Resurrecting "Fahrenheit 9/11": Michael Moore vindicated

LAT: Moore Betta
Dan Neil
February 4, 2007

Some scenes are funnier, and sadder, than they were 21/2 years ago: Britney Spears being earnestly interviewed about global politics while she savages some poor piece of gum: "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes," says the Brit. Then there's the principal of the Executive Chute Corp. on NBC's "Today" show, gamely struggling to fit a thunder-thighed assistant with the device that—should you find yourself atop a burning skyscraper—you may quickly don and jump to safety, maybe. And I love the shoppers congratulating themselves for braving a terrorist attack by patronizing the strategically vital mall in Saginaw, Mich.

Was it, as Michael Moore asks in his 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," all just a dream? Alas, no. The American public was just that . . . what? To convey the sense with which we were so easily frightened into waging war in Iraq, only agricultural metaphors will do: Stampeded, cowed, buffaloed, bullshitted. In the 32 months since Moore's film won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and went on to be the highest-grossing documentary in cinema, it has—while sitting more or less quietly on the video store shelves—been transmuted from a pop-politics firebomb to a work of rueful prophecy.

As I write this, it's several days after President Bush's speech about a troop escalation in Iraq. According to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, 47% to 49% of Americans now believe the United States is likely to lose the war in Iraq, and the president's Iraq approval ratings are hanging in the upper 20s. Estimates of the war's cost range from about $360 billion to an inconceivable $1 trillion or more, according to Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The American death toll is more than 3,000 and the U.N.'s estimate of Iraqi deaths for 2006 alone exceeds 34,000.

Who could have predicted it would all go so badly? Michael Moore, for one. Not because Moore was such an expert at war and grand-scale history, but because he had a hunch, an intuition, that Bush was a piker. And for whatever faults and prosecutorial shadings of fact he is guilty of in "Fahrenheit 9/11"—these have been ably documented by writer Christopher Hitchens and the quite levelheaded Dave Kopel—Moore's singular premise has been vindicated by events: An incapable and incurious man with a delinquent sense of history took us to war under false pretenses, with the wrong people, with all the swagger of a warrior who had never been to war. I can't imagine anyone, no matter how rabidly Republican, who would not wince at the footage of President Bush prancing around the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in a Navy flight suit. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "WHAT A MAROON."...

http://www.latimes.com/features/magazine/west/la-tm-neil05feb04,0,5646707.story?coll=la-home-magazine

I watched it again a few days ago it was amazing what is on it and how much I'd forgotten...that hit home even harder today!

Didn't Hitchens' debunking get debunked?

The title promised "The lies of Michael Moore."

But I doubt many got past the first two bloated paragraphs to reach
the bottom line: "'fact-checking' is beside the point."

http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/

Equally fraudulent is Dave Kopel's (NOT Ted Koppel's) stupid "59 Deceits" site.

In Deceit #3, Kopel claims that Jeffrey Toobin (who'd appeared in F911 saying
"under every scenario Gore won the election") admitted this applied only in
certain scenarios. Follow Kopel's link, and you see Toobin said nothing of
the sort.

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


Both of these pieces were clearly designed to be weighed, not read, and their
obesity mistaken for substance.

She wasn't much of a Bush fan before but the movie pissed her off so much, she couldn't sleep.

I looked at the faces of all those soldiers in the film and I wondered if they were still alive. I cried when Lila Lipscomb stood before the White House with rage and anguish.

I don't want to be right anymore. I want it to be over.

I wonder what became of that woman and what she thinks of her monkey President now.

People like her are never wrong, you know.

:eyes:

Blame Al Qaeda!

I wonder if she shows that bit of movie magic at her dinner parties?

can't quite pinpoint why--but i do

:thumbsup:

I'm so weary of all of this.

The original has become very hard to watch now, last time I did, the tears started to roll.

I remember first watching it back in '04. When it got to the part about the Carlye Group, I didn't pay much attention...I was more interested in 9-11 and the war...now I realize the Carlye Group and Halliburton is the reason why we're there in the first place.

Or did I dream that?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433561/

along with "Sicko" his documentary on the US health care system, or lack thereof.

Comdemns Michael Moore and Fahrehiet 9/11 without ever having seen them. He absolutely refuses to see it, but has 1,000 criticisms of it....Bwa ha ha ha ha.

Typical freeper refusal to face facts. Small-minded prejudice, that's the republicon mindset.

Thankfully, only 30% or less of the American public is so weak and small-minded as to judge something they have not got the guts to watch. That's what makes republicon chickehawks so numerous and pathetic.

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00138

Two scholars, one a Nobel Prize winner, revisit their estimate of the true cost of the Iraq war – and find that $2 trillion was too low. They consider not only the current and future budgetary costs, but the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East.

And certainly more than enough to pay for every social program and to fully finance the safety net, right?

Not to mention the cost in lives and all the anguish around the globe.

BTW, welcome to DU!

they don't want to fund social programs. In fact, I remember hearing something about drowning government in the bath tub.

to think of anyone getting it who actually NEEDED.

Welcome to DU!
:hi:

is as good as burning it!

Moore didn't just have a hunch. And who is this we, kemosabe?

Millions of people, including Moore, knew that Bush and the neo-cons were eager for war with Iraq. They didn't just have a gut feeling, they actually examined the evidence, studied Bush & Co's past acts and the reasons Bush would want to invade Iraq of all places, read about the strategic oil/petrodollar issues in play, studied up on PNAC, and refused to be cowed into war based on fearmongering of the worst sort. Moore was a realist- he didn't just get lucky in his opinion of Bush's war.


Yes, I know the article is supposed to be flattering. But only in a backhanded way.

quite dismissively, putting forth the completely inaccurate rightwing stereotype of him as some sort of raving lunatic of the left who just happened by dumb luck to be right this time. Certainly not an admission that Mr. Moore had done his homework and knew from the beginning that the reasons for war were bogus.

Today I heard Al Franken yabber on about how everyone including himself had been duped into thinking the war was necessary. Oh, really? Not so fast. Millions of people who were paying attention weren't duped. Michael Moore certainly wasn't duped. You weren't duped and neither was I.

If people were fooled, it was because accepting the lies from this criminal cabal was easier and required less effort than seeking out the truth.

he's another ignorant DLC type that we really don't need. He's NOT aware of the poop under the scoop that he gets from the media. He, thinking he's a "liberal", prolly DID support the war to begin with. Folks on DU didn't fall for the war talk for even a minute. We knew who we were dealing with.

:kick:

I fail to see what if anything is false in that movie.

"What are the lies of F911?"

There are no lies. Except he said Bush's inaugural motorcade was
"pelted with eggs." Only one egg has been documented. He eggzaggerated.

I went to see F911 very reluctantly. I thought Moore was an arrogant
self-important jerk, and I'd heard the movie was mean-spirited and full
of lies. Finally I went, feeling it was my duty. I saw that fact-checking
was done by a respected law firm.

I was shaken by the film, and decided to find the lies. I figured I'd start
with the easiest--Gore really won the 2000 election. I mean, how loony can
you be?

I found out it was true. I found out the report saying it was true was just
about to be released in early September of 2001.... when history intervened.
I found that when the report finally was released 11/11/01, all the newspaper
articles on it spun the story so that the fact that Gore got more votes,
reported way at the bottom, seemed immaterial.

Then the stats on the 2004 election were all hinky, and I started studying
9/11, and I realized our nation is in peril.

The best libel/slander attorneys in the business certified that EVERYTHING in that movie is TRUE.
There is NO way to say that it's wrong. That's why Freepers hate it and refuse to see it.

but since his fact checkers could not authenticate them, he
declined the bait.

Haven't verified it, myself.

That will be a barn-burner!

I hope it opens the eyes of all those asleep concerning Single Payer Universal Health care!

Valentine greetings for Michael Moore! :loveya:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6387831398516462334&q=farenheit+911

I think they have speed a little fast his voice sounds a bit odd to me.

But I am glad this came out. It was brave of MM to make the movie when he did - when the 2 candidates the Democratic party machine put on the ticket were war supporters.

We watched it last week, and I hope he is working on a sequel.

if part 2 is to be made it would be 'told ya so' because it's all coming out.

hilarious episode on NYC's garbage being sent to some county in TX with crap-flinging trucks out in the fields...

"This is an impressive crowd. The haves... (laughters...)... and the havemores (louder laughters...). Some people call you the elite. I call you my base." - aWoLiar Bu$che

$acrifice? Anyone? :grr:

again..

It's been a long time since I saw f911..

I got through the first 45 seconds.. I couldn't watch it. Maybe another time. Right now, I need to stay strong to fight this twisted administration.. and I can't see through the tears after just 45 seconds of this movie.

Maybe another day. Ugh.