about the senator and his son being in the military. With so much to work with and that is the BIG LIE you all come up with??? Have I missed something while being on vacation??? To many funny parts to go into but one of my favorites was the scene with Ashcroft running aganist the Dead Guy in Missouri and losing. As a proud Missourian I can tell you that was sooooo true and everyone in the theater clapped at that part. But do not fear Republicans I think the hype is pretty much over, the theater was half empty. Also I will add that Michael Moore did not let the

democrats off easy either. He made it perfectly clear that they took it up the back side on the 2000 election. I understand that their hands were tied with what happened in Florida and this country could not afford to be without a Government while they fought the injustices that were done but it still painful to watch. For anyone reading this who is still not sure who to vote for, go see this movie and when you walk out think about why the Bush family is not defending themselves aganist this so call "Fictional" movie.

Let me ad that I am NOT a Michael Moore fan and have never seen his work before. The fact is that News Footage does not lie, paper trails don't lie the actual words spoken by this President don't lie...Any time the Bush family wants to discredit what was said.....I'll be waiting....


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Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 11:19am
Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911



By Dave Kopel

This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online. This report was first posted on the web on the morning of July 1. Since then, I've revised several sections in response to reader requests for clarifications, and have added additional deceits which have been pointed out by readers or journalists. As result, the number of listed deceits has been raised from 56 to 59.



Thanks to the readers who have written to point out additional deceits or to point out items which need clarification. Also thanks to the readers who have written in defense of Moore. All writers have been rational and civil. Moore's defenders have made two main points:



First, notwithstanding the specific falsehoods, isn't the film as a whole filled with many important truths?



Not really. We can divide the film into three major parts. The first part (Bush, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) is so permeated with lies that most of the scenes amount to lies. The second, shorter part involves domestic issues and the Patriot Act. So far, I've identified only one clear falsehood in this segment (Rep. Porter Goss's toll-free number). So this part, at least arguably, presents useful information. The third part, on Iraq has several outright falsehoods--such as the Saddam regime's murder of Americans, and the regime's connection with al Qaeda. Other scenes in the third part--such as Iraqi casualties, interviews with American soldiers, and the material on bereaved mother Lila Lipscomb--are not blatant lies; but the information presented is so extremely one-sided (the only Iraqi casualties are innocents, nobody in Iraq is grateful for liberation, all the American soldiers are disillusioned, except for the sadists) that the overall picture of the Iraq War is false.



Second, say the Moore supporters, what about the Bush lies?



Well there are plenty of lies from the Bush administration which should concern everyone. For example, the Bush administration suppressed data from its own Department of Health and Human Services which showed that the cost of the new Prescription Drug Benefit would be much larger than the administration claimed. This lie was critical to passage of the Bush drug benefit bill. Similarly, Bush's characterization of his immigration proposal as not granting "amnesty" to illegal aliens is quite misleading; although the Bush proposal does not formally grant amnesty, the net result is the same as widespread amnesty.



But two wrongs don't make a right, and the right response to Presidential lies is not more lies from his political opponents. Moreover, regarding the issues presented in Fahrenheit 911, the evidence of Bush lies is extremely thin. Moore shows Bush claiming that a particular day at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, was a working vacation, but Bush appears to be dissembling. Later, after Osama bin Laden was driven into hiding but was not captured, Bush unconvincingly claims not to spend much time thinking about bin Laden. Within Fahrenheit 911, most of rest of alleged Bush administration lies actually involve Moore's fabrications to create the appearance of a lie--such as when Moore chops a Condoleezza Rice quote to make her say something when she actually said the opposite.



The one significant Bush administration lie exposed in the film involves the so-called Patriot Act; as Fahrenheit accurately claims, at least some of the material in the Patriot Act had nothing to do with 9/11, and instead involved long-sought items on the FBI agenda which had previously been unable to pass Congress, but which were enacted by Congress under Bush administration assurances that they were essential to fighting terrorism.



If you look up the noun "deceit" in the dictionary, you will find that the definitions point you to the verb "deceive." According to Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary, the main (non-archaic or obsolete) definition of "deceive" is "to cause to accept as true or valid what is false of invalid." Although the evidence in this report demonstrates dozens of plains deceits by Moore, there are at least a few "deceits" in this report regarding which reasonable people may disagree. So if you find me unpersuasive on, for example, three alleged deceits, consider this article to have identified "Fifty-six Deceits" rather than fifty-nine. Whether or not you agree with me on every single item, I think you will agree that the evidence is undeniable that Fahrenheit 911 is filled with deceit.




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

There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers.



The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the film.



To understand the deceptions, it helps to understand Moore’s ideological position. So let us start with Moore’s belief that the September 11 attacks on the United States were insignificant.



Edward Koch, the former Democratic Mayor of New York City, writes:

A year after 9/11, I was part of a panel discussion on BBC-TV’s “Question Time” show which aired live in the United Kingdom. A portion of my commentary at that time follows:

“One of the panelists was Michael Moore…During the warm-up before the studio audience, Moore said something along the lines of “I don’t know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightning than die from an act of terror.”…I mention this exchange because it was not televised, occurring as it did before the show went live. It shows where he was coming from long before he produced “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Edward Koch, “Moore’s propaganda film cheapens debate, polarizes nation,” World Tribune, June 28, 2004. By the way, I don't disagree with the point that it is reasonable to consider the number of deaths from any particular problem, including terrorism, in assessing how serious the problem is. Moore's point, however, was willfully oblivious to the fact that al Qaeda did not intend 9/11 to be the last word; the organization was working on additional attacks, and if the organization obtained the right weapons, millions of people might be killed. More fundamentally, even if Moore's argument in London is conceded to be legitimate, it contradicts Fahrenheit 911's presentation of Moore as intensely concerned about the September 11 attacks.



As we go through the long list of lies and tricks in Fahrenheit 911, keep in mind that Michael Moore has assembled a “war room” of political operatives and lawyers in order to respond to criticism of Fahrenheit 911 and to file defamation suits. (Jack Shafer, “Libel Suit 9/11. Michael Moore’s hysterical, empty threats,” Slate.com, June 12, 2004.) One of Moore's "war room" officials is Chris Lehane; Lehane, as an employee of Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark (who was also supported by Moore), apparently spread rumors to the press about John Kerry's alleged extra-marital affair.



Of course if there are any genuine errors in this report, the errors will be promptly corrected. On July 5, I removed a complaint about a Presidential approval poll number, which I had wrongly thought was not supported by data.



Conversely, because Moore has a paid expert staff which is monitoring criticism of the movie, it is reasonable to assume that—unless I have specifically retracted some item in this report—Moore and his staff have not offered a persuasive rebuttal.



In this report, I number Moore’s deceits. Some of them are outright lies; some are omissions which create a false impression. Others involve different forms of deception. A few are false statements Moore has made when defending the film.



2000 Election Night

Deceits 1-2



Fahrenheit 911 begins on election night 2000. We are first shown the Al Gore rocking on stage with famous musicians and a high-spirited crowd. The conspicuous sign on stage reads “Florida Victory.” Moore creates the impression that Gore was celebrating his victory in Florida.



Actually, the rally took place in the early hours of election day, before polls had even opened. Gore did campaign in Florida on election day, but went home to Tennessee to await the results. The “Florida Victory” sign reflected Gore’s hopes, not any actual election results. (“Gore Campaigns Into Election Day,” Associated Press, Nov. 7, 2000.)



The film shows CBS and CNN calling Florida for Al Gore. According to the narrator, “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy….All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”



We then see NBC anchor Tom Brokaw stating, “All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. It was our mistake.”



Moore thus creates the false impression that the networks withdrew their claim about Gore winning Florida when they heard that Fox said that Bush won Florida.



In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.



The premature calls probably cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided, and many voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is that supporters of the losing candidate are most likely to give up on voting when they hear that their side has already lost. (Thus, on election night 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter gave a concession speech while polls were still open on the West coast, the early concession was widely blamed for costing the Democrats several Congressional seats in the West. The fact that all the networks had declared Reagan a landslide winner while West coast voting was still in progress was also blamed for Democratic losses in the West.) Even if the premature television calls affected all potential voters equally, the effect was to reduce Republican votes significantly, because the Florida panhandle is a Republican stronghold; depress overall turnout in the panhandle, and you will necessarily depress more Republican than Democratic votes.



At 10:00 p.m., which network took the lead in retracting the premature Florida result? The first retracting network was CBS, not Fox.



Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.



CBS had taken the lead in making the erroneous call for Gore, and had taken the lead in retracting that call. At 3:59 a.m., CBS also took the lead in retracting the Florida call for Bush. All the other networks, including Fox, followed the CBS lead within eight minutes. That the networks arrived at similar conclusions within a short period of time is not surprising, since they were all using the same data from the Voter News Service. (Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations” (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)



Moore’s editing technique of the election night segment is typical of his style: all the video clips are real clips, and nothing he says is, formally speaking, false. But notice how he says, “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy…” The impression created is that the Fox call of Florida for Bush came soon after the CBS/CNN calls of Florida for Gore, and that Fox caused the other networks to change (“All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”)



This is the essence of the Moore technique: cleverly blending half-truths to deceive the viewer.



2000 Election Recount

Deceit 3



A little while later:

…Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, “under every scenario Gore won the election.”

What Moore doesn’t show is that a six-month study in 2001 by news organizations including The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN found just the opposite. Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place, Bush still would have won Florida and the election.

Thomas Frank, “Film offers limited view,” Newsday, June 27, 2004.



Florida Purge of Convicted Felons from Voter Rolls

Deceit 4



According to Fahrenheit, Bush cronies hired Data Base Technologies to purge Florida voters who might vote for Gore, and these potential voters were purged from the voting rolls on the basis of race. ("Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.") As explained by the Palm Beach Post, Moore's claim is extremely incomplete, and on at least one fact, plainly false.



The 1998 mayoral election in Miami was a fiasco which was declared void by Florida courts, because--in violation of Florida law--convicted felons had been allowed to vote. The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida.



There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons.



Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged.



The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties.



When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had been not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger. (On the other hand, John Lott's study of the Florida fiasco suggests that Republicans and Democrats were purged in approximately equal numbers, with Black Republicans being disproportionately impacted.)



It seems to me that even if we presume that the 1,100 wrongly purged Florida voters would have voted Democratic at the same rate that felons do (even though some of these voters were non-felons who were the victim of mistaken identity), the net result of the 2000 purge fiasco harmed Bush: the number of votes which Gore gained as a result of 20 counties refusing to conduct the felon purge far outnumbered how many votes that Gore lost as the result of the overbroad purges in other counties.



Regardless, Moore's claim that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity.



Bush Presidency before September 11

Deceit 5



The movie lauds an anti-Bush riot that took place in Washington, D.C., on the day of Bush’s inauguration. Moore continues: “No President had ever witnessed such a thing on his inauguration day. And for the next eight months it didn’t get any better for George W. Bush. He couldn’t get his judges appointed; he had trouble getting his legislation passed; and he lost Republican control of the Senate. His approval ratings in the polls began to sink.”



Part of this is true. Once Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, Democrats controlled the Senate, and stalled the confirmation (not “appointment”) of some of the judges whom Bush had nominated for the federal courts.



Congress did enact the top item on Bush’s agenda: a large tax cut. During the summer, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives easily passed many of Bush’s other agenda items, including the bill whose numbering reflected the President’s top priority: H.R. 1, the Bush “No Child Left Behind” education bill. The fate of the Bush bills in the Democratic-controlled Senate, as of August 2001, was uncertain. The Senate later did pass No Child Left Behind, but some other Bush proposals did not pass.



Bush Vacations

Deceits 6-7



Fahrenheit 911 states, “In his first eight months in office before September 11th, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time.”

Shortly before 9/11, the Post calculated that Bush had spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route, including all or part of 54 days at his ranch. That calculation, however, includes weekends, which Moore failed to mention.

Tom McNamee, “Just the facts on ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ Chicago Sun-Times, June 28, 2004. See also: Mike Allen, “White House On the Range. Bush Retreats to Ranch for ‘Working Vacation’,” Washington Post, August 7, 2001 (Many of those days are weekends, and the Camp David stays have included working visits with foreign leaders.)

he 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.

Christopher Hitchens, “Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore,” Slate.com, June 21, 2004.



By the way, the clip of Bush making a comment about terrorism, and then hitting a golf ball, is also taken out of context, at least partially:

Tuesday night on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how “the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists.” But Wilson disclosed that “a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber.”

"Cyberalert," Media Research Center, July 1, 2004, item. 3.



September 11

Deceit 8



Fahrenheit presents a powerful segment on the September 11 attacks. There is no narration, and the music is dramatic yet tasteful. The visuals are reaction shots from pedestrians, as they gasp with horrified astonishment.



Moore has been criticized for using the reaction shots as a clever way to avoid showing the planes hitting the buildings, and some of the victims falling to their deaths. Even if this is true, the segment still effectively evokes the horror that every decent human being still feels about September 11.



But remember, Moore does not necessarily feel the same way. As New York’s former Mayor Edward Koch reported, Moore later said, “I don’t know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightning than die from an act of terror.”



Like several of the other deceits identified in this report, the September 11 deceit is not part of the film itself. Several of the deceits involve claim that Moore has made when discussing the film. Like some deceits which are identified near the end of this report, the September 11 deceit involves the contradiction between Moore's purported feelings about a topic in the movie and what appear to be his actual feelings about that topic. If a Klansman made a film which feigned admiration for Rosa Parks, that too would be a form of deceit, even if the film were accurate in its portrayal of Parks as a great American hero.



On the other hand, a person might feel great personal sympathy for the victim of a lightning strike, but the same person might feel that, overall, the "lightning problem" is not worth making a big fuss over. Fahrenheit present September 11 as a terrible tragedy, and as something worth making a big fuss. On this latter point, Fahrenheit's purported view does not appear to be the same as Moore's actual view. Although I consider the disjunction to be deceitful, other people may not.



If you don't find my argument convincing, don't count this item as a "deceit." If you're not convinced by this item, you may likewise not be convinced by some of the items at the end of this report, which involves omissions rather than outright lies. If you think that this report would be better-titled as "The Fifty-Four Deceits of Fahrenheit 911," I accept your good-faith criticism. Let us just remember that whether the precise number of deceits is 54 or 59, it is unacceptable for a documentary or an op-ed to contain dozens of falsehoods.



Bush on September 11

Deceit 9



Fahrenheit mocks President Bush for continuing to read a story to a classroom of elementary school children after he was told about the September 11 attacks.



What Moore did not tell you:

Gwendolyn Tose’-Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School, praised Bush’s action: “I don’t think anyone could have handled it better.” “What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”…



She said the video doesn’t convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush’s presence had a calming effect and “helped us get through a very difficult day.”

“Sarasota principal defends Bush from ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ portrayal,” Associated Press, June 24, 2004. Also, since the President knew he was on camera, it was reasonable to expect that if he had suddenly sped out of the room, his hasty movement would have been replayed incessantly on television; leaving the room quickly might have exacerbated the national mood of panic.



Moore does not offer any suggestion about what the President should have done during those seven minutes, rather than staying calm for the sake of the classroom and of the public. Nor does Moore point to any way that the September 11 events might have turned out better in even if the slightest way if the President had acted differently. As with the previous item, people may differ about whether this segment should be considered deceitful, or perhaps just a very cheap shot.



Pre-911 Briefing

Deceits 10-12



Castigating the allegedly lazy President, Moore says, “Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001 that said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.”



Moore supplies no evidence for his assertion that President Bush did not read the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief. Moore’s assertion appears to be a complete fabrication.



Moore smirks that perhaps President Bush did not read the Briefing because its title was so vague. Moore then cuts to Condoleezza Rice announcing the title of the Briefing: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”



However, no-one (except Moore) has ever claimed that Bush did not read the Briefing, or that he did not read it because the title was vague. Rather, Condoleezza Rice had told the press conference that the information in the Briefing was “very vague.” National Security Advisor Holds Press Briefing, The White House, May 16, 2002.



The content of the Briefing supports Rice’s characterization, and refutes Moore’s assertion that the Briefing “said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.” The actual Briefing was highly equivocal:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar’ Abd aI-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

(Some readers have wondered how this short segment qualifies as three deceits: 1. that Bush did not read the memo, 2. that the memo's title was offered as an excuse for not reading the memo, 3. omitting that the memo was equivocal, and that the hijacking warning was something that the FBI said it was "unable to corroborate.")



Saudi Departures from United States

Deceits 13-16

Moore is guilty of a classic game of saying one thing and implying another when he describes how members of the Saudi elite were flown out of the United States shortly after 9/11.

If you listen only to what Moore says during this segment of the movie—and take careful notes in the dark—you’ll find he’s got his facts right. He and others in the film state that 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country after Sept. 13.

The date—Sept. 13—is crucial because that is when a national ban on air traffic, for security purposes, was eased

But nonetheless, many viewers will leave the movie theater with the impression that the Saudis, thanks to special treatment from the White House, were permitted to fly away when all other planes were still grounded. This false impression is created by Moore’s failure, when mentioning Sept. 13, to emphasize that the ban on flights had been eased by then. The false impression is further pushed when Moore shows the singer Ricky Martin walking around an airport and says, “Not even Ricky Martin would fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one. Except the bin Ladens.”

But the movie fails to mention that the FBI interviewed about 30 of the Saudis before they left. And the independent 9/11 commission has reported that “each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.”

McNamee, Chicago Sun-Times. (Note: The Sun-Times article was correct in its characterization of the Ricky Martin segment, but not precisely accurate in the exact words used in the film. I have substituted the exact quote. One September 13, U.S. airspace was re-opened for a small number of flights; charter flights were allowed, and the airlines were allowed to move their planes to new airports to start carrying passengers on September 14. Although there is still conflict on the issue, there appears to have been a charter flight from Tampa, Florida, which took three Saudis to Lexington, Kentucky.)

Tapper: our film showcases former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, using him as a critic of the Bush administration. Yet in another part of the film, one that appears in your previews, you criticize members of the Bush administration for permitting members of the bin Laden family to fly out of the country almost immediately after 9/11. What the film does not mention is that Richard Clarke says that he OK’d those flights. Is it fair to not mention that?

Moore: Actually I do, I put up The New York Times article and it’s blown up 40 foot on the screen, you can see Richard Clarke’s name right there saying that he approved the flights based on the information the FBI gave him. It’s right there, right up on the screen. I don’t agree with Clarke on this point. Just because I think he’s good on a lot of things doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything.

Jake Tapper interview with Michael Moore, ABC News, June 25, 2004.



Again, Moore is misleading. His film includes a brief shot of a Sept. 4, 2003, New York Times article headlined “White House Approved Departures of Saudis after Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says.” The camera pans over the article far too quickly for any ordinary viewer to spot and read the words in which Clarke states that he approved the flights.



Some Saudis left the U.S. by charter flight on September 14, a day when commercial flights had resumed, but when ordinary charter planes were still grounded. When did the bin Ladens actually leave? Not until the next week, as the the 9/11 Commission staff report explains:

Fearing reprisals against Saudi nationals, the Saudi government asked for help in getting some of its citizens out of the country….we have found that the request came to the attention of Richard Clarke and that each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.

No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.

The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country. Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the Bin Ladin flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity.

The FBI checked a variety of databases for information on the Bin Ladin flight passengers and searched the aircraft. It is unclear whether the TIPOFF terrorist watchlist was checked. At our request, the Terrorist Screening Center has rechecked the names of individuals on the flight manifests of these six Saudi flights against the current TIPOFF watchlist. There are no matches.

The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights who the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict this conclusion.

(Deceits: 1. Departure dates for Saudis, 2. Omission of Richard Clarke's approval for departures, 3. Lying to Jake Tapper about whether Clarke's role was presented in the movie, 4. Omission of Commission staff finding that many Saudis were asked "detailed questions" before being allowed to leave.)



Bush and James Bath

Deceit 17

Moore mentions that Bush’s old National Guard buddy and personal friend James Bath had become the money manager for the bin Laden family, saying, “James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush.” The implication is that Bath invested the bin Laden family’s money in Bush’s failed energy company, Arbusto. He doesn’t mention that Bath has said that he had invested his own money, not the bin Ladens’, in Bush’s company.

Matt Labash, “Un-Moored from Reality,” Weekly Standard, July 5, 2004. See also: Frank, Newsday; Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, "More Distortions From Michael Moore. Some of the main points in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ really aren’t very fair at all," MSNBC.com, June 30, 2004.



Moore makes a big point about the name of James Bath being blacked out from Bush National Guard records which were released by the White House. The blackout might appear less sinister if Moore revealed that many other names were blacked out, to protect the privacy of former National Guard members. In fact, federal law required the Alabama National Guard to black out the names of all other Guardsmen whose medical information was on the same pages as the records which the Alabama Guard released regarding George Bush's health records. So what Moore presents as a sinister effort to conceal the identity of James Bath was in fact the legally-required compliance with federal law.



Bush and Prince Bandar

Deceit 18



Moore points out the distressingly close relationship between Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Prince Bandar, and the Bush family. But Moore does not explain that Bandar has been a bipartisan Washington power broker for decades, and that Bill Clinton repeatedly relied on Bandar to advance Clinton’s own Middle East agenda. (Elsa Walsh, “The Prince. How the Saudi Ambassador became Washington’s indispensable operator,” The New Yorker, Mar. 24, 2003.)



President Clinton’s former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Wyche Fowler, has been earning a lucrative living as a Saudi apologist and serving as Chairman of the Middle East Institute—a research organization heavily funded by Saudi Arabia. (Joel Mowbray, “Feeding at the Saudi Trough,” Townhall.com, Oct. 1, 2003.)



I am not suggesting that Mr. Fowler is in any way corrupt; I’m sure that he is sincere (although, in my view, mistaken) in his strongly pro-Saudi viewpoint. What is misleading is for Moore to look at the web of Saudi influence in Washington only in regard to the Republican Bushes, and to ignore the fact that Saudi influence and money are widespread in both parties.



Harken Energy

Deceits 19-20



Bush once served on the Board of Directors of the Harken Energy Company. According to Fahrenheit:

Moore: Yes, it helps to be the President’s son. Especially when you’re being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

TV reporter: In 1990 when M. Bush was a director of Harken Energy he received this memo from company lawyers warning directors not to sell stock if they had unfavorable information about the company. One week later he sold $848,000 worth of Harken stock. Two months later, Harken announced losses of more than $23 million dollars.

Moore:…Bush beat the rap from the SEC…

What Moore left out: Bush sold the stock long after he checked with those same “company lawyers” who had provided the cautionary memo, and they told him that the sale was all right. Almost all of the information that caused Harken’s large quarterly loss developed only after Bush had sold the stock.



Despite Moore’s pejorative that Bush “beat the rap,” no-one has ever found any evidence suggesting that he engaged in illegal insider trading. (Byron York, “The Facts About Bush and Harken. The president’s story holds up under scrutiny,” National Review Online, July 10, 2002.)



Carlyle Group

Deceits 21-23

Moore’s film suggests that Bush has close family ties to the bin Laden family—principally through Bush’s father’s relationship with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm. The president’s father, George H.W. Bush, was a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group’s Asian affiliate until recently; members of the bin Laden family—who own one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction firms—had invested $2 million in a Carlyle Group fund. Bush Sr. and the bin Ladens have since severed ties with the Carlyle Group, which in any case has a bipartisan roster of partners, including Bill Clinton’s former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. The movie quotes author Dan Briody claiming that the Carlyle Group “gained” from September 11 because it owned United Defense, a military contractor. Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman notes that United Defense holds a special distinction among U.S. defense contractors that is not mentioned in Moore’s movie: the firm’s $11 billion Crusader artillery rocket system developed for the U.S. Army is one of the only weapons systems canceled by the Bush administration.

Michael Isikoff, “Under the Hot Lights. Moore’s movie will make waves. But it’s a fine line between fact and fanaticism. Deconstructing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.” Newsweek, June 28, 2004.



Moore claims that refusing to mention the Crusader cancellation was alright because the cancellation came after the United Defense IPO. But the cancellation had a serious negative financial impact on Carlyle, since Carlyle still owns 47% of United Defense.

Moore tells us that when Carlyle took United Defense public, they made a one-day profit of $237 million, but under all the public scrutiny, the bin Laden family eventually had to withdraw (Moore doesn’t tell us that they withdrew before the public offering, not after it).

Labash, Weekly Standard.



There is another famous investor in Carlyle whom Moore does not reveal: George Soros. (Oliver Burkeman & Julian Borger, “The Ex-Presidents’ Club,” The Guardian (London), Oct. 31, 2000.) But the fact that the anti-Bush billionaire has invested in Carlyle would detract from Moore’s simplistic conspiracy theory.



Moore alleges that the Saudis have given 1.4 billion dollars to the Bushes and their associates.

Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: 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. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

...The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that 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.

Isikoff & Hosenball, MSNBC.com. (The full text of the article contains the counter-argument by Moore's "war room" and the replies by Isikoff and Hosenball).



Saudi Investments in the United States

Deceit 24



Moore asks Craig Unger: “How much money do the Saudis have invested in America, roughly?”

Unger replies “Uh, I've heard figures as high as $860 billion dollars.”



Instead of relying on unsourced figures that someone says he “heard,” let’s look at the available data. According to the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy (a pro-Saudi think tank which tries to emphasize the importance of Saudi money to the United States), in February 2003 total worldwide Saudi investment was at least $700 billion. Sixty percent of the Saudi investments were in the United States, so the Saudis had about 420 billion invested in the U.S.—a large amount, but less than half of the amount that Moore’s source claims he “heard.” (Tanya C. Hsu , “The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian Investment” Sept. 23, 2003.)



Special Protection for Saudi Embassy

Deceit 25



Moore shows himself filming the movie near the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C.:

Moore as narrator: Even though we were nowhere near the White House, for some reason the Secret Service had shown up to ask us what we were doing standing across the street from the Saudi embassy….

Officer: That’s fine. Just wanted to get some information on what was going on.

Moore on camera: Yeah yeah yeah, I didn’t realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies.

Officer: Uh, not usually, no sir.

But in fact:

Any tourist to Washington, DC, will see plenty of Secret Service Police guarding all of the other foreign embassies which request such protection. Other than guarding the White House and some federal buildings, it’s the largest use of personnel by the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

Debbie Schlussel, “FAKEN-heit 9-11: Michael Moore’s Latest Fiction,” June 25, 2004.



According to the Secret Service website:

Uniformed Division officers provide protection for the White House Complex, the Vice-President's residence, the Main Treasury Building and Annex, and foreign diplomatic missions and embassies in the Washington, DC area.

So there is nothing strange about the Secret Service protecting the Saudi embassy in Washington—especially since al Qaeda attacks have taken place against Saudi Arabia.



Alleged Bush-Saudi Conspiracy

Deceit 26

Moore asks, “Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in the morning they might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you?” But his Bush/Saudi conspiracy theory is contradicted by very obvious facts:

…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…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.”

Hitchens, Slate. This isn't to say that concerns about the wishes and interests of the Saudi rulers play too large a role in American foreign policy--especially in the U.S. State Department, which has been notoriously supportive of pro-U.S. Arab dictatorships for many decades. I would much prefer that the State Department and other American foreign policymakers spent less time worrying about friendly relations with the governments of Saudi Arabia, China, and other dictatorships, and more time supporting the aspirations of people who want to free themselves from dictatorship. But complaining about the historic pro-Saudi tilt in U.S. foreign policy, a tilt which is partly the result of extensive business relations between the two countries, is not the same as propounding a tin-hat conspiracy theory that George Bush is servile tool of the bin Laden family.



Proposed Unocal Pipeline in Afghanistan

Deceits 27-31

Moore mentions that the Taliban visited Texas while Bush was governor, over a possible pipeline deal with Unocal. But Moore doesn’t say that they never actually met with Bush or that the deal went bust in 1998 and had been supported by the Clinton administration.

Labash, Weekly Standard.

Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August 1998.

Jonathan Foreman, “Moore’s The Pity,” New York Post, June 23, 2004.

In December 1997, a delegation from Afghanistan’s ruling and ruthless Taliban visited the United States to meet with an oil and gas company that had extensive dealings in Texas. The company, Unocal, was interested in building a natural gas line through Afghanistan. Moore implies that Bush, who was then governor of Texas, met with the delegation.

But, as Gannett News Service points out, Bush did not meet with the Taliban representatives. What’s more, Clinton administration officials did sit down with Taliban officials, and the delegation’s visit was made with the Clinton administration’s permission.

McNamee, Chicago Sun-Times.

Whatever the motive, the Unocal pipeline project was entirely a Clinton-era proposal: By 1998, as the Taliban hardened its positions, the U.S. oil company pulled out of the deal. By the time George W. Bush took office, it was a dead issue—and no longer the subject of any lobbying in Washington.

Isikoff & Hosenball, MSNBC.com.



On December 9, 2003, the new Afghanistan government did sign a protocol with Turkmenistan and Pakistan to facilitate a pipeline. Indeed, any Afghani government (Taliban or otherwise) would rationally seek the revenue that could be gained from a pipeline. But the new pipeline (which has not yet been built) has nothing to do with Unocal. Nor does the new proposed pipeline even resemble Unocal's failed proposal; the new pipeline would the bring oil and gas from the Caspian Sea basin, whereas Unocal's proposal involved deposits five hundred miles away, in eastern Turkmenistan.



Fahrenheit showed images of pipeline construction, but images have nothing to do with the Caspian Sea pipeline, for which construction has never begun. Nor do they have anything to do with the Unocal pipeline, which never existed except on paper.



According to Fahrenheit, Afghanistan's new President, Hamid Karzai, was a Unocal consultant. This is false. Sumana Chatterjee and David Goldstein, "A lowdown on the facts behind the allegations in 'Fahrenheit 9/11'," Knight-Ridder newspapers, July 2, 2004.



Bush Administration Relationship with the Taliban

Deceit 32

Moore also tries to paint Bush as sympathetic to the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan until its overthrow by U.S.-led forces shortly after Sept. 11. Moore shows a March 2001 visit to the United States by a Taliban envoy, saying the Bush administration “welcomed” the official, Sayed Hashemi, “to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban.”

Yet Hashemi’s reception at the State Department was hardly welcoming. The administration rejected his claim that the Taliban had complied with U.S. requests to isolate Osama bin Laden and affirmed its nonrecognition of the Taliban.

“We don’t recognize any government in Afghanistan,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on the day of the visit.

Frank, Newsday.



Moore Claimed that Osama bin Laden Might be Innocent and Opposed the Afghanistan War

Deceits 33-34



Fahrenheit 911 attempts in every way possible to link Osama bin Laden to George Bush. Moore even claims that Bush deliberately gave bin Laden “a two month head start” by not putting sufficient forces into Afghanistan soon enough. However:

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.

Hitchens, Slate.



Three days after September 11, Moore demanded that no military action be taken against Afghanistan:

"Declare war?" War against whom? One guy in the desert whom we can never seem to find? Are our leaders telling us that the most powerful country on earth cannot dispose of one sick evil f---wad of a guy? Because if that is what you are telling us, then we are truly screwed. If you are unable to take out this lone ZZ Top wannabe, what on earth would you do for us if we were attacked by a nation of millions? For chrissakes, call the Israelis and have them do that thing they do when they want to get their man! We pay them enough billions each year, I am SURE they would be happy to accommodate your request....

But do not declare war and massacre more innocents. After bin Laden's previous act of terror, our last elected president went and bombed what he said was "bin Laden's camp" in Afghanistan -- but instead just killed civilians.

Michael Moore, "War on Whom?" AlterNet, Sept. 14, 2004.



The next day he wrote:

Trust me, they are talking politics night and day, and those discussions involve sending our kids off to fight some invisible enemy and to indiscriminately bomb Afghans or whoever they think will make us Americans feel good.

...I fear we will soon be in a war that will do NOTHING to protect us from the next terrorist attack.

"Mike's Message," Sept. 15, 2001. Although Moore vehemently opposed the Afghanistan War, Fahrenheit criticizes Bush for not putting more troops into Afghanistan sooner.



Are we any safer because the U.S. military eliminated the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, removed a government which did whatever al Qaeda wanted, and killed or captured two-thirds of the al Qaeda leadership? Fahrenheit's thesis that the Afghanistan War was solely for the pipeline and to distract attention from Saudi Arabia is inconsistent with the well-known results of the war. A sincere patriot could have opposed the Afghanistan War for a variety of reasons, such as fear that the invasion might stir up even more anti-American sentiment. But the only reason which Fahrenheit offers for opposing the war is the claim that not enough force was used in the early stages (a criticism contrary to Moore's 2001 opposition to the use of any force), and the factually indefensible claim that the results of the war did not help American security or harm terrorists.







The article is too long for one post, so to read more go to:

http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm

Dave Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute and an NRO columnist. He has previously written about the deceptions in “Bowling for Columbine.” Like Michael Moore, in 2000 Kopel endorsed and voted for Ralph Nader.


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-12-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 11:49am

Thanks for the critique. I haven't, and probably won't (unless it's shown for free), see this movie. I am always interested in what people actually take away from seeing it though. There was just one thing that I wanted to point out, and possibly try to answer for you.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:16pm
Did YOU see the movie?
cl-Libraone~

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:19pm
Thanks for your thoughts but unless you have an inside to the Bush clan, thats all they are. Since you haven't seen it then you really don't know how it was put together and what footage was actually used. That's why I would like to hear from those who ACTUALLY saw it.
Avatar for baileyhouse
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:23pm
Nice cut and paste of OTHERS views...but I asked for only those on this board who had actually seen it for themselves...was I not clear..sorry.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-12-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:23pm

Darn! I posted my

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:25pm
I think you are missing the point of my OP.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:32pm
No I didn't and I don't plan to. Are you suggesting because I didn't see the movie, I am not able to post an article pertaining to the deceit in this movie? I am not stating my own opinions on this movie, just posting the opinions of the author. Why do all of the supporters of this movie think that if you don't see it, you cannot post something in regards to it?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:41pm
First of all, I never read where you asked for everyones opinions, so no you definintetly were not clear. What does it matter if I never saw the film, I am posting an article that points out all of the lies and deception in this movie. Sorry if it shatters your perception of this movie being the "truth according to Moore". Sometimes cutting and pasting an article is necessary in order to inform people.




Edited 7/6/2004 12:59 pm ET ET by bethannne

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 12:48pm
"What does it matter if I never saw the film, I am posting an article to point out all of the lies and deception in this movie."

how do you know that what you read about it isn't lies, if you haven't see it yourself?

So far, there has not been a SINGLE fact shown to be incorrect in that movie. I challenge you to find a single one. Not an incorrect 'impression', mind you. An actual incorrect FACT.

I've seen the movie twice..

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