If you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11, ask & discuss it here.

[richiebaseball]

Originally posted by Joeblack
I believe that the main goal of Moore's movie is to get a representative percentage of the undecided/indifferent to vote against Bush and break the tie between him and Kerry come November.

Of course, that is just this man's opinion, Rich.

Thanks Joe. I also think that affecting the election was a very large part of his reason. (Personally I think $$$ was his main reason. He knows a gold mine when he sees it and Moore may be a lot of things but a dummy ain't one of them.) Which brings me to another question. What reason would he have to paint the whole picture when it comes to President Bush? Much better to paint a picture that puts the President in the worst light possible. If that means interspersing fact with half-truths and innuendo then so be it. That would have a better chance at getting his message out to an audience.
I guess that's what bothers me the most about this film. I see so many people that find the film "fascinating" and "disturbing" and are taking it for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And the search for the whole truth can't be found in a Michael Moore documentary. Come to think of it, it's not often found here either.

Just one man's opinion.

Richard

 

[MPLsDad]

I just can't bring myself to see this movie. Clearly MM (not Mickey Mouse) has an agenda so he put his side of the story out there for others to view. However, unlike our DISboard Community, I have no equal forum to respond. I'm certainly not going to produce a movie that either supports or negates his views, so why even bother giving him my hard earned penny for his thoughts. Just my thought about this.

 

[faithinkarma]

Speaking of lying to further ones own agenda:


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5601245



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Sept. 11 commission, which reported no collaborative links between Iraq and al Qaeda, said on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney had no more information than commission investigators to support his later assertions to the contrary.
The 10-member bipartisan panel investigating the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington said it reached its conclusion after reviewing available transcripts of Cheney's public remarks asserting long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden's Islamist militant network.

"The 9-11 Commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9-11 attacks," the commission said in a statement.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment on the commission statement.

Assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and could be prepared to provide chemical or biological agents to al Qaeda for attacks on the United States were a main justification for President Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq. No such weapons have been found.

Soon after the Sept. 11 commission said in staff report last month that there was no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two sides, Cheney continued to assert that long-standing links existed."

 

[richiebaseball]

Originally posted by faithinkarma
Speaking of lying to further ones own agenda:

And in your opinion what was his agenda?

Richard

 

[faithinkarma]

He lied. Does it matter what his agenda was? Is there an agenda anyone would find defensible?

 

[Nancy]

My show of hand.

I have NEVER seen a movie based on a review. I go to see it based on story line, who is in it and if I think I will enjoy it. I love Mel Gibson movies but didn't see Passion because I didn't think I would like the movie. I will not go see Tom Cruise movies no matter what they are because I don't like the way he acts. I don't go to movies that are porn. I like to go to a movie and come out of it feeling good, not disgusted, angry or sick to my stomach. I will not see a MM film because the guy comes across as a big egotistical jerk. That is my opinion on him...I have none on the actual movie. I had thought about seeing it just to see what all the bantering was about on the CB....but I won't. I won't waste my money on anything he does.

 

[richiebaseball]

Originally posted by faithinkarma
He lied. Does it matter what his agenda was? Is there an agenda anyone would find defensible?

Since you brought it up, I just thought you would have an opinion. You said he had an agenda and I just wondered what you thought that agenda was.

Richard

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by faithinkarma
He lied. Does it matter what his agenda was? Is there an agenda anyone would find defensible?

What are you saying he lied about? That there was no collaborative relationship? That there are longstanding links between Saddam and al Qaeda?

 

[kbeverina]

There are so many articles out there now exposing this movie for what it is, it's hard to keep up with them and hard to know where to begin in outlining its deceit.

Let the flames begin.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by jason
Sorry I'm a few days late on this, but just to clarify. Kbev asked me a question I belive 4 or 5 times. Kbev just refused to take my honest answer as the truth I guess. ThreeCircles was just trying to help get my point across.

That's not how it happened. I asked a question directed to those who had seen the film. You responded:

I will answer. I thought Bush was talking about terrorist and if my facts are correct al Qaeda is a terrorist group.

That statement implies that you thought Bush was talking about al Qaeda, but doesn't outright say it. Rather than proceed on the implication, I wanted to clarify that this is what you were saying:

Right. So you did think when you saw that clip that Bush was talking about al Qaeda after 9/11?

At that point ThreeCircles said:

As inconspicuous and well hidden as it may be, Jason already answered your question.

And my response to that is, no jason didn't.

I asked those who'd seen the clip if they believed Bush was talking about al Qaeda in that clip. You did not directly answer that, as is shown above. I asked if you thought he was talking about al Qaeda. Your response was that you thought he was talking about terrorists, and aren't al Qaeda terrorists?

You next said that you did respond. I saw that. But you did not respond to my request for clarification on your statement. When I pushed for that, you evaded by saying, "What's the difference?"

Sorry, but big difference if the movie wants you to think Bush is talking about al Qaeda after 9/11 and he's really talking about a Palestinian terrorist act in Israel. I think your "What's the difference?" response is an evasion.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by ThreeCircles
Here's an article that talks about connections between w and the Carlyle Group. Too long to post but here's the link:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/19/news_pf/Columns/Pipeline_plan_leads_b.shtml

Maybe you can explain in your own words why you are troubled by the Bushes, bin Ladens and the Carlyle Group. No links, just you telling me why this is an important point for the movie.

 

[dmadman43]

Originally posted by richiebaseball
Thanks Joe. I also think that affecting the election was a very large part of his reason. (Personally I think $$$ was his main reason. He knows a gold mine when he sees it and Moore may be a lot of things but a dummy ain't one of them.) Which brings me to another question. What reason would he have to paint the whole picture when it comes to President Bush? Much better to paint a picture that puts the President in the worst light possible. If that means interspersing fact with half-truths and innuendo then so be it. That would have a better chance at getting his message out to an audience.
I guess that's what bothers me the most about this film. I see so many people that find the film "fascinating" and "disturbing" and are taking it for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And the search for the whole truth can't be found in a Michael Moore documentary. Come to think of it, it's not often found here either.

Just one man's opinion.

Richard

Indeed. "JFK" was fascinating and distrubing. "Nixon" was fascinating and disturbing. Was it the truth? hardly.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by Truth
kbeverina,

On the flying the bin ladens when everyone else was grounded confusion, here is what Mike has said happened and he did a lousey of drawing the distinction in the film but if you know what happened you are able to follow it better but still it's sloppy editing at best and an opening for people to get the wrong idea at worse. It is very important that it be made very clear when points as important as this one are made.

I would like to interject this--you have said several times that Moore does a lousy job of drawing the distinction--perhaps because he's tying together unrelated things, trying to imply things that aren't there?

ok 1. The bush 41 being grounded refers to the Day of 9/11 after the attacks when nothing was being allowe to take off.
This is too loosely tiesd to the fact that when bush and all these other people were grounded there were several flights that were allowed to take off and travel inside the United states and collect all the 140 Saudi people to a common point where as soon as flights out of the country were allowed they all took off together.

I've read the Tampa report that supports these 9/13 flights. The report also says that private charters were allowed to fly that day. That there were other private charters flying that day. Also, the Tampa article reports that the family members were accompanied by FBI and local law enforcement. Maybe they were conducting their interviews of family members during this time.

Personally it seems a point that has much less impact now that the truth has been revealed compared to before when the government admitted what was done and was denying anything about it. During the denial period people had known that planes had taken off for the express purpose of helping the bin ladens and other Saudis and it seems people assumed they were flown on out of the country then rather than being ferried to a collection point to await the reopening of the airspace.

I disagree--people are still walking away from this film with the impression that Bush let the bin Ladens leave the country before anyone else was allowed to fly, even his dad, even Ricky Martin. And this adds to the overall implication of complicity between Bush, the bin Ladens and the Saudis in general. It's making the impact it was intended to make.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by minniepumpernickel
It's kind of like" The Passion of the Christ" movie. I didn't believe everything in that movie, but it didn't bother me if other people did, and liked it!

Great analogy. Say you didn't see the movie. Your friend did and says to you, "Wow! I'm so glad I saw that movie! I had no idea that the Jews murdered Jesus!"

*disclaimer--have not seen that movie either, am not saying that the movie depicts this in any way, simply reflecting popular criticism of it to make an apt analogy

Are you saying that you wouldn't be bothered by what your friend believes to be true based on watching that movie? You wouldn't strike up a conversation with her about it?

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by septbride2002
I just came back from seeing the movie and while I have not read all 8 pages of this thread here is what I took away from the movie:

1) The US media needs to do a better job then reporting what is popular. They even admitted several times that they were biased in their reporting. I wish for accurate, unbiased coverage of events. One of the moments of the movie that made me realize this fact is that they noted members of the Taliban (I belive) visited the Bush family in TX and only the British Press reported on it.

This is incorrect. Taliban representatives, with permission from the Clinton administration, came to Texas to meet with Unocal to discuss a pipeline project. They never met with Bush, governor of Texas at the time. This project, by the way, was supported by the Clinton administration, who did meet with those representatives at that time.

The movie apparently shows clips of a pipeline being built--but this particular project was scrubbed in 1998. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Bush administration and no, Afghanistan's president is not a former Unocal consultant, as presented by the movie.

3) It was shocking to me to see how everyone was so interconnected. Friends of President Bush were put into positions of power.

I would really like to know specifics on this. Which friends, which positions?

4) I have to admit that Michael Moore had a really good point about letting the Bin Ladin family leave the country. I think it is disgraceful that our adminstration let them leave without so much as having the CIA or the FBI run an investigation on them. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten anything, and maybe they would have but now we will never know.

Thank you for posting this. Now I don't have to go to the trouble of showing Rutt and Tuke that Michael Moore can rebut all he likes about the semantics of what he said--people are still walking away with the impression that they left the country while flights were still grounded without being investigated. Untrue.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by septbride2002
The way it was presented is that the Bin Ladin families left the US on September 13th. There was an interview with a former FBI investigator (and I cannot remember if he recently retired or if they ever even mentioned it) stating that he thought it very odd that the family members of the most wanted man in America would be ushered out of the country so quickly.

~Amanda

Key words being "The way it was presented". Moore wanted you to think this was the case. But it wasn't.

And in his rebuttals to the criticism, he admits that it wasn't.

 

[Jimbo]

From the 9/11 commission's report:

The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country.

The FBI interviewed 22 of the 26 people that flew out of the country, and the reports says that "many were asked detailed questions."

Richard Clarke himself signed off on the whole thing, and he can't be considered a friend of the administration. And the other thing worth noting is that the family left the country on 9/14, not 9/13. That's significant because the order grounding all flights was lifted on the 14th.

So many people have been deceived on this point. I asked before, but I'm still curious: did the film merely imply that the family left without being questioned, or did it come right out and say it? Either way, you'd have to have a pretty loose definition of a documentary if this film qualifies as one..

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by Jimbo
So many people have been deceived on this point. I asked before, but I'm still curious: did the film merely imply that the family left without being questioned, or did it come right out and say it? Either way, you'd have to have a pretty loose definition of a documentary if this film qualifies as one..

It implies it, but the public reaction, and this thread, confirm that people walked away with the wrong impression, despite Moore's attempts to say he never said it directly.

Rutt and Tuke posted Moore's rebuttal earlier:

In the June 28, 2004 issue of Newsweek Magazine, Newsweek writer Michael Isikoff makes completely false and misleading statements about facts and issues contained in Fahrenheit 9/11. Isikoff has also gone on television shows repeating the charges.

Here are some of the falsehoods he is telling, and the truth:

Saudi Flights: Isikoff writes that "The movie claims that in the days after 9/11, when airspace was shut down, the White House approved special charter flights so that prominent Saudis - including members of the bin Laden family - could leave the country. Author Craig Unger appears, claiming that bin Laden family members were never interviewed by the FBI. Not true, according to a recent report from the 9/11 panel."

Isikoff's account of the movie is flatly untrue.

What the movie says is this: "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 September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country."

These facts are based entirely on the findings contained in the 9/11 commission draft report, which states, "After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin." National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12;

Isikoff claims that Fahrenheit 9/11 says that these flights out of the country took place when commercial airplanes were still grounded. The film does not say this anywhere. The film states clearly that these flights left after September 13 (the day the FAA began to slowly lift the ban on air traffic).

Moreover, in an interview with author Craig Unger, the film makes reference to the fact that these individuals were briefly interviewed before they were allowed to leave.

So there you go, in Michael Moore's own words--the Saudis didn't fly out before restrictions were lifted and they were interviewed before they left.

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by RNMOM
I don't understand why the conservative right can't look at this film themselves and make their own minds up. It seems to me they all parrot the same crap about a film none/very few have seen. How can that be? Do they always allow others to make up their minds for them?

I see the information from Washington day after day and I take it for face value. I don't go spouting off at every sentence/statement that it is lies and deceits. I don't go nuts at the newscasters or networks. I make my own mind up about it and discuss it with my family and friends as I see necessary.

Isn't that what we're doing? Discussing? There's plenty of criticism from very liberal commentators. Your statements regarding parroting the conservative right are just untrue.

MM produced an informative film about something he is passionate about. He has some very interesting information in it that I had not heard.

Uh, yeah...cause he made it up! I reserve the right to generalize until you'd like to specifically list what interesting information you hadn't heard.

Everyone I know who has seen it finds it quiet fascinating. The two showings the members of our family viewed had thunderous applause at the end. Okay, so they are all bleeding heart liberals, right. But that is their RIGHT. We liberal democrats are allowed to express our opinions. No one is shoving it down anyone's throats. If you did not see the film or don't like the film, then don't post on a topic about the film...okay?? Is that clear enough?

What the heck?! Do you not see the irony in what you just said?

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by septbride2002
How can you form an opinion on something that you haven't even seen?

~Amanda

If you post a list of things that you came away with from this movie, and those things are factually incorrect, I'm going to form an opinion on it without even seeing it.