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"Fahrenheit 9/11" is the temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn.
Unfortunately for the anti-war movement, Michael Moore is very popular and has a very popular movie. It's important for us to point out the errors of the Bush administration and the wrongheaded actions of the war in Iraq. However, we should do so with truth and honesty. Michael Moore might be opposed to the war, but he is not an honest man.

Take a look at Spinsanity.org, a site that serves as a watchdog of manipulative political rhetoric. The editors are not conservative at all. Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan have been politically active in Democratic and progressive politics.

Let's count the ways film distorted facts
Despite all the critical notice and box-office success it has achieved, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 continues a pattern of dissembling and inaccuracy found in most of his work.

Moore's antics have become notorious. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, Roger & Me; made numerous factual errors in his books Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?; and altered footage of a Bush-Quayle ad and unfairly edited a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston (among other things) in his Academy Award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine. Although Fahrenheit 9/11 avoids glaring factual errors, it is filled with deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased but unsubstantiated insinuations.

For instance, Moore suggests that relatives of Osama bin Laden, along with other Saudis, obtained special permission to fly out of the United States while air traffic was grounded after Sept. 11. He states: "In the days following Sept. 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded," adding, "But really, who wanted to fly? No one, except the bin Ladens." Moore later says, "It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after Sept. 13th." Moore fails to note that U.S. airspace reopened to commercial aircraft on Sept. 13 and to general aviation on Sept. 14. While technically correct, his language leaves the impression that the bin Ladens left the country before others were allowed to....

... he states that "in 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea." Contrary to Moore's implication, however, the fact that Bush was governor of Texas at the time of the Taliban/Unocal meeting does nothing to prove he was somehow involved.

Moore implies that the Afghanistan campaign was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline: "When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete, we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former adviser to Unocal. Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal adviser... . Faster than you can say black gold, Texas tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea."

But Unocal dropped its support for the pipeline in 1998. Afghanistan did sign the agreement in 2002, but Unocal is not involved in the project, which is still in its planning stages....

posted by Hal 5:24 AM