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To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.
The problem is of course finding the discerning veiwer. Those seem to be damn few and far between and half the appeal of Michael Moore's work has been that it's tailored for people that want to believe it, faulty logic or not.Not that this is GOOD, but the nice thing about bad logic is that a discerning viewer can identify it on the spot, whereas actual LIES are impossible to discern unless you already know all about the subject.
. I just did a much more careful search, and Axis Kast posted it in the post about Bradbury and 9/11. My apologies.
Ah, so you've seen the film already?Axis Kast wrote:Stormbringer has it right. Too many will take Moore's word at face value.
Not to mention that I think it's absolutely hilrarious he tried to defend Osama's potential innocence after 9/11. African embassy bombings, anyone?
Of course, Shafer knows damned well (and says so in the article) that Moore is just blowing hot air and isn't going to sue anyone.Moore isn't likely to find a more severe appraisal of his film and his work than this Slate piece by Christopher Hitchens. Read it, Mr. Moore. We invite your suit.
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Shafer's piece is an explanation of why Moore's lawsuit threats against those who either libel him (it's damned hard to prove in the US for a public figure) or 'anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation' are simply more self-serving bullshit from Michael Moore.Durandal wrote:There's a difference between libel and criticism. Moore hasn't threatened Hitchens specifically with a suit, so I don't see what you're going off and getting a boner about here.
Hitchens is a right-wing bozo?Iceberg wrote:Sooooo... some right-wing bozo is criticizing a left-wing bozo. Story and pictures at 10.
Hitchens is right wing?Iceberg wrote:Sooooo... some right-wing bozo is criticizing a left-wing bozo. Story and pictures at 10.
Yeah? So? Who gives a rat's ass?Glocksman wrote:Shafer's piece is an explanation of why Moore's lawsuit threats against those who either libel him (it's damned hard to prove in the US for a public figure) or 'anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation' are simply more self-serving bullshit from Michael Moore.Durandal wrote:There's a difference between libel and criticism. Moore hasn't threatened Hitchens specifically with a suit, so I don't see what you're going off and getting a boner about here.
Again, who gives a shit? What does Moore's threat to sue anyone who libels him for, well, libeling him, have to do with anything?In other words, unless a critic really goes off the deep end and claims that MM eats dead babies for lunch, Moore's threats are empty and he knows it and are either an attempt to scare off some of the less well informed would be critics or (most likely) an attempt to generate more free publicity for the upcoming release of the film.
Interesting, Hitchens is claiming the sanctions were due to non-compliance with UN resolutions. That's not quite true. It was the policy of both Clinton and Bush that sanctions would remain until Saddam was gone. Furthermore, Iraq's sovereignty was "qualified" by the UN, noone else- therefore if he was attempting to imply that the US could unilaterally further "qualify" its sovereignty by occupying the country .... bzzt.Hitchens wrote:We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.)
Notice the implication that all insurgents = Ba'athists, which is clearly not the case. If he is not implying this, the comment is utterly irrelevant to the point.I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once.
Interesting claim, considering the Iraqis attempted to bring him in and he either killed himself or was shot.Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome.
Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer
Falsification. Iraq, like Saudi Arabia, sponsored the families of already dead suicide bombers. Macarbe, but not "sponsorship of suicide bombers".Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel.
What Mike said.(Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.)
Not quite as absurd as his past comment, but still utterly ridiculous, on two levels- firstly, it was during a miliary invasion of *Kuwait*, and second, it was in *1991*, not *2003*. I think Hitchens would find that the Iraqi military suffered an *ahem* decline in between those two dates.In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time.
See above.After that same invasion was repelled?Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more
You mean the same way Bush 41 tried to murder Saddam during Desert Storm with airstrikes? To be childish: you started it. Don't dish out what you can't take- and wtf does a former head of state have to do with the security of the nation a decade after the attempt??the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait.
Of course, we should spend billions of tax dollars and the lives of almost 1,000 men and the livlihood of 10 times that number (in American wounded) to avenge Bush for his dear ol Dad.Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?)
An appropriate response. Your point, Hitchens? Besides dragging up the events of a decade past against one man as some lame attempt at a point.Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.)
Ah, you mean the no-fly zones that were supposedly established by a resolution that *affirmed* Iraqi sovereignty and was not enacted under Ch VII of the UN Charter, and were therefore totally illegal- and everyone knew it- including the US (hence the reason why they never dragged it out as a war justification).Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones
And this has what to do with theat to America again?and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country.
Hey- moron- he *grew up there*In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthro Saddam.
Well, if they CELEBRATED it, they must be a threat!In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge.
Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement.
Absurd. Rhetoric, intent and capability are not synonyms. Furthermore, Israel is not America.I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews.
Another falsehood- specifically, Zarqawi went to *Kurdish* Iraq- the one that had achieved virtual independence from Ba'athist rule thanks to the no-fly zones. Saddam held no power there.And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.
Untrue- North Korea rejected the offer due to the climate before the invasion, and furthermore, if anyone can explain to me how North Korea would get a complete missile system to Iraq through the blockade, I'd like to hear it (Iraq's Al Samoud missles, which were kitbashes of 1960s tech SA-2 SAMs, were detected and in the process of being destroyed by UNMOVIC before the invasion- you cannot hide missile development, period).On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported?and the David Kay report had established?that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Moore's attempt to defend Osama bin Laden as the unfair victim of U.S. finger-pointing just after September 11, 2001 is well known.Ah, so you've seen the film already?
Uh, I see no reason to tollerate Iraq's trying to kill an American President, no matter what we did. An attack on our citizens is still an attack on our citizens. The world isn't a nice place. Do you let people punch you, Vympel, because you think they have a good argument for it?You mean the same way Bush 41 tried to murder Saddam during Desert Storm with airstrikes? To be childish: you started it. Don't dish out what you can't take- and wtf does a former head of state have to do with the security of the nation a decade after the attempt?
So we can try to kill other heads of state and that's OK, but if they try to kill ours, it's evil and an act of war. Gotcha.Axis Kast wrote:Uh, I see no reason to tollerate Iraq's trying to kill an American President, no matter what we did.
When and where did he say this? This is the first I've heard of it.Axis Kast wrote:Moore's attempt to defend Osama bin Laden as the unfair victim of U.S. finger-pointing just after September 11, 2001 is well known.
That's not quite what Moore said.Durandal wrote:When and where did he say this? This is the first I've heard of it.Axis Kast wrote:Moore's attempt to defend Osama bin Laden as the unfair victim of U.S. finger-pointing just after September 11, 2001 is well known.
