Airman's review of Fahrenheit 9/11. Fire at will.

[elucidator]

@Liberal

… Like the Amish girl Ruth, I just don’t care.

I know I’m going to hate myself in the morning for asking this, but…huh? Whaddyfuck?

[rjung]

The simple fact remains that Liberal is still too chickenshit to actually see the movie, but doesn’t mind pontificating for hours on end against it. I guess it’s an efficiency thing – it’s easier to attack something when you don’t know what you’re talking about…

[Mr.Moto]

Why should tomorrow morning be any different?

[elucidator]

Yo momma still be here.

[El_Cid_Viscoso]

by rjung

So, in times of national security, the President of the United States only gets to know what the fuck’s going on when his Secret Service detail says so?

For the love of God, rjung, the least you could do is stay on-message. Aren’t you usually of the opinion that Mr Bush is lacking in mental capacity? That he’s incapable of making a good decision? If he is, in reality, a complete dumbass, don’t you think his staff and the Secret Service would be clued in, and treat him accordingly?

In your world, the President isn’t a go-to guy. He’s most certainly not Eric the Clown. But in light of the way you continue to portray him, if right then and there he’d taken charge, he’d have done little more than jump up and run in a circle, whooping like Curly.

No, wait. Whooping like Curly on crack. Right, rjung? <nudge nudge>
I’ve seen this all over the Web, as well as here: “Seven minutes is an eternity.” Good heavens. When did President Bush get a tardis?

Seriously, though, what’s the Secret Service to do, yank him out of the Pocket prematurely? Without clearance for his motorcade, or worse, a secured air corridor? The bottom line is that on the morning of September 11, 2001, Booker Elementary was the safest place in America. Why fuck with that? And as for his directing a security briefing, the President was one of the few adults in America who didn’t witness the televised attacks as they happened. What could he possibly have added to the discussion?

On a slightly tangential note, I sometimes wonder how those kids in the classroom at Booker are going to turn out. Will they have pleasant memories of that day? Do they still think of President Bush as the kind man who visited their elementary school during Story Time? Sometimes, I try to offer him a little charity: that he gave those seven minutes to the kids, that he kept his Secret Service at arms’ length so that the children could remember something good from that terrible day.

And then hardness of the reality sinks in and the illusion is lost. The President’s staff reacted the way they were supposed to – Card gave him the news. The President reacted the way he was supposed to – he kept his poker face. And waited for his next move. And sadly, no matter how much I want to believe anything else, there’s nothing more to it than that.

[mhendo]

@RT

@Lib

@RT

It’s been well documented that permission to fire on a civilian airliner in US airspace needed to come from the President.

It needs to if he says so. He may say something like, “Do not fire until I give the order,” but he may also delegate a standing order, something like, “Fire when and if you believe it is appropriate.”

Is there any evidence that he did so? Surely in the extensive analysis of the events of that morning, such a fact would have come to light.

and

@RT

@Lib

@RT

Is there any evidence that Andy Card told Bush to stay where he was?

Andy Card is the White House Chief of Staff and has no authority over the Secret Service.

Yes, but the guy we say leaning over and whispering into Bush’s ear was Andy Card, not a Secret Service agent. If anyone told Bush to stay put - on behalf of the Secret Service or on his own authority - it would seem like it would have had to be Andy Card.

I don’t have anything substantive to add to the thread. I just dropped in to give RTFirefly the prize for the Most Nested Quotations in a Single Post.

Congratulations!

[RTFirefly]

@mhendo

and I don’t have anything substantive to add to the thread. I just dropped in to give RTFirefly the prize for the Most Nested Quotations in a Single Post.

Why thanks. But I still miss the old days when vB would nest the suckers for you, rather than ignoring quotes-within-quotes.

Besides, it had to be done. Given Lib’s deliberately-ignoring-one’s-point approach to the debate, I needed the nested quotes to keep track of things. I’d look at his response to my latest response, and wonder: what the hell was that actually about?? Reading Lib was like having short-term memory loss, since it had so little to do with what had gone before. So I had to tie it all together so it would be clear where he’d gone off the rails.

(What is “long before he joined the SDMB,” Alex?)

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

Here’s an interestng article about what I was talking about, coincidentally written long before I ever saw the movie, and it makes the point that I was making. To quote:

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t legitimate questions that deserve to be asked about the influence that secretive firms like Carlyle have in Washington—not to mention the Saudis themselves (an issue that has been taken up repeatedly in our weekly Terror Watch columns.) Nor are we trying to say that “Fahrenheit 9/11” isn’t a powerful and effective movie that raises a host of legitimate issues about President Bush’s response to the September 11 attacks, the climate of fear engendered by the war on terror and, most importantly, about the wisdom and horrific human toll of the war in Iraq.

But for all the reasonable points he makes, on more than a few occasions in the movie Moore twists and bends the available facts and makes glaring omissions in ways that end up clouding the serious political debate he wants to provoke.

That’s remarkably similar to what I was saying, only they have more fact-based research to back up what they are saying. Still, it’s nice to know that there were others more knowledgeable than I who noticed the peculiarities of Moore’s filmmaking techniques.

[Zoe]

Lib: Most of what went on most assuredly wasn’t even IN the room. It was outside the room where a whirlwind of activity likely took place. It’s quite active enough when Secret Service plans events weeks in advance. The activity during emergencies would approach the level of frenzy, were it not for the fact that they act professionally. It’s what they’re trained to do. (bolding mine)

I seem to recall that these professionals turned the wrong direction when leaving the school grounds on the way to the airport. “The best laid plans…”

Lib: Liberal: He knew that the FAA and NORAD had certain standard operating procedures and statutory mandates, and that nothing he (or any other human being) could come up with in five minutes while in a Florida elementary school would be any better than those.

<snip>

All possible agencies were going at full speed, from the FAA to NORAD to the New York City Fire Departement.

Judging from the presentation of the Commission’s oral report, the FAA and NORAD were not preforming well at all!

I can’t speak for others, Lib, but I don’t argue with you hoping that you will concede the points. It has to do with balance and reason and the view from my perspective.

It also has much more to do with people who may disagree with me, but who remain open-minded. That’s what I have respected about Airman and apparently others do too.

Airman, I was pleased just to know that you have seen the movie! I disagree with you about the recruiters, but you were more than fair. I wish that there were more Americans from both sides willing to listen to each other.

[rjung]

I was tempted to start a thread about this, but I think I’ll just shoehorn it here instead:

Cubans flock to see 'Fahrenheit 9/11’
The day after the movie opened in U.S. theaters, Cubans had their hands on bootleg copies. For weeks before the Havana premier, underground video stores were renting “Fahrenheit” for five pesos a night.

“Cubans can identify with the agony in Iraq. We are also a target of George Bush,” said Lisandro Otero, author and playwright whose works have been translated into 19 languages. “It’s a brilliant expose of how Bush lied to the American people.”

… Others were surprised that the U.S. system tolerated such strident criticism of a sitting president.

Alex Martin, 30, praised both Moore for having had the “courage” to make the movie, and “U.S. democracy for protecting freedom of speech.”

So, in an oddly ironic way, Michael Moore is doing a better job of promoting American ideals than Bush is.

[roger_thornhill]

I saw the film on VCD last night, having read very little about it before, although I am currently reading ‘Stupid White Men’, which shares some of the same material (and spirit).

I thought it was pretty poor cinema and pretty poor as a documentary. The central point that Michael Moore wished to convey was that 9/11 was Bush’s salvation (in much the same way that the Falklands War was seen as being Margaret Thatcher’s salvation during her first term in office). At one point midway though the show, Moore actually has one of his characters say as much. I had been wondering if he was going to include a talking head of that.

The stuff on Bush playing golf (not a bad swing by the way) and on holiday generally served as the overture to lead up to the central theme of salvation. As propaganda it had the virtue I suppose of being of the bang someone over the head variety, rather than the subtle, and it (the overture) duly reached its climax with the Bush in the classroom scene (the only bit I’d heard about), which was meant to ridicule and deride the man but may have had the effect of making the viewer empathise with his anguish. It’s noteworthy that Moore’s unctuous commentary reached an apogee of faux calmness at this point. I wondered whether the fellow from Flint might not vanish altogether on his white charger.

Sadly not.

When we got to the events of 11 September 2001 themselves, I played a little guessing game with myself about whether Mr Moore would show the smoldering buildings themselves and guessed right on that one. He sure loves his little tricks and surprises. Would make a good lawyer…or even president. But then again he’s worked in a field where truth has always taken a back-seat to money and personal fame, so he’d probably be challenged by such a move. Especially into politics, where first he’d have to get elected and secondly he’d get lots of hack journalists sticking a microphone or a clipboard up his nose. He might just have to retreat to his Manhattan apartment, or even one of those boarded-up places in Flint, which his shaky camera showed us.

My wife has also seen Columbine and says it’s much better, much less crass and manipulative. It couldn’t be much worse than his latest money-spinner.