And I respectfully disagree.
And I respectfully disagree.
(On preview: Dammit, I thought I caught that before it went through. Oh well.)
Plus, by Moore’s way of calculating vacations, I get 104 days a year right off the top — weekends.
Has Mr. Moore never heard of SCUD missle attacks upon Israel during the Gulf War, a war in which Israel was not a participant. A great many Americans reside in or are visiting Israel at all times. Not to mention fostering suicide bombings against Israel by offering payments to the families of suicide bombers so the bombers wouldn’t be constrained by the financial fates of their survivors, thus encouraging murderous attacks on innocent Israelis and American citizens in Israel.
Shame on you, Mr. Moore, for these blatant lies! Shame on you! 
Moore shows an interview with a retired FBI agent saying (paraphrasing here) “I can’t for the life of me figure out why the Bush administration was so bent on getting certain Saudis and members of the bin Laden family out of the country on 9/13 without being interviewed by the FBI, when not even George H. W. Bush could get clearance to fly” leaving out the fact the Richard Clarke was the man behind the decision to allow it.
Later in the film, Moore accosts a member of Congress that I cannot name, asking if he’ll help enlist his kids to go fight in Iraq. The guy gives Moore a long what-the-fuck stare and the scene ends. I later saw the same Rep. tell a reporter that indeed he told Moore that his nephew was shipping off to Iraq shortly and Moore edited it out.
These are the only parts of the film I have a real problem with, but they are overshadowed by the rest of movie. I would like to hear of more examples from posters who have seen the movie.
Admit it–it’s not propaganda, per se, you have a problem with, just propaganda for a viewpoint other than yours.
By your reasoning, Frank Capra’s *Why We Fight *series aren’t documentaries, either.
These are taken from the critical article. Are they accurate summarizations of points in the movie? Have you seen the movie? I was all over someone (can’t remember who) in one of the BfC threads because he was basing all his criticism on a third-party anti-BfC website and had not actually seen the movie himself. By the end of the thread, he had watched it. It didn’t change his mind on anything, but at least then he was speaking from experience. I wish you would do the same. Watch the movie, then you can criticize what you see as lies. Just don’t depend on an obviously biased source for your information.
By that logic, any attck anywhere is an ‘attack on America’, because there might possibly perhaps be an American in the crossfire.
And my memory escapes me, but I’m fairly certain US citizens were advised to leave Israel some time before the first Gulf war.
I’ll watch it if you pay for it.
OK. My emails in my profile, tell me where to send the check. If I was in Pennsylvania, I’d suggest we go together. That would be fun! 
Doesn’t the fact that this thread exists at all serve to put the lie to any claims of this man’s veracity? If a person is known to be someone of integrity and honesty, this is usually acknowledged and respected by everyone, even his opponents. If someone’s veracity is questionable in the first place, it would go to show an inclination to play fast and loose with the truth at the very least, with the greater likelyhood that the person in question has no qualms about distorting the truth or phrasing things in such a way as to give a false (i.e., dishonest) impression. And making patently false declarations of fact, such as Hussein never killing or even threatening any American, is a another example of this man’s inherent dishonesty and the insidious ways in which he employs it, such as attempts to use false “facts” such as these to bolster his point of view.
And although I’m a conservative, I rarely listen to Rush Limbaugh, having been pretty much turned off toward him after his Chelsea Clinton remark, but I do remember his once saying something along the line of “To tell the truth is self-defeating, if you’re a liberal!” It is people like Moore who give rise to this type of thought.
If you can’t bolster your opinion or prove your point by being honest, it proves you either lack the skills necessary to marshall genuine facts in your favor, or you support and promote ideas that you know won’t fly on their own merits and thus resort to lies and false facts and false impressions in attempt to artificially influence people toward your own point of view. This is Michael Moore in a nutshell. And then, with half the country being aware he is a lying, deceitful and manipulative loose cannon, he has the nerve to take the podium at the Academy Awards and spout “Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you!”
I suppose time will tell whether the administration manipulated facts and lied to the public about Iraq, or whether it honestly believed itself to be correct in its belief about Iraq’s WMD threat (something, by the way, that as I’ve said before most of the countries of the Middle East and Europe, the U.S. ilntelligence agencies and Bill Clinton himself also believed), there can be no question of Moore’s dishonesty. Therefore, he is much more deserving of the same shame that he tries to cast upon President Bush, who, whether you believe him or not, is doing everything he can to protect us all from another horrendous attack.
Neither of these points is valid in regard to the discussion. What Moore flat-out declared to be the case is not true. Americans *have *been threatened and killed due to Hussein’s activities, and whether what you say might mitigate the circumstances, and I’m sure Moore knows this, he chose not to get involved in the degree or circumstances of Hussein’s threat, choosing instead to flat-out and bald-facedly lie and claim no such threat ever existed. It is simply more expedient from his point of view to lie in an attempt to persuade people to his point of view, than it is to try to convince them honestly with the facts.
Basically, Starving Artist, you’re saying “There’s no smoke without fire”? Exactly the same logic could be applied to the Bush administration. But you’re prepared to accept that they might have made an honest mistake. And even if that’s the case, you trust them not to make any more mistakes?
‘Threat to Americans’ is NOT the same as ‘threat to America’. Saddam didn’t send Scuds into Tel Aviv in the hope they’d hit a few Americans. He didn’t cosy up with Palestinian suicide bombers for them to target Americans.
I’ll even answer that. The answer to the first question is yes, I’d like to think it was an honest mistake, although I don’t think it was. The answer to the second question is no, I don’t trust them not to make any more mistakes.
But we’re not talking about Bush, we’re talking about Moore’s dishonesty about Bush.
Sorry, you are not presenting any argument here. No fear, I’ll help you out. Here’s how you can prove it’s a lie:
- Prove that Bush did NOT spend more vacation time than anyone else.
- Prove that there is no difference between the state of being on vacation and the state of being not on vacation.
I think you are trying to prove #2, but you offer no evidence. You offer some similarities between being on vacation and regular duties, but just because there are similarities does not mean there are no differences. Once you show there are no differences, then Moore is being dishonest (although not out-and-out lying, still).
Good point, but I think it is obvious that he’s not counting the Gulf War. In that war, as you will remember, Saddam did not attack America’s army, we attacked his army. So if his army kills Americans as a result of that war, this is obviously something you can’t blame Iraq for.
Just because the military is composed of volunteers, doesn’t mean there is no exploitation going on. Moore hints at the exploitation, namely the National Guard as promising just a few weekends a year of service, in exchange for paying for college. In fact, the blatant lies of the Marine recruiters in the film can qualify as exploitation, since they are aimed at the lower class.
Let me step up to the plate. While I’m often in agreement with many of the opinions held by Michael Moore, I completely dislike the methods he uses to advocate them. I’ve always felt that postions should be defended by facts - facts presented in their true context and facts including an acknowlegement of an opposing point of view. Moore ignores these niceties and, while presenting facts in a narrow legalistic sense, creates a distorted overall picture. If Moore believes he is presenting the truth, he should focus on the truth and not the presentation.
And let me add, lest others think I’m giving in to the dark side of the force, that everything I just wrote also applies to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and numerous others who use the same tactics and think the best way to spread the truth is to tell a lie.
GorillaMan, please. It is one thing to be mistaken about something most of the rest of the world is mistaken about as well (and when it is something that all the intelligence that can be brought to bear on it has (apparently) failed to reveal as being mistaken), and another to flat-out and beligerently lie about something when the facts that contradict it are readily at hand for anyone to see. Moore relies on the fact that people aren’t sitting in the audience with notebook in hand taking notes on everything he says and every impression he creates in order to research them later to determine their veracity. In the first place, most of those in the audience are likely to be inclined to want to believe him in the first place; others don’t know how (and it probably never occurs to them to try) to recognize what might be misleading or dishonest in what he’s saying or showing and besides, one would have to know shorthand to keep up with all the caca flying around in order to be able to research it, even if one were so inclined.
But you are! The process has already begun.
::SA wrings hands in sinister and delightedl anticipation::
It is only a matter of time and you will be one of us, a dreaded and evil conservative! We eagerly await your conversion.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
I can’t believe that you would require evidence for something as common sense as this. Simply put, he could be up to his armpits in work at the White House, riding a horse in Crawford, or falling off a Segway wherever he did that, and the fact remains that should anything happen he is still in control. He does not abdicate that responsibility like you or I would when we leave our jobs for vacation. He can never escape the responsibilities of the Presidency. Therefore, while he may make every effort to make himself comfortable, and he may try to escape for a little while, he’s always working. That, to me, does not constitute a vacation.
Actually, since we’re nitpicking, the UN coalition attacked Iraq, and during that attack Americans were killed. So while you can argue that Iraqi Freedom wasn’t legit you cannot argue that Desert Storm wasn’t killing of Americans on the orders of Saddam Hussein, who precipitated that war by invading Kuwait.
I’m in the Guard, remember? I don’t feel exploited. Fact is, before 9/11 that’s all a Guard commitment consisted of, and sooner or later it will revert back to that. It already has at my unit, although I personally have to do much more than that. That’s not exploitation. That’s people making informed judgments and taking calculated risks for future benefits, same as any other job.