Letter from Michael Moore to Mr. Bush

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Letter from Michael Moore to Mr. Bush
81
Fri, 08-27-2004 - 3:36pm


August 26, 2004

It Takes Real Courage to Desert Your Post and Then Attack a Wounded Vet

Dear Mr. Bush,

I know you and I have had our differences in the past, and I realize I am the one who started this whole mess about "who did what" during Vietnam when I brought up that "deserter" nonsense back in January. But I have to hand it to you on what you have uncovered about John Kerry and his record in Vietnam. Kerry has tried to pass himself off as a war hero, but thanks to you and your friends, we now know the truth.

First of all, thank you for pointing out to all of us that Mr. Kerry was never struck by a BULLET. It was only SHRAPNEL that entered his body! I did not know that! Hell, what's the big deal about a bunch of large, sharp, metal shards ripping open your flesh? That happens to all of us! In my opinion, if you want a purple heart, you'd better be hit with a bullet -- with your name on it!

Secondly, thank you for sending Bob Dole out there and letting us know that Mr. Kerry, though wounded three times, actually "never spilled blood." When you are in the debates with Kerry, turn to him and say, "Dammit, Mr. Kerry, next time you want a purple heart, you better spill some American red blood! And I don't mean a few specks like those on O.J.'s socks -- we want to see a good pint or two of blood for each medal. In fact, I would have preferred that you had bled profusely, a big geyser of blood spewing out of your neck or something!" Then throw this one at him: "Senator Kerry, over 58,000 brave Americans gave their lives in Vietnam -- but YOU didn't. You only got WOUNDED! What do you have to say for yourself???" Lay that one on him and he won't know what to do.

And thanks, also, Mr. Bush, for exposing the fact that Mr. Kerry might have actually WOUNDED HIMSELF in order to get those shiny medals. Of course he did! How could the Viet Cong have hit him -- he was on a SWIFT boat! He was going too fast to be hit by enemy fire. He tried to blow himself up three different times just so he could go home and run for president someday. It's all so easy to see, now, what he was up to.

What would we do without you, Mr. Bush? Criticize you as we might, when it comes to pointing out other men's military records, there is no one who can touch your prowess. In 2000, you let out the rumor that your opponent John McCain might be "nuts" from the 5 years he spent in a POW camp. Then, in the 2002 elections, your team compared triple-amputee Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden, and that cost him the election. And now you are having the same impact on war hero John Kerry. Since you (oops, I mean "The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth!") started running those ads, Kerry's polls numbers have dropped (with veterans, he has lost 18 points in the last few weeks).

Some people have said "Who are you, Mr. Bush, to attack these brave men considering you yourself have never seen combat -- in fact, you actively sought to avoid it." What your critics fail to understand is that even though your dad got you into a unit that would never be sent to Vietnam -- and even though you didn't show up for Guard duty for at least a year -- at least you were still IN FAVOR of the Vietnam War! Cowards like Clinton felt it was more important to be consistent (he opposed the war, thus he refused to go) than to be patriotic and two-faced.

The reason that I think you know so much about other men's war wounds is because, during your time you in the Texas Air National Guard, you suffered so many of them yourself. Consider the paper cut you received on September 22, 1972, while stationed in Alabama, working on a Senate campaign for your dad's friend (when you were supposed to be on the Guard base). A campaign brochure appeared from nowhere, ambushing your right index finger, and blood trickled out onto your brand new argyle sweater.

Then there was the incident with the Crazy Glue when your fraternity brothers visited you one weekend at the base and glued your lips together while you were "passed out." Though initially considered "friendly fire," it was later ruled that you suffered severe post traumatic stress disorder from the assault and required certain medicinal attention -- which, it seems, was provided by those same fraternity brethren.

But nothing matched your heroism when, on July 2, 1969, you sustained a massive head injury when enemy combatants from another Guard unit dropped a keg of Coors on your head during a reconnaissance mission at a nearby all-girls college. Fortunately, the cool, smooth fluids that poured out of the keg were exactly what was needed to revive you.

That you never got a purple heart for any of these incidents is a shame. I can fully appreciate your anger at Senator Kerry for the three he received. I mean, Kerry was a man of privilege, he could have gotten out just like you. Instead, he thinks he's going to gain points with the American people bragging about how he was getting shot at every day in the Mekong Delta. Ha! Is that the best he can do? Hell, I hear gunfire every night outside my apartment window! If he thinks he is going to impress anyone with the fact that he volunteered to go when he could have spent the Vietnam years on the family yacht, he should think again. That only shows how stupid he was! True-blue Americans want a president who knows how to pull strings and work the system and get away with doing as little work as possible!

So, to make it up to you, I have written some new ads you can use on TV. People will soon tire of the swift boat veterans and you are going to need some fresh, punchier material. Feel free to use any of these:

ANNOUNCER: "When the bullets were flying all around him in Vietnam, what did John Kerry do? He said he leaned over the boat and 'pulled a man out of the river.' But, as we all know, men don't live in the river -- fish do. John Kerry knows how to tell a big fish tale. What he won't tell you is that when the enemy was shooting at him, he ducked. Do you want a president who will duck? Vote Bush."

ANNOUNCER: "Mr. Kerry's biggest supporter, Sen. Max Cleland, claims to have lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam. But he still has one arm! How did that happen? One word: Cowardice. When duty called, he was unwilling to give his last limb. Is that the type of selfishness you want hanging out in the White House? We think not. Vote for the man who would be willing to give America his right frontal lobe. Vote Bush."

Hope these help, Mr. Bush. And remember, when the American death toll in Iraq hits 1,000 during the Republican convention, be sure to question whether those who died really did indeed "die" -- or were they just trying to get their face on CNN's nightly tribute to fallen heroes? The sixteen who've died so far this week were probably working hand in hand with the Kerry campaign to ruin your good time in New York. Stay consistent, sir, and always, ALWAYS question the veracity of anyone who risks their life for this country. It's the least they deserve.

Yours,

Michael Moore

mmflint@aol.com

www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. George, I know you said you don't read the newspaper, but USA Today has given me credentials to the Republican convention to write a guest column each day next week (Tues.-Fri.). If you don't want to read it, you and I will be in the same building so maybe I could come by and read it to you? Lemme know...

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-28-2004
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 10:01am


No one had to plant anything in the viewers mind. What we saw during that 7 minutes of Bush reacting to the news that our country was being attacked was The Essence of Bush - which is Not Much.

Any person with even an ounce of objectivity can see that Bush, in a rare unscripted moment was impotent and useless as president of the United States. Bush uses scripts every day, from Cheney telling him to go to war to putting on a hard hat and having people tell him how cool he is when he identifies with the common, hardworking man. Now he's acting the part of tough, focused president, but anyone who's looking can see it's an act-it seems to work for him and he's pushing it to the limit.

If I thought Bush could clean up the mess and chaos he's created (& I think he deserves to clean it up) without making a bigger mess, I'd vote for him - but it should be obvious to anyone really paying any attention to the real Bush that he'll only go on to create an even bigger one.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 10:14am

<<"What we saw during that 7 minutes of Bush reacting to the news that our country was being attacked was The Essence of Bush - which is Not Much.">>.....Did you ever "just sit there" for all of 7 minutes? Noticed how short 7 minutes are? Add to that what happened on that moment, and notice how time flies even faster?


<<"(& I think he deserves to clean it up) ">>.....I think so too.

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-28-2004
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 11:01am


Uh no - when you're just sitting there, and aware, 7 minutes seems like a long time. If you're just sitting there with your head up your butt it probably goes pretty quickly.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 3:07pm

<<"when you're just sitting there, and aware, 7 minutes seems like a long time. ">>.... exáctly! They SEEM like a long time.


<<"If you're just sitting there with your head up your butt it probably goes pretty quickly">>....I'm not that loose-limbed, so I'll take your expertise

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-28-2004
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 3:22pm


Ah, don't be so modest, we know you are lol!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 3:32pm
Nope, hate to disappoint you. You are the teach, so how much do you charge per say....7 minutes?

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 5:36pm
"Of course, but why would he continue to sit there and not excuse himself because the country needed him. This was not a time to be overly polite. This was a national emergency."

You still haven't said what exactly he was supposed to do or what he didn't do. Until you can, this is nothing more that an argument against Bush built on MM's rhetoric.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-28-2004
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 6:54pm
If it had been anyone other than GWB sitting there looking totally befuddled (by the way, have any of the Bushies even seen the footage of Bush's reaction that day?) the Bush fans would be putting that picture on the side of every bus in the country. Which, come to think of it, isn't a bad idea. :)
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2004
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 9:51pm
Dogging the goat

Diana West (archive)


August 30, 2004

No wonder my mother was a little breathless on the telephone. "Listen to this," she said, preparing me for a snippet from a tome by the popular, late and liberal historian William Manchester. It describes Franklin D. Roosevelt's initial reaction to news of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that devastated the American fleet, killing 2,403 soldiers, sailors and civilians.

After calling the secretary of state, Manchester writes, "the President of the United States did nothing for 18 minutes."

Eighteen minutes. Why, that's 11, maybe 12 minutes more than George W. Bush paused during a visit to a Florida elementary school before taking action on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Truth be told, I've withheld this historical mini-scoop for a while, thinking "Agitprop 9/11," or whatever, which first ginned up the notion that President Bush fiddled around while the Twin Towers burned, wasn't worth spilling ink over. But now that the Kerry presidential campaign is Michael-Moore-ishly aping the outrage over the Lost Minutes, the fact of FDR's post-Pearl Harbor lull gains currency.

"John Kerry is not the type who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second-graders while America is under attack," Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter declared last week, by all accounts with a straight face. Ms. Cutter, Ted Kennedy's former press secretary, was referring to the kiddie book Mr. Bush continued reading with schoolchildren for several minutes after learning that the second tower of the World Trade Center had been attacked.

Them may be fightin' words in a "more sensitive" war on terror, but I'm guessing that Thomas E. Dewey, FDR's fourth and final presidential opponent, never even thought to hit Roosevelt for 18 minutes of inaction at the onset of World War II. Let's just say that John Kerry is no Tom Dewey. "Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whisper in my ear that America is under attack," Mr. Kerry intoned this month, "I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needed to attend to. And I would have attended to it."

Really? As an article in The Washington Times points out, Mr. Kerry's reaction to the attacks of Sept. 11 wasn't exactly the stuff of the Minutemen. Mr. Kerry told "Larry King Live" that on the morning of Sept. 11 nearly three years ago, he "sat stunned and unable to think for more than 30 minutes in the Capitol until he and other senators were whisked out of the building to safety," the Times reports. "By that time, Mr. Bush already had addressed the nation, vowed to capture those responsible and begun discussions with Vice President Dick Cheney and other top aides about whether to shoot down any civilian aircraft violating the administration's order that all planes be grounded." And finished reading "My Pet Goat."

This, of course, is getting ridiculous -- and I don't just mean the non-issue over the first minutes after the World Trade Center attack. The real question is, why does Mr. Kerry keep erecting so many wobbly pedestals for himself? Whether it's a silly vow of insta-action belied by his behavior; a Christmas in Cambodia that wasn't really Christmas and likely wasn't Cambodia; widely, seriously contested military claims of both heroics and atrocities; or talk of a "secret" plan to save Iraq; the man increasingly sounds like he is all bluster.

Mr. Kerry's Brahmin braggadocio on the "Goat" minutes may seem to be a small thing, hardly a matter on which presidential elections turn. But in a campaign based solely on the candidate's "biography," it is one more telling detail in an evolving character study that the Kerry campaign, given the probing charges raised by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the pressing, new journalism of the blogosphere, is no longer sole author of.

As even Democrats admits, there is little in the Kerry resume to boost a wartime presidency: two dovish Senate decades; a stint as a leading antiwar protester instrumental in creating the iconic image of Vietnam vet-as-baby-killer; an abbreviated tour in Vietnam that netted a considerable and, lately, controversial, collection of medals; and a presidential campaign. This, of course, explains why Mr. Kerry has strategically reconfigured his biography so that those four months in Vietnam 35 years ago appear, climactically, to precede his White House run today. Such a life, though, leaves rather a longer lull than either FDR or George W. Bush has ever had to explain.


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/dw20040830.shtml

Kerry said he himself sat there for 30 minutes, stunned and unable to think. Imagine if he was the president when September 11th happened?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 9:51pm
Still waiting for someone to tell me what he didn't do and should have done instead of just ridiculing the way he looked. You are doing nothing more than building a haystack. But heck, like I said, just one more person picking up on MM's rhetoric. Just what he wanted. He is good, and all the little soldiers are doing their part too.
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