You’re all right, Airman.
The movie doesn’t claim that the bin Ladens were allowed to leave on the 13th. Moore clearly says they left after the 13th. This seems to be a common misperception that Moore bashers take away from the film, but it’s bullshit. The second time I saw the film I payed close attention to this section and Moore didn’t say they left on the 13th.
Aro, I guess I’m basing my opinion on what I went through that morning. I was watching the news, wondering what happened. Was it an accident? A suicidal pilot? Terrorists? An auto-pilot mixup? Suddenly, when the second plane hit, those questions were replaced by a “Holy hell, we’re under attack” moment. It hit me like a ton of bricks. But it didn’t seem to get much of a rise out of him. I can understand him thinking of the children, but I don’t think anyone would have been to shocked had he politely excused himself. I don’t think anyone would have been shocked if one of his advisors would have stepped into the classroom and said “sorry kids, we’re going to have to cut this a little short”.
Oops! That should be “alright”. Kinda changes the whole meaning the other way, actually.
I mean you are an okay guy. Disregard that first post.
Here is a transcript of what was said. Other links are provided within that link. I’ll let you take a look, because the date seems to be a matter of some debate.
Funny, I can see both yours and mine.
It isn’t a matter of wealth, but of freedom. Freedom means being allowed to pursue your own happiness in your own way. In order to get a job, decent housing, health care, and education for your children, you had to join the Ba’ath Party.
Punishing children for the sins of their fathers — and even raping schoolgirls — was a hallmark of Saddam and his sons.
No, children in Fallujah played in streets flooded with sewage. The US has cleaned it up and built a new sewage treatment facility. It was children in northern Iraq who were gassed.
Apparently, there was.
Good review, **Airman, **, thanks. I had a lot of the same reactions.
Well, i don’t have a great deal to add about the movie. I’ve already spent too much time writing about it on these boards. If anyone wants to put themselves through the pain of reading my opinions, you can find them here, where i critiqued Christopher Hitchens’ review of Moore’s film.
On some of the issues raised by Airman in this thread:
On the recruiters:
I’m going with Otto on this one. You can pretend that they are just like car salesmen if you like, but that strikes me as damning with faint praise. Personally, i would hope that we expect higher standards of integrity from our military than we do from our car salesmen.
And, as Otto said, it wasn’t simply a case of salemanship or hyperbole or stretching the truth. It was barefaced lying. They asked a guy to give them his name and address and phone number, and told him unambiguously that this was so they could cross him off the list and he wouldn’t be bothered again by military recruiters. After he gave his details and left, they then stated outright that he would be added to a list of people to be contacted again by the armed forces.
I’m not sure if this level of dishonesty is actually sanctioned by the military brass. I’m willing to believe it’s not, and that these guys were breaking the rules. Either way, it’s not a very pretty picture of military honesty.
On the Bin Laden family’s departure:
Dio beat me to the punch on this one. Show me exactly where he says they left on September 13.
On Moore and the Congress critters:
Sure, it was hyperbolic. Sure, he (and all of us) knew that a parent can’t sign a child up for the military. It was a rhetorical device used in support of a broader point about who serves in the US military. Personally, i think he belaboured the point a bit, but if the only real criticism that you have of this section was that it was “showboating,” then i would say, “Yep, he’s guilty as charged. But his point still stands.”
On the Condoleeza Rice quotation:
I actually think Moore should have used the whole quotation in his film, because the whole thing certainly doesn’t do Rice and the Administration any favours. It demonstrates how tenuous the link between Iraq and 9/11 actually was (i.e. basically non-existent), and shows the cheap rationalizations and illogical segues required to make the link on even a rhetorical level.
Airman Doors asks:
The difference is that, to my knowledge, Moore is not witholding information that specifically shows the exact opposite of what he is arguing.
The Bush administration, on the other hand, was being told by its own security and intelligence people, from the very beginning, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were in no way responsible for 9/11. Yet they continued to push the link because they knew that it was a winning tactic in getting Americans behind the war on Iraq.
And they’re still doing it. Recently, a leading Republican Party PR guy named Frank Luntz was interviewed on PBS. In the introduction, they discuss a memo circulated by Luntz to the Party:
The administration continues to make the link, all the while knowing that it can only be sustained at the most rarified level of abstraction.
You ask, Airman, referring to Moore and the administration’s mode of argument, “What’s the difference between the two?” Well the difference is what i’ve just explained.
There’s also another very small difference that people could be forgiven for missing:
We never invaded a country, killed thousands of its people, and sacrificed hundreds of US lives based on Moore’s movie.
Ludicrous assumption based on prejudice.
Thank you for watching the movie, Airman.
Actually, grammatically speaking, there’s no such word as alright. Your sentence was all right the first time.
But, as Mr. Moto already pointed out, how can anyone pin this on the Bush administration to the exclusion of other administrations? It’s been SOP for recruiters for a long, long time.
Prejudice? 
Against what, socialist dictators?
“Under the previous rulership of the Ba‘ath party, one could not reach high positions in the government or the schools without becoming a party member.”
I’m afraid you’ll have to direct me to the place in the transcript where Moore said that these military recruiting techniques were the fault of the Bush administration.
The movie was about more than just Bush.
Yeah. And Moore told Lauer it wasn’t even political.
From the transcript:
.
(bolding mine)
So what’s the debate? Where did Moore say anyone was flown out on the 13th? It’s not in the transcript and it’s not in the movie.
As a matter of fact, I wonder if you can show that anything in the transcript isn’t true. I only ask becaues you claimed this section had been “debunked.” I’m curious as to exactly what was disproven.
Lib, there was no attempt by Moore to tag Bush with any culpability for the dishonesty of the recruiters. That bit was actually rather incidental to his broader point that Iraq had depleted a lot of manpower and that new recruiting was primarily being done in poor communities. He followed some recruiters around to illustrate the dempgraphic being targeted. The fact that the recruiters came off as weasels was just happenstance.
BTW, anyone who’s ever been recruited knows that recruiters are oily, glad handing weasels. That’s not exactly breaking news. For Moore it was more about their marks than about their tactics.
I’m not Airman Doors, but I’ll take a shot at this question. I’ve heard it asked several times, and can’t understand it. I would expect the President to do the obvious thing, when he heard “Mr. President, America is under attack” he should have said a quick goodbye and immediately went to find out what was going on. After all, (IIRC) he basically didn’t know much at that time, just that two planes had hit the WTC. Even though it didn’t really matter, it did show a failure in leadership.
Yep. This adds up to another snide little innuendo - that the administration needs bodies for their war, and so cooked up the tactics recruiters use.
In fact, recruiters have used the same tactics since time immemorial. They use these tactics because they work, and work well, wartime or peacetime.
Anybody who signed up willingly at any time within the last thirty years would look at those recruiters and recognize those tactics. This is hardly the Bush administration’s fault. If he’s to be blamed for it, then you have to blame Clinton as well, for the cute little war I found myself in the middle of after I willingly joined.
I could make an argument that it wasn’t- at least not in a partisan or ideological sense. It’s a personal screed against Bush, but Moore does not push or endorse any particular political ideology, nor does he condemn an ideology. The film is about the personal integrity and competence of Bush, but it’s not about Republicand and Democrats. moore does not endorse a party or candidate in the movie and I don’t believe he even mentions John Kerry’s name.
Frankly, you could watch this as a Libertarian and not find anything ideologically to disagree with. If Bush is corrupt, he’s corrupt. His party has nothing to do with it.
Moto, as you can see, I pretty much said the same thing. Those recruiters were exactly the same when I was recruited into the Navy in 1984 as they were in F911. I don’t think Moore was trying to blame Bush for tha, though. ike I said, his intent with that segment was just to show who they were targeting, not how.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Bush is corrupt. But that isn’t what my objections are about. I’m not defending Bush. It is not the case that Bush is proposition A and Moore is proposition Not A, and that the two of them are subject to the law of excluded middle. It is not the case that if Moore is deceitful, then Bush is exonerated, or vice-versa.