Fahrenheit 9/11

[Badassdom 0]

i just saw the movie ,a bit late but still

i have to say i was really disapointment

the beginning was good (well i didn't know that)

but the rest was really old already known stuff

wel what you think?

[Wilco 944]

Bush fan, so I didn't see it, and myself and many others can't believe this man calls himself an American.

[red oct 2]

i heard some of it was stretched a little. i won't bother seeing it. i personally don't care to much about Moore, i think of him as the lefts Rush Limbah. there are a couple things i will agree w/ but for the most part, his whiney liberal bitching just gets old to the point i'd rather drive a spike through my head.

[Badassdom 0]

why not cause he doens't like bush?

he doesn't say the US is bad he says bush is bad for the US, as that is an opinion he does that because he thinks he will help the US with that, right?

[red oct 2]

the reason i don't care for moore is not because he dislikes bush, heh, everybody probaly knows how much i dislike a professional retard like Bush (take a look over here to see what i mean) but anyway, i dislike moore simply because as i said, he's the lefts version of Rush Limbah, in other words, he rants on just about whoevers in office. he complains on how evil, selfish, and greedy the wealthy americans are and will write entire books demonizing them and ironically lives a very comfrontable living and is awfully wealthy himself. if you want to listen to liberal news in the states, there are much better alternitives than Moore. Like NPR, Air America, even Newsweek Magazine has some pretty unbiased news.

[Milkman 1]

From what I have heard, it was alot better than Bowling for Columbine, which I did see. Columbine was a pretty bad movie from a political standpoint as well just a bad movie, his filming technique was odd to say the least. I never figured out what exactly his point was.

[blackdog~ 0]

Michael Moore is a lardbucket... who spews out as many lies as he takes in food (and that's a lot as we can all see).

[Akira 0]

Quote[/b] ]myself and many others can't believe this man calls himself an American.

Why?

Quote[/b] ]Michael Moore is a lardbucket... who spews out as many lies as he takes in food (and that's a lot as we can all see).

I'm sure you can do better than resorting to third grade debating tactics.

[Major Fubar 0]

<span style='color:red'>OK, this is a VERY touchy subject - please discuss without flaming...

...if people can't behave, thread will be locked & deleted, and offenders will get a +1 (or more) Warning Level and a minimum 48 hour PR...</span>

[bn880 5]

I like it, interesting, other side of the story in media, fun documentary to watch.

It's like with the law, if you're not guilty you have nothing to worry about, and if neocons are clean they have nothing to worry about. Why would they freak out.

[Major Fubar 0]

My personal opinion: I thought it was very informative, and also entertaining.

I wouldn't accept every single fact as gospel, but it's a nice counterbalance to the pro-Bush/pro-War propoganda spewed forth from many mainstream news sources....

[Tovarish 0]

IMHO, it was good, but could have been better. He plays fast and loose with some facts, (but then again, so has Bush) and tries too hard to lead the audience's train of thought. While I'm on his side of the argument and I enjoyed both Farenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, I have to somewhat agree with the "left wing Rush Limbah" comparison.

What he really does have a knack for is making films that can go from depressing to hilarious and back every other scene.

[Badassdom 0]

Michael Moore is a lardbucket... who spews out as many lies as he takes in food (and that's a lot as we can all see).

(I asume youre talking about the film) I can't really find a lie in the movie, to add on that he does't actually claim a lot, he suggests(?) a lot. but if you say he lies you should back it up

(not saying he does or doesn't)

[Major Fubar 0]

What I find interesting is the number of people (in general, not on this forum) who say "terrible movie, full of inaccuracies, leftist rubbish" and then go on to say "oh, BTW, I've not seen it"...

[bn880 5]

IMHO, it was good, but could have been better. He plays fast and loose with some facts, (but then again, so has Bush) and tries too hard to lead the audience's train of thought. While I'm on his side of the argument and I enjoyed both Farenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, I have to somewhat agree with the "left wing Rush Limbah" comparison.

What he really does have a knack for is making films that can go from depressing to hilarious and back every other scene.

I definately have to agree about the could be better part. It is good, but could be much better IMO as well. Kind of slow at times where he counts on people to "be in the zone" or something, instead he should have went more the Hollywood way with more bells and whistles + facts.

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ](I asume youre talking about the film) I can't really find a lie in the movie

Then here's a nice primer for you. And it isn't filled to the brim with dripping rhetoric. It simply lays out the lies/deceit in a list.

Quote[/b] ]Although Moore vehemently opposed the Afghanistan War, Fahrenheit criticizes Bush for not putting more troops into Afghanistan sooner.

[Badassdom 0]

well i read the first paragraph of the paper.....

sorry to say but it was really poor on arguments, it just kept on saying how deceitfull Moore was and how untrue the film is but it doesn't really have a argument to back it up

it only says that the things mentioned in the film aren't as bad as Moore portrays them, but it does't disprove them

(not saying the film is true or not, just that 1e paragraph of this paper is poor)

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]sorry to say but it was really poor on arguments, it just kept on saying how deceitfull Moore was and how untrue the film is but it doesn't really have a argument to back it up

Reading the first paragraph ain't enough. There are 59 arguments and boatload of information to go through. Ahh, more stuff:

Quote[/b] ]Moore’s second statement is technically true, but duplicitous. Of course no-one would want to "sacrifice" his child in any way. But the fact is, Moore's opening ("only one") and his conclusion ("not a single member") are both incorrect. Sergeant Brooks Johnson, the son of South Dakota Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, serves in the 101st Airborne Division and fought in Iraq in 2003. The son of California Republican Representative Duncan Hunter quit his job after September 11, and enlisted in the Marines; his artillery unit was deployed in the heart of insurgent territory in February 2004. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden's son Beau is on active duty in the Judge Advocate General Corps; although Beau Biden has no control over where he is deployed, he has not been sent to Iraq, and therefore does not "count" for Moore's purposes. Seven members of Congress have been confirmed to have children in the military...Attorney General John Ashcroft’s son is serving on the U.S.S. McFaul in the Persian Gulf...Why not count Duncan Hunter's son? Note the phrasing: "only one had an enlisted son in Iraq." Although Hunter's son "enlisted" in the Marines, he is a Second Lieutenant, which means that he is above the rank of an "enlisted man." But why hide from the viewers how many Congressmen really have sons serving in the military in Iraq?

Quote[/b] ]Fahrenheit 9/11 states, "In his first eight months in office before September 11th, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time."...Reader Scott Marquardt looked into a random week of Bush's August 2001 "vacation." Using public documents from www.whitehouse.gov, here is what he found:

Monday, August 20

Spoke concerning the budget while visiting a high school in Independence, Missouri.

Spoke at the annual Veteran's of Foreign Wars convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Signed six bills into law.

Announced his nominees for Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Agriculture, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management, member of the Federal Housing Finance Board, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disabled Employment Policy, U.S. Representative to the General Assembly of the U.N., and Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development for the Bureau of Humanitarian Response.

Spoke with workers at the Harley Davidson factory.

Dined with Kansas Governor Bill Graves, discussing politics.

Tuesday, August 21

Took press questions at a Target store in Kansas City, Missouri.

Spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on the matter of free trade and tariffs on Canadian lumber.

Wednesday, August 22

Met with Karen Hughes, Condi Rice, and Josh Bolten, and other staff (more than one meeting).

Conferenced with Mexico's president for about 20 minutes on the phone. They discussed Argentina's economy and the International Monetary fund's role in bringing sustainability to the region. They also talked about immigration and Fox's planned trip to Washington.

Communicated with Margaret LaMontagne, who was heading up a series of immigration policy meetings.

Released the Mid-Session Review, a summary of the economic outlook for the next decade, as well as of the contemporary economy and budget.

Announced nomination and appointment intentions for Ambassador to Vietnam, two for the Commission on Fine Arts, six to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry, three for the Advisory Committee to the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, one to the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and one to the National Endowments for the Arts.

Issued a Presidential Determination ordering a military drawdown for Tunisia.

Issued a statement regarding the retirement of Jesse Helms.

Thursday, August 23

Briefly spoke with the press.

Visited Crawford Elementary School, fielded questions from students.

Friday, August 24

Officials arrived from Washington at 10:00 AM. Shortly thereafter, at a press conference, Bush announced that General Richard B. Myers will be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and General Pete Pac will serve as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He also announced 14 other appointments, and his intentions for the budget. At 11:30 AM these officials, as well as National Security Council experts, the Secretary of Defense, and others, met with Bush to continue the strategic review process for military transformation (previous meetings have been held at the Pentagon and the White House). The meeting ended at 5:15.

Met with Andy Card and Karen Hughes, talking about communications issues.

Issued a proclamation honoring Women's Equality Day.

Saturday, August 25

Awoke at 5:45 AM, read daily briefs.

Had an hour-long CIA and national security briefing at 7:45

Gave his weekly radio address on the topic of The Budget.

Having shown a clip from August 25 with Bush explaining how he likes to work on the ranch, Moore announces "George Bush spent the rest of the August at the ranch." Not so, as Scott Marquardt found by looking at Bush's activity for the very next day.

Sunday, August 26

Speaks at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Speaks at the U.S. Steel Group Steelworkers Picnic at Mon Valley Works, southeast of Pittsburgh. He also visits some employees still working, not at the picnic.

Marquandt looked up Bush's activities for the next three days:

Declared a major disaster area in Ohio and orders federal aid. This affects Brown, Butler, Clermont and Hamilton counties.

Sent a report on progress toward a "solution of the Cyprus question" to the Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Announced his intention to nominate Kathleen Burton Clarke to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management (Department of the Interior).

Spoke at the American Legion's 83rd annual convention in San Antonio, discussing defense priorities. Decommissioned the Air Force One jet that flew 444 missions, from the Nixon administration to Bush's retirement ceremony for the plane in Waco, Texas.

Attended the dedication ceremony of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park in San Antonio.

Announced appointment of 13 members of the Presidential Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nations Veterans.

Moore wraps up the vacation segment: "It was a summer to remember. And when it was over, he left Texas for his second favorite place." The movie then shows Bush in Florida. Actually, he went back to Washington, where he gave a speech on August 31.

Quote[/b] ]What Moore did not tell you:

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

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

Also, since the President knew he was on camera, it was reasonable to expect that if he had suddenly sped out of the room, his hasty movement would have been replayed incessantly on television; leaving the room quickly might have exacerbated the national mood of panic, even if Bush had excused himself calmly...I agree with Lee Hamilton, the Vice-Chair of the September11 Commission and a former Democratic Representative from Indiana: "Bush made the right decision in remaining calm, in not rushing out of the classroom."

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

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

Moore smirks that perhaps President Bush did not read the Briefing because its title was so vague. Moore then cuts to Condoleezza Rice announcing the title of the Briefing: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Here, Moore seems to be playing off Condoleezza Rice's testimony of the September 11 Commission that the contents of the memo were vague.

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

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

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

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

[m21man 0]

For those of you who only wish to read the first paragraph, I will continue cutting out snippets:

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

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

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

Quote[/b] ]Moore makes a big point about the name of James Bath being blacked out from Bush National Guard records which were released by the White House. The blackout might appear less sinister if Moore revealed that federal law (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPPA) required the National Guard to black out the names any Guardsmen whose medical information was on the same pages as the records which the Guard released regarding George Bush's health records. In Bath's case, he had been suspended for failing to take an annual physical exam. So what Moore presents as a sinister effort to conceal the identity of James Bath was in fact the legally-required compliance with federal law.

Quote[/b] ]Moore points out the distressingly close relationship between Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Prince Bandar, and the Bush family. But Moore does not explain that Bandar has been a bipartisan Washington power broker for decades, and that Bill Clinton repeatedly relied on Bandar to advance Clinton’s own Middle East agenda.

Quote[/b] ]Moore shows himself filming the movie near the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C.:

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

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

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

Officer: Uh, not usually, no sir.

But in fact:

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

Quote[/b] ]According to the Secret Service website:

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

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

Quote[/b] ]According to Fahrenheit, Afghanistan's new President, Hamid Karzai, was a Unocal consultant. This is false. Sumana Chatterjee and David Goldstein, "A lowdown on the facts behind the allegations in 'Fahrenheit 9/11'," Knight-Ridder newspapers, July 2, 2004. The origin of the claim appears to be a December 6, 2001 story in the center-left French newspaper Le Monde. The story does not cite any source for its claim. (The story is available on-line from Le Monde's website; registration and payment are required.) Unocal has denied that Karzai was ever a consultant.

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

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

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

There's much more for you to look at...

[Badassdom 0]

mmm.....

sorry but still no lie, it says that he's deceiving en creating false suggestions

Quote[/b] ]

For those of you who only wish to read the first paragraph

[Major Fubar 0]

Did Moore ever claim his movie was a statement of facts, or is it an opinion piece?

Like I said before, I wouldn't accept his factoids as absolute truth without my own research, but his film is certainly no worse at "bending the truth" or "falsehood by omission" than, say, Fox News  

[Billabong81 0]

Did Moore ever claim his movie was a statement of facts, or is it an opinion piece?

I remember he once refered to his movie as a documentary...if you call it a documentary, in my book it has facts

EDIT: Or should have facts in this case

[The Real Armstrong 0]

I'm dying to see the movie but it hasn't come out in Sweden yet.

[fallchild 0]

I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed it for what it is, a left-wing opinion piece.

Michael Moore only goes wrong, in general, by creating the impression, intentionally or not, that his films are mostly unbiased fact. I think he could do a lot better by cutting a bit of bias and getting back some credibility.

Just my 2c  

[denoir 0]

For those of you who only wish to read the first paragraph, I will continue cutting out snippets:

Don't bother, this whole thing has been posted already in the elections thread. And it won't do any good as an argument against F911. It shows that there are no major factual errors in the movie and that the movie is an opinion piece. Moore called it a 'movie editorial'. Which is exactly what it is - a very good addition to the ongoing debate. It's very biased and makes not attempt at hiding it.

While as subtle as an elephant in a china shop, Moore is exactly what America needs. Something to counter the right wing hate-propaganda (Limbaugh, Coulter..). And he does it quite well.

Foremost, the movie reflects well on America. Such an excersise in free speech shows the difference between America and a banana republic dictatorship - a distinction that has been increasingly difficult to make with Bush in power. (Although the auto-censorship of the Bush supporters is quite remarkable.)

From an international perspective, this is the best pro-American argument available today. The movie goes to show that not all Americans are like Bush. And this is a very strong point given the situation today. In Europe America is seen as the biggets threat to world peace - more dangerous than the terrorists it supposedly fights. Moore counters the bad international image of America with pointing out that the problem is with the Bush Administration and not with America per se.

And it works quite well. Bush is an easy target. From a European perspective, Bush is a religious fundamentalist responsible for the deaths of tens if not hundrends of thousands of innocent people. Moore helps decoupling the blame from America in general and pointing at Bush and his merry men.

I would recommend anybody to see the movie, not because it will change your mind but because it is a phenomenon that has stirred quite some controversy. It's about keeping yourself informed about what people are debating. Auto-censorship won't do you much good. See the movie and form an opinion of your own.

As for it's artistic qualities.. well, I'm personally not too fond of Moore's filming style. There is a good movie hidden somewhere inside, but it is often lost in the ill-timed voice-overs and a myriad of poorly done cuts etc

On the other hand, the aesthetic qualities of the movie are not the reason why you would want to watch it.