Return to main page

    3/16/08 Update

    In retrospect, my opinions have changed slightly since writing this. I still strongly disagree with Fahrenheit 9/11, the foreign policy ideology behind its creation, and, most importantly, the method with which these views are conveyed, but my criticisms would now likely take a different tone. My foreign policy views now are very similar to those described here.

Fahrenheit 911

By Travis Snyder

7/9/04

Red font indicates exact quotes from a reference. References found at the bottom of the page. Comments are appreciated.

Excerpts/highlights summarized with accompanying news articles include The Florida Recount, The Draft Myth, The War In Iraq, The UN, Iraq and Darfur and Arab Governments and Causes of Terrorism.

    As I battled between these conflicting feelings of guilt, curiosity, and suspicion, a single event pushed me over the edge: the public attendance and statements from preeminent members of the Democratic party. Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, the Head of the Democratic National Committee Terry Mcaulife, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, Montana Sen. Max Baucus, South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Sen. Bob Graham, New York Rep. Charles Rangel, Washington Rep. Jim McDermott, and others (1). Even a member of the 911 Commission, Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste made an appearance! (2)

Senator Bob Graham of Florida said, "There might be half of the Democratic Senate here." (2)

Harkin told the Associated Press, "It's important for the American people to understand what has gone on before, what led us to this point, and to see it sort of in this unvarnished presentation by Michael Moore." (3)

    When asked by the (conservative) National Review if he believed Moore's account of the war in Afghanistan, McAuliffe said, " I believe it after seeing that." The DNC chairman added that he had not heard of the idea before seeing the movie, but said he would "check it out myself and look at it, but there are a lot of interesting facts that he [Moore] brought out today that none of us knew about." (1)

A short time later, McAuliffe was asked by CNN, "Do you think the movie was essentially fair and factually based?" "I do," McAuliffe said. "I think anyone who goes to see this movie will come out en masse and vote for John Kerry. Clearly the movie makes it clear that George Bush is not fit to be president of this country." (1)

"This movie raises a lot of the issues that Americans are talking about, that George Bush has been asleep at the switch since he's been president," McAuliffe said as he walked the red carpet into the premiere. (1)

According to the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota:

"At the Washington premiere, Moore sat a few rows behind Daschle. Afterward, says Moore, ‘He gave me a hug and said he felt bad and that we were all gonna fight from now on. I thanked him for being a good sport,'" Corliss wrote. (109)

    But Daschle disagreed!:

....the South Dakota Democrat said he and Moore did not embrace. (109)

"I know we senators all tend to look alike. But I arrived late, and I had to leave early for Senate votes. I didn't meet Mr. Moore," Daschle said. (109)

    These are all the quotes I could find, but it was amazing to me that if it was true that the majority of the film consisted of lies and propaganda that such powerful national Democrats would attend and make these statements. I decided that I would have to see it for myself. I rationalized my decision by telling myself that afterwards I would write a summery and analysis of the film. The guiltier I felt about supporting (through attending) the film, the longer my commentary about it would be. Judge for yourself the result...

    As such thoughts rolled through my head, I attended the 9:50 PM showing at a minor theater in Tallahassee Florida on Sunday, June 27th. Major theaters in the area did not show it. Immediately upon arrival we were greeted by two Marijuana legalization activists trying to gather signatures. The theatre was filled near capacity. The audience was a normal looking one, perhaps a little younger and more "grunge" then the average audience, but this may have just been because of the late viewing time.

    To my surprise, the movie began with a dramatic rehash of the 2000 elections concluding, "If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario Gore won the election." Having read extensively on this issue I could not believe what Moore was insinuating. The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post and the LA Times all did extensive journalistic investigations of this issue and all found that even if Gore had won the Supreme Court Case and a recount was undertaken in the specific Democratic voting counties (which is what Gore was asking for), Bush still would have won (34) (83). CNN has on it's "Indepth Special":

A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president. (121)

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide. (121)

    Now, these papers certainly lean to the left in their reporting, as seen by their endorsements of Gore in that election (118), and you can bet your bottom dollar that the journalists investigating this were hoping to cash in on what would have been the biggest journalistic scoop of the century. In my research I did find that there were studies done where Gore would have won under certain extenuating circumstances, hence the infamous indented or hanging chad scenario etc... (34)

    In fact, the argument can legitimately be made that more people in Florida went to the ballot box intending to vote for Gore. However, short of reading voters minds, an election has to have parameters around which it can be conducted. Bush clearly won the election. The film shows tearful, almost all black, members of the house of Representatives on the floor of the house chamber railing against the 'disenfranchisement' of minority voters, denouncing the election as illegitimate and berating the Senate for not backing them (apparently, in a procedural flux, a single Senator had to co-sign to allow these representatives to proceed in taking further action)... The fact that the entire Senate and almost the entire house of Representatives recognized the legitimacy of the election is apparently lost on Moore, who resorts to race baiting in his desperate attempt to make his point. 

NARRATOR: Not a single senator came to the aid of the African-Americans in Congress. One after another they were told to sit down and shut up. (157)

    I wonder what all these Democratic Senators present for this 'gala film opening' thought of this. Will any reporters ever ask them?

    Where does Moore get this stuff from? The myth was built up and continues to be propogated by the nations prominent Democrats. At the Democratic National convention more than nine in 10 delegates say George W. Bush did not win the 2000 election legitimately. (140)

    Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry had this to say in a speech before the AME:

Don’t tell us disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes is the best we can do. This time, in 2004, not only will every vote count – we’re going to make sure that every vote is counted. (141),

    And he made similar remarks to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition:

    Al Gore got wild cheers at the Democratic convention after saying:

    Bill Clinton also delivered some "red meat" to the delegates:

Peter Kirsanow, an African American member (Bush appointee) on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights writes in the (conservative) National Review:

The six-month investigation of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found absolutely no evidence of systematic disenfranchisement of black voters. The investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice also found no credible evidence that any Floridians were intentionally denied the right to vote in the 2000 election. (142)

In fact, Florida 2000 was not a startling anomaly. Ballot-spoilage rates across the country range between 2-3 percent of total ballots cast. Florida's rate in 2000 was 3 percent. In 1996 it was 2.5 percent. (142)

The next time Senator Kerry tells a black audience about massive disenfranchisement, he might also inform them that in none of the offending counties was the county supervisor a Republican — and in 24 of the 25 counties with the highest ballot spoilage — er, disenfranchisement — rates, the county supervisor was a Democrat. (In the remaining county, the supervisor was an independent.) (142)

Glitches occur in every election. Some glitches are massive, others not. This is not to downplay the problem, but to put it into perspective. For example, the number of ruined ballots in Chicago alone was 125,000, compared to 174,000 for the entire state of Florida. Several states experienced voting problems remarkably similar to those in Florida. But the closeness of the 2000 election in Florida, and the attendant electoral implications, placed the state at the fulcrum of a remarkable opportunity for racial demagoguery. (142)

    Kirsanow's statement that the commission found no intentional disenfranchisement is correct. His assertion that the commission found absolutely no evidence of systematic black disenfranchisement is misleading, because the commission split into two partisan camps. The sole Republican and an Independent on the commission wrote a minority dissenting opinion agreeing with Kirsanow and slamming the majority report:

By basing its conclusion on allegations that seem driven by partisan interests and that lack factual basis, the majority on the Commission has needlessly fostered public distrust, alienation and manifest cynicism. The report implicitly labels the outcome of the 2000 election as illegitimate, thereby calling into question the most fundamental basis of American democracy. What appears to be partisan passions not only destroyed the credibility of the report itself, but informed the entire process that led up to the final draft. (144)

    But the 5 Democrats and one Independent detailed in their majority report the chaos of the election process and numerous inconsistencies and problems:

During Florida’s 2000 presidential election, restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors, and inadequate resources in the Florida election process denied countless Floridians of their right to vote. This disenfranchisement of Florida voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based on county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly 10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in the November 2000 election. (145)

    The minority report responded that this statistic "....is nothing more than a wild guesstimate."

Let us be clear: According to Dr. Lichtman’s data, some 180,000 Florida voters in the 2000 election, 2.9 percent of the total, turned in ballots that did not indicate a valid choice for a presidential candidate and thus could not be counted in that race. Six out of ten of these rejected ballots (59 percent) were “overvotes”—ballots that were disqualified because they indicated more than one choice for president. Another 35 percent were “undervotes,” ballots lacking any clear indication of which presidential candidate the voter preferred. (The other 6 percent were invalid for some other unspecified reason. Since they are ignored in the majority report, they will be here as well.) (144)

The problem is voter error, a term that astonishingly appears nowhere in the majority report. This is the central fact the majority report attempts to obscure. Some voters simply did not fill out their ballots according to the instructions. They failed to abide by the very elementary rule that you must vote for one and only one candidate for the office of president of the United States, and therefore their attempt to register their choice failed. Their ballots were rejected, and their votes did not count. (144)

        However, the term 'voter error' does appear in the majority report and it is 'astonishing' that the minority report would claim this. Their basic point that the majority report tends to minimize voter error is probably true. The minority report offers more facts not contained in the majority report:

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state’s only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate. (144)

Republican-appointed commissioners were never asked for any input in the composition of the witness list or in the drafting of the report itself. (144)

An outside expert with strong partisan affiliations was hired to do a statistical analysis without consultation with commissioners. (144)

We asked for a copy of the machine-readable data that Professor Lichtman used to run his correlations and regressions. That is, we wanted his computer runs, the data that went into them, and the regression output that was produced. The Commission told us that it did not exist—that the data as he organized it for purposes of analysis was literally unavailable. Professor Lichtman, who knows that as a matter of scholarly convention such data should be shared, also declined to provide it. (144)

    Who is Professor Lichtman? Brief searches yielded some interesting results. He wrote an endorsement on the back of Bill Clinton's recent book, "My Life" (147). During a later redistricting dispute in Florida he was called as the main Democratic witness:

The Legislature called two political scientists who challenged the logic and conclusions of the Democrats' top expert witness, Allan Lichtman, the history department chairman at American University. (146)

    He was also called as a Democratic witness in Arizona:

But the Democrats had a statistics expert of their own. Professor Allan Lichtman, chair of the American University history department, cited studies that show the gap closing and called the year-old Commerce study obsolete. (149)

    On January 14th 2004 he gave an interview with CNN:

"Now you have George Bush coming along. His dad tried to get into space and failed. His dad didn't have the vision thing. So here is George Bush. He's not going -- he's now going to prove he has the vision thing that his dad didn't have." (148)

"He he's even going to top Kennedy. He's not just going to the moon, he's going to Mars. The problem is he doesn't want to make it hard. Where is he going to pay for it? Is he going to ask his rich buddies out there in corporate America to pony up and pay what could be a multibillion dollar price tag?" (148)

"What's on the table now won't do it. We needed that $5 trillion surplus that's has gone a glimmering and suddenly become a $500 million deficit." (148)

The other thing is there are lots of other goals that might be more relevant to life here. What about cutting fossil fuels by 50 percent? Or doing something about global warming or fixing up the electric grid? All those questions are going to be asked by George's Bush's critics. (148)

    Professor Lichtman has a blog on the History News Network, which is filled with Bush bashing. A recent entry states:

Today, a charge by John Kerry that the Bush administration was the most corrupt in American history would also engender widespread skepticism. Yet there is good reason to believe that such a charge is once again correct. (149)

    Besides his partisanship, Lichtman also has a personal conflict of interest - his academic reputation. On CNN:

WOODRUFF: Well, whatever the poll numbers are showing these days, history may be on Al Gore's side in his bid for the presidency. Allan Lichtman, dean of history at American University, some years ago, created a system for predicting the outcome of presidential elections. I asked Lichtman to explain the 13 keys to the presidency and what they bode for this year's presidential hopefuls. (150)

WOODRUFF: Now, and you're saying it's been accurate every time you've applied these keys since 1984? (150)

LICHTMAN: That's correct. Well ahead of time, it has predicted the outcome of every election from 1984 to 1996. (150)

WOODRUFF: But having said that, the pluses for Al Gore, you're saying, far out -- or outweigh the negatives? (150)

LICHTMAN: The pluses narrowly outweigh the negatives. That's why Gore is going to win. (150)

    In sum, from the brief research I have done it is certainly suspicious that: 1. The commission based it's majority report on hidden research which cannot be replicated (as the work has not been shared). 2. The 'expert witness' who did this research seems to be a partisan Democrat. If the majority commission was truly looking to come clean in their investigations, their actions make little sense. 3. The minority report neglects to mention that Dr. John Lott, their statistician, is clearly a staunch Republican as seen by his website. (151)

    The majority commission found problems with voting procedures for a number of other groups including the disabled, elderly, Jewish, Puerto Rican and Hispanic. Despite the fact that the only group not on their list are white Christians, the report really just seems to show that problems existed across the board. Whether the problems fell disproportionately on any group in particular is unclear. In my judgment, it is a shame that the commission succumbed to partisan squabbles and was unable to give a united report, and that both selected partisan researchers to put forth their findings. But it is notable that even the Democratic majority commission report found that there was no Republican effort to 'steal' or influence the election, or disenfranchise black voters. [To read some expanded research on this, including my communications with both Dr. Lott and Dr. Lichtman click here]

    Next, the film covers the oft cited 'fact' that Bush took the most "vacation time" in the history of any president. To his credit, Moore at least mentions that Bush was receiving foreign dignitaries, Congressmen, aides and government officials regularly, but the film focuses on clips of Bush playing golf and clearing brush and takes excerpts from a press conference of Bush responding awkwardly to questions about his schedule. In short, much ado about nothing - a non-story here. In actuality, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea if Bush never went to Washington...

    Then the film focuses on Bush's national guard record and shows clips of Moore calling the president a deserter. Democrats have questioned whether Bush showed up for temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign during a one-year period from May 1972 to May 1973. (4), (126) Although not require to do so, Bush released most of his military records earlier this year. Recently, some news organizations filed suit for the original microfilm in the belief that all of the original records may not have been released. On July 8th, the New York Times reported that:

It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. (110)

    It is unclear how these records would have been different from the ones already released by Bush. The Associated Press reported:

    Thirteen pages of payroll records and retirement point summaries released earlier in the week showed Bush was paid for 25 days during the period from May to May, 1972-73. He was not paid for any service during a more than five-month period in 1972, from April 17 to Oct. 27. He was paid for two days in late October of that year, four days in mid-November and no days in December. He was paid for additional days in 1973. The White House also earlier in the week released a copy of a dental exam Bush received at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama on Jan. 6, 1973, as proof that Bush had physically been at the base and served there. The records showed that Bush, a pilot, was suspended from flying status beginning Aug. 1, 1972, because of his failure to have an annual medical examination. His last flight exam was on May 15, 1971. (4), (126)

    Since this paper was written, the Department of Defense found the missing film, but no new information is contained in them, or so the media tell us.

    Bush was lauded as being in the top 5% of his class in reports by his superiors and honorably discharged. In fact, Moore’s "deserter" remark prompted (left of center) ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings to confront Democratic Presidential contender Wesley Clark (who Moore was backing) at a Democratic candidates debate on Jan. 22.

Jennings: Now, that's a reckless charge not supported by the facts. And I was curious to know why you didn't contradict him ... (5)

    In sum, it is certain that Moore's charge of desertion is false. A more appropriate question, which Moore doesn't address, is whether Bush received preferential treatment getting in and out of the National Guard. (6) Moore than makes a HUGE deal of the fact that the name of another pilot who missed a physical was blacked out in the military papers released by the Bush campaign, but not in a separate copy that Moore received from 'elsewhere'. Ominous music plays as a split screen shows both records side by side. It turns out this person was a friend of Bush's who later was involved with Bush in business. First, it is troubling that a citizen's private information can end up in the hands of a filmmaker. Secondly, why would the White House release the military records of another private citizen? The fact that two pilots in the same reserve unit both missed physicals, were friends and later had the audacity to have a business relationship does not strike me as newsworthy.

    Throughout the movie Moore jumps on Bush Jr. and Bush Sr. for having connections with the Saudis and the Bin Ladens (referring to Osama Bin Laden's family). Moore makes little distinction between the Saudis and Bin Ladens, and neglects to mention that Osoma Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia and disowned by the Bin Ladens. Moore claims that in the days and weeks immediately after the terror attacks of Sept 11th, close to 140 members of the Saudi Royal family, Saudi citizens and some Bin Ladens were granted exclusive flights out of the country when all other planes were grounded. Upon visiting Moore's website, I find he now claims (in a defensive manner) that his film didn't state that all other flights were grounded, but that the Saudis were allowed to leave when normal flights resume. (35) Others must have been left with the same false impression. In any case, it is a legitimate question to ask why this was done, but Moore's attempts to blame this on Bush fall flat because media darling and Bush critic Richard Clarke told the Congressional Newspaper The Hill, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again." (7)

Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing. (7)

“This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation. (7) (52)

He said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials and that the FBI interviewed and signed off on the rest. (7)

“It’s very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation.” (7)

The Sept. 11 commission released a statement last month declaring that six chartered flights that evacuated close to 140 Saudi citizens were handled properly by the Bush administration. (7) [I wonder what 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste was thinking at this point]

    Moore neglects to mention any of this information and leaves the impression that, either through neglect or malice, the Bush administration may have let possible co-conspirators, or people with important information, leave the country. The suggested reason for this was the close business ties that Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. and other members of the government had with the Saudis. The film shows clips of the massive Saudi embassy and describes how 7% of the US economy is owned by Saudi Arabia and that Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, has excessive secret service agents assigned to protect him. It is unclear how Moore knows how many Secret Service agents are assigned to different diplomatic personal. According to the Secret Service Mission Statement:

The Secret Service protects the President and Vice President, their families, heads of state, and other designated individuals; investigates threats against these protectees; protects the White House, Vice President’s Residence, Foreign Missions, and other buildings within Washington, D.C. (36)

    There is a humorous scene in which Moore is accosted outside the Saudi Embassy by these agents who question what he is doing (in a good natured way). At other times Moore describes how Saudi investors or Saudi owned investment firms invested in Bush Jr.'s various business ventures, owned stock in defense firms and that, after he retired, Bush Sr. sat on various corporate boards in which the Saudis had heavily invested. Clip after clip portray both father, son and other senior Republican officials meeting, posing and shaking hands with various Saudis. Moore especially focuses on the Carlyle group, a large Washington DC-based investment group (which, incidentally anti-Bush Billionaire George Soros also invested in) (96). In all this, "the Saudis" and "the Bin Ladens" are used interchangeably.

    It is important to give some background information before debunking this misleading picture. Moore's claim that the Saudis own 7% of the US economy is wildly off. The entire Saudi economy only equals 3% of US GDP (although it's been pointed out that investments abroad subtract from GDP). (9) (119) My research, albeit limited, suggests that there is no clear way to estimate the exact extent of Saudi investment in the United States, although it certainly is substantial. See David Kopel's extensive review for further analysis of this:

According to the Bureau of Economic Statistics, total foreign investment in the United States in 2003 was $10,515 billion dollars. This means that even if the figure that Unger "heard" about Saudis having $860 billion is correct, then the Saudis would only have about 8 percent of total foreign investment in the United States. Unless you believe that almost all American assets are owned by foreigners, then it cannot possibly be true that Saudis "own seven percent of America." (87)

    Saudi Arabia is the greatest oil producer on the planet and we are the biggest consumer. Therefore, each year US oil companies give billions of US dollars to the Saudi government through contracts, direct oil payments and taxes. However, owning so many US dollars means that, naturally, Saudis reinvest that money in the United States. If the Saudis invested their money elsewhere they would have to change their dollars to another currency (one couldn't buy stock in a European company in dollars).

    The American buck is the most prolific currency on the planet and is legal tender in many countries, but eventually dollars, in and of themselves, eventually filter back to the country which issues them: the United States and a few scattered affiliates (which have no national currency). Because of the historical profitability, strength and safety of the US economy, the Saudis generally choose to invest a good portion of their wealth directly in the United States. Taken by itself, this is a good thing. The influx of Saudi money (our returning dollars) raises the value of the stock market, finances our national debt and generally contributes to the economic growth of our country and increases prosperity for all our citizens. It's called capitalism. (8) Those that have relationships with Saudi investors and convince them to invest in the United States are a key part of this process.

    A similar situation developed in the 80s and continues to this day with the Japanese. Flush with cash from American consumer purchases, the Japanese choose to invest a good portion of their dollars back in the United States. Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman once remarked:

It is a mystery to me why... it is regarded as a sign of Japanese strength and American weakness that the Japanese find it more attractive to invest in the U.S. than Japan. Surely it is precisely the reverse - a sign of U.S. strength and Japanese weakness. (8)

    The sheer proliferation of Saudi money and the large number of investment firms, corporations and businesses that interconnect guarantee that just about any successful businessmen, or prominent politician, can be linked in some way to Saudi money, especially by a filmmaker with an bone to pick. Even more laughable is Moore's shocking finding that Saudi money was linked to past Bush family oil businesses. One might expect that Texas oil companies would be the first place someone from the Middle East would invest. Interestingly enough, it appears even Moore himself couldn't escape a smear of his own making. The Gaurdian reported:

"One of Moore's prime targets is the Carlyle Group, a Washington DC-based investment firm that allegedly links the Bush and Bin Laden families. The trouble is that the company recently became co-owner of the very cinema chain due to screen Fahrenheit 9/11 across America." (10)

    Also left out of the documentary are the facts regarding the relationship Osama had to his family. Instead of flashing photographs of Republican officials shaking hands with various Bin Ladens, Moore could have told us that Osama was the 17th of 51 siblings, expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994, and publicly denounced by his family on at least three different occasions. According to ABCnews:

When asked once by a reporter to list their names, he could barely recall a dozen before giving up amid his own laughter. But members of the bin Laden clan living in the United States weren't laughing in the days following the attacks. They were fearing for their lives — and fleeing the country. (11)

Osama's father was an illiterate laborer who turned a construction business into a worldwide conglomerate. Now, the family members are "kind of like the Rockefellers or the Forbeses of Saudi Arabia," explains ABCNEWS consultant Jonathan Winer.(11)

The second richest family in Saudi Arabia, The bin Laden family business employs 32,000 people in 30 countries, has a revenue of $5 billion a year and is invested everywhere from construction to manufacturing to financial services to insurance to biological research. (11)

And some of the bin Ladens carry out their business ventures in the United States, based primarily on the East Coast, from as far south as Florida to as far north as Boston, and with offices in Rockville, Md., in between. (11)

The Boston bin Ladens, for instance, own several units in a luxury condo and 16 percent of Hybridon, a Boston, Mass.,-based biotech company engaged in cancer research — and technology that someday could be used to defend against biological attacks. (11)

The rupture with his family came in 1991 when Osama denounced the presence of America in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War while other bin Ladens were making millions building airstrips and military housing for U.S. troops. (11)

1994 [The family expressed] their "regret, denunciation and condemnation of all acts that Osama bin Laden may have committed, which we do not condone and we reject." (12)

His relatives also denounced him after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa — attacks for which Osama bin Laden has been indicted in U.S. federal court. (13)

"All the family members condemn all violent and terrorist acts, even if Osama is behind them," the uncle [current family patriarch] told reporters [after September 11th]. (13)

Contrary to almost every reported news story and biography of Bin Laden, the 9/11 commission found:

Bin Ladin never received a $300 million inheritance. From about 1970 until approximately 1994, he received about $1 million per year—a significant sum, but hardly a $300 million fortune that could be used to fund a global jihad. (19)

    The Bin Laden's were involved in wide ranging philanthropies including:

Last year, former President Carter met with 10 bin Ladens who donated $200,000 to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga. (11)

They donated $1 million to Harvard Law school, and another $1 million for the study of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard's School of Design. (13)

Harvard officials say they have no reason to believe that the donations were in any way linked to Osama bin Laden. Still, Harvard officials have spent the week explaining to angry alumni and radio talk show hosts that the bin Laden family group, who represent about 20 of Osama bin Laden's siblings, disavowed his politics and actions a long time ago. (13)

    The preceding paragraph is especially interesting as Moore tries to get the same reaction out of his audience, playing the Bin Laden name throughout the film as if it were unconscionable that any government official or business man would have anything to do with such a villainous family. Although Moore doesn't cover this in his documentary, it is illuminating to note the connection between his smear of the Bin Laden family and the outrage on the left over alleged racial profiling and the detention of Muslims on immigration violations in the period after September 11th. This is not to suggest that the Bin Ladens should not have been investigated in an appropriate matter [which apparently they were even before 9/11], but to link the Bush family and other Republican officials to them in such a suggestive way demonstrates ignorance at best.

    However, I must concede that Moore does make a decent point about the basic nature of the Saudi regime.  

Oil, being an extremely valuable commodity, has made the Saudis (and some other Middle East states), exceptionally wealthy. Despite this wealth, or ironically, perhaps because of it, Saudi Arabia is a heavily indebted state (debt load is 115% of GDP) (14), ruled by a chaotic, corrupt oligarchy consisting of the ever expansive Saudi royal family. The family maintains it's hold on the kingdom through a combination of religious indoctrination (which aids in the creation of external enemies), ruthless despotism, and the 'generosity' of a bloated, out of control welfare system. Throwing buckets of cash at individuals who never worked a day for it, combined with the lack of an accountable financial system and loose controls, has led to an explosion of funding for the twisted ideology of Wahhabism. Moore is right in exposing the Saudi regime as the dangerous society it has become.

    Generally, it appears that a corrupt political society is only reinforced and further distorted by the power thrust upon it through easy wealth [and possibly created from it]. To elaborate further, let's pretend there is no oil in the Middle East, but it's all in Africa. The Middle East, besides Israel, would consists of impoverished warring states that don't have the capability to threaten anyone besides their own citizens and their equally impoverished neighbors. In short, you'd have a situation similar to (certain parts of ) Africa today. But in Africa, you'd still have the constant civil wars, tin cup dictators, rebel leaders, massacres and genocides, but now each state would be bolstered by billion dollar oil revenues. Mirage fighters would replace machetes in Rwanda; cruise missiles would replace militias in the Congo. Tanks would replace horsemen in the Sudan. These regimes would have the funds to import and/or train scientists to develop chemical and biological agents. Powerful countries would succeed in taking over their neighbors. Sound familiar?

    In essence, the political systems are not much different in (parts of) Africa and the Middle East. Oil makes the difference appear so glaring by increasing the wealth and power these corrupt despots hold and elevating them from primitive warlords to global power mongers. (20) The national security of the United States [and the free world] become threatened when these regimes gain enough power, through oil, to threaten the stability of a vital economic commodity and, in some cases, become powerful enough to challenge the west militarily - Iraq through direct military confrontation, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and others through the exportation of subversive ideology and terrorism. Is the United States trying to steal oil in order to profit corporations as Moore later indicates? No. US companies are more than willing to pay the market price for it. Is oil intertwined in the problems of the Middle East? Yes. But not in the way Moore and the anti-US crowd overseas believe it is, although I can see how it is tempting to make the correlation. The US [and the free world] would like nothing better than to pay their money for oil and have nothing else to do with the Middle East. Unfortunately, it appears that this hands off policy, coupled with appeasing diplomatic and military alliances and interventions, has failed.

    Another theory is that without foreign aid or natural resources, governments are forced to liberalize because it is the only way for them to get tax revenues. In other words, when wealth can only be generated through the naked productivity/ingenuity of it's citizens, the rulers of that country will be most inclined to introduce reforms to accelerate this. Notice some of the strongest economic zones in the world today - Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Switzerland, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea and the (early, eastern) United States - are poor in natural resources. Historically, the British, Dutch, Portuguese and, going way back, Carthageans and Athenians, were all were top world powers without being strong in natural resources. Why was the Spanish Empire, a centrally controlled country drowning in colonial gold, discarded into the ash heap of history so fast? Returning to the Africa analogy, the areas which are richest in natural resources, especially the diamond belt, are suffering the greatest conflict and strife. Taking this into account, Moore and other leftists should wonder why the United States would even want to "take over" any oil...

    Egypt, homeland of number two (and probably more influential in operational effectiveness than Osama Bin Laden) Al Qaeda terrorist Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, is perhaps the second largest supporter of Al-Qaeda in the gulf region. Each year Egypt receives about 2 billion dollars in transit from the Suez canal, 2.2 billion in 'aid' from the United States and inflows of money from the 10% of it's population that works or has worked abroad in other gulf states. With this revenue, why should the government worry about the need for a rich or middle class to tax? (111)

   We must not minimize the role that the socialistic nature of the Arab governments play in their totalitarianism, aggression, and sponsorship of terrorism. Foreign investment is discouraged because of the government monopolies and political instability (not to mention lack of religious freedom, freedom of expression etc..- foreign investments need foreign workers to manage them; how would you like to move your family to Syria, Iran, or Saudi Arabia?). Publicly owned factories are not likely to invest in foreign countries. Privately owned Arab companies are hampered by an uneducated workforce, a jumbled legal system, and competition from the huge subsidized public sector, and so are also less likely to invest in foreign countries. The net result is that, besides oil and petro-investments, little trade and interaction exists between (and among) Arab countries and the rest of the world. 

    It has been argued that the United States is the world's best policemen because our citizens own many things of value in countries across the world. Likewise, multitudes of citizens from many, many countries across the world own things of value in the United States (such as businesses that employ our citizens). Therefore, as the wealthiest country in the world, we have the most interest in seeing the world stay free, peaceful, and prosperous in order to protect and increase our own wealth and prosperity. For the United States, a win for us is a win for the world (and vice versa). In the same sense, China's shift from a Communist regime to a Capitalist regime has greatly reduced the threat it poses to it's neighbors. Any hostile actions by the Chinese against, say, Taiwan, would devastate it's economy. Chinese businessmen and workers, the former of which are becoming increasingly influential in the Communist party, would howl and possibly revolt. Chinese aggression is a loosing strategy for China and a loosing situation for the world. In contrast, a hostile action by Saddam Hussein against Kuwait is a win for him and a loss for the world. Socialistic countries are not held back from aggression by business/economic pressures; they see only external prizes that can be easily claimed by 'the state'. It's citizens don't raise a fuss about the need to protect their property because the citizens don't own anything (or very little)! Of course, the term 'Socialistic' as I am using it here does not apply to the Socialistic Scandinavian countries, which consist of private industry (with internal and external foreign investments) burdened by high taxes and regulations. In Arab Socialistic countries there may be some areas of relatively low taxes, but there is little private industry. 

    Perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle lies in the totalitarian nature of the Arab regimes. None of the 22 countries in the Arab league are democracies compared to 63% of countries throughout the world. In it's 2002 survey Freedom House found only 28% of Middle Eastern countries could be described as 'free' or 'partly free'. Despite having lower per capita incomes and GDP, more than 60% of African countries meet this standard. (111)

    Natan Sharansky, a famous Soviet Dissident and Israeli politician writes in 'The Case for Democracy' (a book read and lauded by President Bush), that the motivations of unelected regimes and elected ones are often similar - to stay in power. But the actions taken by the two governments are vastly different. Generally, an unelected regime will expend a great deal of energy on brainwashing, propogandizing, and actively suppressing it's citizens. Sharnaksy argues that a key tool in supplementing this task is creating an external threat. In other words, internal stability is more easily achieved by creating external enemies. In Free Societies this political fearmongering is still attempted (the draft myth) and often directed at opposing political parties, but is limited in scope by the inquires of an independent press and the freedom of public discourse. In Closed Societies, with a controlled media, citizens will often accept the leadership of a regime if they believe an external source is responsible for the dire conditions present in their country, or presents the greater threat. To a lesser degree this can also occur in Free Societies. For example, during both World Wars US citizens accepted rationing and cutbacks in consumer goods with little protest. (154)

    Almost every totalitarian regime in history has created these external enemies in order to help maintain power over their people. In the same way that the Soviets funded Communist insurgencies around the world, the Arab states fund religious insurgencies.  In fact, Arab terrorism was first funded, trained, and encouraged by the Soviet Union. (155), (156) Just like Hitler and Stalin preached hatred of the Jews, Arab regimes call for the destruction of Israel and broadcast anti-Semitic rhetoric. Saddam Hussein was a great admirer of Stalin and the hyper-controlling, top-down, socialistic economic system has been adopted, to varying degrees, by all the Arab governments. The hated, ever-present religious police of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Taliban are the mirror image of the equally hated and feared expansive network of government informers of Saddam Hussein, Castro, Kim Jung Ill, and the Soviet Union. 

    In fact, one could even construct scenarios in which Communist regimes are less of a threat to their neighbors than Arab type dictatorial socialistic regimes. Communists regimes historically have, at least initially, mimicked the effects of creating external threats by creating internal threats within the country by inciting violence and hatred of the upper and middle classes. Authoritarian socialistic type countries are not bloodletting their own people to the degree that the Communists are, and thus might be more inclined to create external threat in order to aid in their retaining control over the populace. (155)

    This is why such a glaring contradiction exists between the diplomatic friendliness enjoyed between the United States and some Arab countries and the propaganda they force feed their citizens. These regimes are willing to publicly smile (in our media) as they accept our aid, weapons, and petro-dollars in return for 'stability', as they privately suppress dissent via internal suppressions and these artificial external enemies. In reality, this 'stability' we create by supporting these undemocratic regimes has achieved the opposite of it's intention. In other words, the destructiveness resulting from the external instability of these regimes has clearly surpassed any 'gain' achieved by their internal stability. Moore's allegations are, again, 180 degrees from the truth. We didn't go to war for oil - we remained in a hypnotic, fallacious 'peace' for so long because of oil! (154)

    This disturbing tendency of Free Societies to appease Closed Societies is not new. Because Free Societies are peaceful societies, they fall prey to 'sound bite diplomacy', and politicians are always keen to avoid any charges of 'warmongering'. Ronald Reagan was denounced as such by his political opponents and the mainstream press as was Barry Goldwater and George W. Bush. All three men, respectively, did, would have, and (hopefully) will, triumph over Closed Societies by bringing clarity to the policies of Free Societies. The difficulty of bringing a Free Society to necessary action is a testament to the polar strengths and weaknesses of a Free Society.

     Note that (with only a few outlying exceptions) no two democracies have ever fought a war. The contradictory public statements vs. private actions of Closed Societies can mislead the media and citizens of Free Societies as to the intentions and motives of the Closed Societies. President H.W. Bush was very concerned about the possibility of 'instability' during the break-up of the Soviet Union and even made a (poorly received) speech in the Ukraine advocating against the reckless nationalism of the Soviet Republics. The same mistake has been repeated in the Middle East. For example, US and Israeli politicians celebrated as Palestinian Authority chairman Yassir Arafat shook the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Simon Peres while he was simultaneously encouraging and/or plotting the murder of Israeli civilians. (154)

    The constant U.S. media reporting of the 'anger of the Arab Street' is often just regurgitating what is being broadcast on state television in these repressive countries. For some reason there is little speculation whether this 'anger' is directed at the United States because of our support for their unpopular, corrupt governments, rather then our policies towards Israel or Iraq. Why is it that the people under the government that we most openly oppose, the Iranian theocracy, are the most (allegedly) pro-American in the region? (154)

    It has been said that Islam itself breeds terrorism. The fact that Mohammad was a conqueror, lived by the sword, and combined Church and State, may have injected an element of violence into the Middle East, but Mohammad also taught peace, justice, and mercy. While it may be possible Islam contributed to some aspects of terrorism, any portrayal of Islam as a root cause of terrorism is misleading. Islamic culture was at one time the most advanced in the world. In recent months Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, elected Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former security official running on an anti-terror and anti-corruption platform. In free societies, almost all Muslims reject terror. 

    What is more probable is that state control over Islam by the despotic governments of the Middle East is one of the causes of terrorism. The BBC reports that in Turkey: Chief Mufti of Istanbul faxes out the sermon, which must be delivered in identical form across the country. (158) The Saudi Royal family appoints and dismisses all imams. Almost all Middle Eastern Governments engage in similar practices. The Mullahs of Iran have managed to overthrow and become the new Tyrants of that country. State and Religion are now the same in Iran. It is true that only a small minority of Muslims corrupt the Islamic religion by engaging in terrorism, but it is also true that a majority of Muslim countries also corrupt the Islamic religion. US Supreme Court Justice Roy Black wisely said: "..a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion..."(159) And American revolutionary Thomas Paine stated: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." (159) To read a bit about our founding and the first separation of Church and State click here.

    Moore is right about the pattern of softness the United States government has followed in dealing with the Saudis (and the entire Middle East). His error lies in linking this problem exclusively to the Bush administration. The problem of Saudi and Arab terror funding, including Al Qaeda linkage, has been a bipartisan issue that the United States has refused to face for decades. Saudi and Arab think tanks and lobbyists curry favor with the political elite of both parties, often hiring members of Congress when they retire. 

    In an under reported June 30th editorial in the Washington Post, Senator Jon Kyl, Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, offers an explanation why 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi:

But for Saudi nationals, we looked the other way. Because Saudi Arabia is a rich country -- and, perhaps more important, because it is considered a U.S. ally -- before Sept. 11, 2001, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs at the time, Mary Ryan, had relaxed the visa application rules, even to the point of implementing "Visa Express," an unprecedented program that literally delegated visa processing to travel agents to speed it up. The basic legal requirement that applicants provide accurate and persuasive information was ignored. (78)

Unfortunately, the State Department does not seem to have learned much from the experience. It continues to maintain that its pre-Sept.11 visa policies in Saudi Arabia were reasonable because of a lack of specific intelligence indicating otherwise. (78)

In fact, the Sept. 11 commission found that two other suicide volunteers were turned down because al Qaeda feared they would have trouble, as natives of Yemen, getting visas of their own. (78)

    This same money has flooded into Presidential libraries of all past presidents. For example, Conservative columnist Robert Novak notes:

Bill Clinton not only received a $750,000 speaking fee for going to Saudi Arabia in January but came back with a hefty pledge for his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., according to high-ranking Saudis. Estimates range from less than $1 million to $20 million. (53)

    Before September 11th a critic can only claim that President Bush perpetuated this pattern of complacency. Since, Bush is the first president that has acted decisively on it and, ironically, is later criticized by Moore for doing so.

    On August 5th 2002 a story appeared in the Washington Post and began:

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States. (16)

    The story was quickly disavowed by senior Bush administration officials (17) and the murky situation quickly faded from public memory (18). Whether the story was leaked to pressure the Saudis, to gauge public opinion, or just uncovered by a resourceful journalist remains unclear. Whatever the case, it shows that serious options were being discussed. During recent months, a huge spike of Al Qaeda related violence has taken place in Saudi Arabia leading to speculation that there was a cease fire agreement between the Saudis and Al Qaeda. Rumors swirled about payoffs and subtle support given to Al Qaeda by various senior members of the Saudi government. (21) True or not, the present battles indicate that whatever official ties there were between Saudi intelligence and Al Qaeda are now broken. What occurred is certainly worth investigating. It was and probably still is true that Al Qaeda's main source of funding comes from individuals in Saudi Arabia. Even so, contrary to popular belief and past policies, strengthening and/or supporting the Saudi regime will probably not result in the defeat of the support (private or public) that encourages terrorism for the reasons described in the proceeding paragraphs.

    In fact, on November 6th 2003, President Bush gave a historic speech calling for democratic reform in the Middle East (15). The President and other member of the Administration have also indicated their hope that a democratic Iraq will aid this spread of freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East.

*    In Conclusion, the differences between all of these 'Causes of Terrorism' may just be a matter of semantics/definitions. Socialism, tyranny, oil, weakness of free societies, and economics pressures are basically all on the same side of the same complementary coin. Change one and the whole coin is likely to flip. Notice that poverty, Islam, US intelligence failures, and 'aggressive' US Middle East policies are not listed among the root causes of terrorism. This was purposely done because they are not. :) For the excerpt of 'Causes of Terrorism' and more articles in this area click here. 

    Moore then shows an intriguing video of Prince Bandar telling a reporter that he only met Osama Bin Laden once, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Bin Laden returned to thank him and other Saudi defense and intelligence officials for providing money and arms from both Saudi and American sources. During the Afghan war, Bin Laden sowed the seeds of his future organization by developing contacts with likeminded extremists and establishing fundraising ties throughout the Middle East. Of course, what Moore is hinting at is that the United States created Bin Laden. Following Moore's line of reasoning we should have opposed communism before winning World War II. After World War II and up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism was clearly the single biggest threat to human civilization and the United States was right to oppose it in any possible way. (23), (22) [Check out these links to see how communism killed more people than both World Wars combined!]

    At different points in the film, Moore reverts to personal attacks on members of the Bush administration. Different scenes are shown of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz combining his hair before an interview with an idiot grin on his face. Bush, Powel, Cheney and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge are shown in similar awkward poses being made-up before TV shoots. The best one is of Attorney General John Ashcroft singing a song. It actually set me thinking how self assured one would have to be to do this in front of one's coworkers. I thought he sang pretty good... Moore prefaced his singing with a dig at Ashcroft, describing how he lost his Missouri Senate seat to a dead man [ his opponent, Mel Carnahan died a month before the election in a plane crash] (24). Left out was that voters knew they weren't actually voting for the dead Mel Carnahan, they were voting for his widow. The Missouri governor promised to appoint Jean Carnahan if her husband won. (66), (87) But I admit parts were funny and I laughed with the rest of the audience.

    Fahrenheit 9/11 has brief but moving scene showing the devastation and grief from the September 11th attacks. No dead or gruesome bodies are shown, nor are the planes showed hitting the towers. Then Moore shifts to President Bush reading to children in a Florida school and alleges that Bush stayed and read to children for seven minutes after learning the second tower was hit. With a background of ominous musics, the camera shows a slow motion close-up of an obviously distressed president and Moore's condescendingly wondering if Bush was thinking about his corporate or Saudi ties that put him in this mess. Moore suggests that Bush stayed in the classroom for those extra minutes because, "no one told him what to do and he didn't know what to do." My disdain for Moore's personal and totally speculative criticisms of Bush at this time almost overwhelmed any curiosity I had on whether what he was reporting was actually factual. The full facts have yet to be fully disclosed, but it turns out that the general timeline given was true and one can make a good argument that Bush didn't show strong leadership by staying in the classroom. The Naples Daily News reports a more positive picture:

Bush told the federal 9/11 Commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." (76)

But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly. (76)

"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?" (76)

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." (76)

Tose'-Rigell said she plans to publish her account of the morning of Sept. 11 from pages she wrote in her journal following the attack. The principal said she didn't vote for Bush. "But that day I would have voted for him." (76)

    This is one of the few areas in the film where Moore actually reports something interesting and accurate that isn't generally seen in the mainstream press. It is a shame this revelation is almost completely obscured by his snide comments and irrational speculations.

    The film's big derisive laugh comes with a clip of Bush on a golf course, saying, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers," before swinging his club and advising, "Now, watch this drive." The insinuation is that Bush's mind is on golf instead of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001. Moore doesn't mention Bush was talking about a suicide bombing attack in Israel. (75) (87)

    Moore then attempts to show that members of the administration were obsessively focused on Iraq almost immediately after 9/11, and used the attack as an excuse for the real goal of corporate profit in Iraq. He returns to Richard Clarke and extracts a quote where it appears Clarke is accusing the Bush administration of asking him to fudge a connection between Iraq and 9/11. USA today reports:

Clarke said Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes that soon after the attacks, Bush demanded to know whether Iraq was behind them. When Clarke told him intelligence found no link, "He came back at me and said: 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way." (25)

After experts concluded again that Saddam Hussein played no role, Clarke said, his memo "got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. Do it again.' " (25)

Clarke's memo was returned because Tenet had already "told the president that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attack," the White House said. (25)

    We might wonder who to believe at this juncture, but we can at least commend Bush for wanting to know whether a sworn enemy of the United States, with ties to various terror organizations, was involved in the 9/11 attack. [See Putin's comments below... (27)]

    However, in the media and political firestorm over Clarke's book, testimony and interview, one thing Clarke said threw up a bright red flag:

"Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before [referring to Al-Qaeda]," Clarke said in the book, going on sale Monday. Clarke said Rice appeared not to recognize post-Cold War security issues and effectively demoted him within the National Security Council staff. (25)

    If we set aside any possible grudge over this demotion, being passed over for a top job in the Department of Homeland Security, his vote for Al Gore in the 2000 election, or even his praise of the Bush administration weeks earlier (28), it is still totally unbelievable and inconceivable that the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a women with impeccable credentials (29), who spent most of her storied career studying foreign policy, would not have heard of Al Qaeda.

    Moore later attacks Rice by showing her testifying that the intelligence she receiving prior to 9/11 was vague. This was immediately followed by a different clip of her announcing the title of a briefing, "“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.", the idea being that she had information, but was too incompetent to act on it. However, we knew Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US throughout the '90s. In fact, he had already done so, during the first world trade center bombing. The whole thing is another non-story.

    Moore also claims that Bush never met [or was briefed by, I forget the exact term used] with Clarke. This comes despite Moore's earlier description of Bush demanding Iraq connections from Clarke.... But, the White House countered this claim by claiming:

Bush did not need briefings from Clarke because he met daily with the CIA director. (25)

    Moore states that the Bush administration cut counter terrorism funding. In a further illuminating off the record conversation with Fox News, Richard Clarke dispels this:

JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?

CLARKE: All of that's correct. (28)

    According to the Washington Post, Attorney General John Ashcroft [the singer] was accused by a liberal group, which obtained department documents, of reducing a $1.5 billion counter terrorism appropriation to the FBI to $531 million and making terrorism a low priority. This was NEW funding in an emergency bill passed soon after 9/11. If this is what Moore was referring to, an increase of $531 million isn't a cut. The title of the article was "FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11: Request for New Counterterror Funds Cut by Two-Thirds". The Post attempts to fix it's shoddy reporting by adding:

White House spokesman Taylor Gross noted that FBI funding has increased by more than 50 percent between 2000 and 2004, not including supplemental funds such as those requested after Sept. 11. Under President Bush, "the FBI has been reformed to make counterterrorism its No. 1 priority," Gross said. "No matter what sort of rhetoric gets thrown about in a campaign season, it doesn't change the fact that this president is committed to fighting the war on terrorism." (30)

    Next, Moore levels the charge that the only reason we invaded Afghanistan was to construct a natural gas pipe line through the country. Moore cites a visit by Taliban ministers sponsored by energy giant Unocal in '97 and '98 to the United States as evidence of profit over principals. There is an amusing clip of a Taliban representative telling a women protesting the Taliban's brutal treatment of women, "no wonder no man will have you", or something similar.

    Moore leaves out that the State Department's condemnation on the day of one of the visits: “We don’t recognize any government in Afghanistan.” (83) It is a bit ironic, because the State Department was responsible for letting them in the country. Moore also neglects to mention that the United States had been a leading critic of the Taliban government even before September 11th and after the African Embassy bombings of '98 and in response to critical news coverage, Unocal withdrew it's tentative plans for the pipe line.

In a press release announcing the withdrawal from the project, Unocal said it would, however, continue to provide "humanitarian support and skills training to Afghanistan through CARE and the University of Nebraska at Omaha." The oil company added that neither program was designed to provide pipeline construction skills training. (31)

The Center trained 400 Afghan men before Unocal unexpectedly pulled out of the contract. (31)

"They were hot for it then, but they gave up," Yaseer said of Unocal. "But [the 400 Afghan men] all have their own businesses now, so it was a useful program." (31)

    Certainly doesn't seem very nefarious, but add in eerie music, ominous commentary and descriptions of connections between Unocal and Bush administration officials, and you have a full blown conspiracy! Especially when Moore falsely claims that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was involved with Unocal, but according to a Unocal spokesman.

"Karzai was never, in any capacity, an employee, consultant or a consultant of a consultant," Barry Lane said. He said Unocal also never had a plan to build a Caspian Sea pipeline. (79) (80)

    Karzai's spokesmen denied he was ever a consultant for Unocal as well. Upon further research it appears Moore's claim may have originated in "Le Monde", a left wing newspaper in France beset by scandal and accusation of bias. (123)

    Since the fall of the Taliban, the new Afghan government has begun negotiations with neighboring countries on construction a pipeline. But, it turns out that Unocal isn't involved at all! A Unocal press release states:

Unocal has absolutely no intention of participating in an Afghanistan pipeline project nor are we in discussions with any parties about doing so. (81)

    So President Karzai is apparently attempting to rebuild his country and encourage foreign investment, including the building of a long pipe line [a Caspian pipeline which is different from what Unocal had been contemplating] that will employ hundreds of Afghans and results in millions of tax revenues. Gasp!

    How could Moore get this all wrong? At some point it becomes difficult to believe that anyone is capable of such stupidity from ignorance alone.

    Moore claims that the real target all along was Iraq and that the US bungled the Afghan invasion, after all, we weren't there to get terrorists, just to build the pipe line! This omits the amazing military victory the United States achieved. At the time, America's newspapers, notably the New York Times, left their readers with the impression that the the effort was fading and that Afghanistan would be the next Vietnam. Sound familiar? With two thirds of the Al Qaeda senior leadership dead or captured, and the rest dodging US and Pakistani special forces in the treacherous tribal regions of Pakistan, it made little sense to swamp the country with US troops.

    So what was the next step? As previously mentioned, President Bush and his advisors were faced with a stark choice: to continue to respond to each act of terrorism as a symptom, or to try to cure the body of the disease:

...the threat posed to the United States came less from Al Qaeda per se than from the environments allowing such groups to form. As the Bush administration gauged the impact of Sept. 11, policymakers split into two camps: those who argued that the US must respond narrowly against Al Qaeda and its supporters, namely the Taleban in Afghanistan; and those who sought a broader mandate to reshape Middle Eastern countries regarded as terrorist breeding grounds. (26)

    We now know what path the President choose. To argue with the policy would be legitimate, but debating issues is not what this film is about. How do the terrorists view the struggle in Iraq? According to a 54 page Al Qaeda handbook intercepted and verified by western intelligence agencies:

"This would be (for the US) the first step toward the eradication of hardline Islam in the entire world," it said. (60)

    The most ridiculous point in the movie occurs when Moore shows slow motion shots of Iraq kids singing and dancing and families laughing together in harmony. This is supposed to represent Saddam's peace loving Iraq. It's a small detail, but it might be worth mentioning the 290,000 [low end] estimated Iraqis buried in mass graves, the thousands of Kurds and Shittes killed and gassed, the 1-2 million casualties from the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam's support for terrorism and the raping of Kuwait. (32) Even some hardcore liberals were uneasy with the logic used by some on the left against the war. (33) (Great article. If you get a chance; read it)

    Even more outlandish is Moore's claim that Saddam never murdered a single American! My boisterous laughter at this led to reproachful looks from those in the rows in front of me. Moore forgets that 147 Americans were killed in battle and 145 in non combat deaths for a total of 292 dead in the first gulf war and 467 wounded. (37) He neglects to mention that Iraq fired daily on US aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones, violating a cease fire agreement that Iraq signed. Also left out are Saddam's payment of $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, which directly or indirectly resulted in a number of US citizens killed in Israel, and his harboring of Abu Nidal and other terrorists who engaged in and financed terrorism around the world, including the slaying of US diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan. (38), (39)

    Moore than hits us with the footage of Bush saying, "..remember, this is a man who tried to kill my dad". To my surprise, there was scattered laughter throughout the theater. Saddam's attempt to assassinate the President of the United States is no laughing matter. During testimony before the September 11th commission, Judith S. Yaphe, considered to be one of the most respected authorities on Iraq (40) said:

Iraq's security services and surrogates showed little success, however, in planning or ordering operations against foreign targets. Baghdad ordered its Palestinian dependents to launch terrorist operations against the United States and its coalition partners in the fall and winter of 1990; they refused to comply. Iraq made an apparently singular effort to send terrorist teams abroad prior to the initiation of hostilities with the U.S.-led coalition in 1991; it failed. One of the Intelligence Community's reported successes in the period of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm was the arrest of the teams on landing outside Iraq. They were caught by their fake passports, all of which were in consecutive sequence. The attempt to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in April 1993 was a botched job, using apparently ill-trained operatives in an ill-planned operation. (39)

    On June 9th 2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that,

"..Russian agents had received information that Iraq's special forces were preparing terrorist attacks on the United States, and on its military bases around the world." (27)

    Putin's comments were portrayed by some as just an attempt to bolster Bush. This is a charge that cannot be proved or disproved.

    Attempting to prove Saddam's collaboration with Al Qaeda has proved more difficult, although it has been established and verified that there has been a lengthy relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda stretching back into the early nineties. Exactly what occurred in these contacts does not seem to be known with certainty. A recent article in the Weekly Standard offers interesting insights not found in the mainstream media (41), which, for unknown reasons, constantly downplays the possibility of an Iraq Al Qaeda connection, much to the ire of administration officials. (42)

    The 9/11 commission played the middle ground and described the connection as the following in a staff statement:

    I hate to repeat myself, but this seems to be a point of contention for many. Imagine again you are President of the United States. You know Iraq ordered it's Palestinian dependants to launch terror attacks against the United States in the first Gulf War and attempted to send special forces abroad. Iraq harbors the head of the group which recently killed the US ambassador to Jordan. Iraq harbors Abu Abbas [terrorist who planned the hijacking of an American cruise liner in which a wheelchair bound American Jew was shot and thrown overboard] (131). Iraq fires at US warplanes everyday. Iraq obstructs and hinders U.N. weapons inspectors. Iraq attempted to kill an ex President of the United States. Iraq has twice attempted to build nuclear weapons. Iraq has used chemical weapons. Iraq has built long range missiles in gross violation of treaties it signed. Iraq has committed genocide against it's own people. Iraq has invaded two of it's neighbors. Putin says "Iraqi special forces are preparing terrorist attacks". Saddam Hussein praised the September 11th attacks. And to top it off, you are told that there exists, at minimum, high level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda - a group that blew up the basement of the World Trade Center, blew up two embassies, blew up a US battleship, blew up a good bit of the Pentagon, blew up the Twin Towers and would have blown up the Capitol building had they not been 'rolled' by some old fashioned hardnosed American citizens who decided not to 'wait and see' if their hijackers promises of safety could be trusted (126), (127) . Do you think, in all this, you just might conclude that we could not afford to wait, contain, and in the President's words, "trust, a madman"?

    Moore then shows gruesome footage of Iraqi civilian deaths, burn victims in the hospital and wailing civilians denouncing the United States. Some quick mathematics, using low end estimations, provides some perspective. According to most sources, it is estimated that there were between one and two million total casualties with at LEAST 300,000 killed in the Iran Iraq war of the 80's. (43) Sources indicate a reasonable low end estimate of Iraqi military deaths from the first gulf war is 15,000 and civilian deaths around 2,000 (44). Saddam personally initiated both these wars. It's claimed that as a result of sanctions and post war chaos many more died. According to a March 17 briefing at the State Department by Andrew Natsios, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development:

...took place in waves, over a 25-year period. Methodically, Saddam's forces destroyed villages, transferred women and children to detention camps and took away the men in trucks, some of them barefooted and naked, never to be seen again. Tens of thousands of people were taken far from their homes to distant camps in the deserts where they were killed, buried by bulldozers under tons of sand. (46)

This is not some random violence by out of control troops. This was systematic mass murder. The death tolls rival the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the killing fields of Cambodia under Pol Pot. (46)

How many died in these mass murders? Some say 300,000, some say 400,000. There are estimates of upwards of a million. We are helping the Iraqis as they begin the terrible task of counting. (46)