Spinsanity on Fahrenheit 9/11

[Joe]

Read the whole thing

[Shadow WarChief]

And for those of you who don't want to click the link:

Fahrenheit 9/11:
The temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn
By Brendan Nyhan
July 2, 2004

Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions.

With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.

However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think.

The 2000 Florida recount

Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --


Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.


But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore draws the clip, reporter Candy Crowley explained that Toobin's analysis assumed the statewide consideration of "overvotes," which was not a sure thing, though there are indications that Leon County Circuit Court judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount, might have directed counties to consider them.

The Saudi flights

In another scene, Moore suggests that members of Osama Bin Laden's family and other Saudis were able to fly out of the country while air traffic was grounded after September 11. After an initial report in Newsweek inaccurately characterized the scene, saying it had made a direct claim to that effect, Moore's staff replied with a legalistic parsing. The film does accurately date the Saudi flights out of the country to "after September 13" as they claim (flights leaving the country resumed on the 14th), but Moore does not take the important step of explaining the meaning of this date in the film:

Moore: In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded... [video clips] Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one, except the Bin Ladens.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND): We had some airplanes authorized at the highest levels of our government to fly to pick up Osama Bin Laden's family members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of this country.


Moore: 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 US after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.

Given that Moore states that "In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded," how are viewers to know that this description did not include the Saudi flights out of the country? The "after September 13th" clause may show that Moore's claim was technically accurate, but it leaves viewers with the distinct impression that the Bin Ladens left the country before others were allowed to.

Saudi investments and business relationships

Moore also uses the power of insinuation to play on the relationship between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The facts are thin, but that doesn't stop him from making ominous suggestions about the connections between the two.

After discussing the September 11 attacks, Moore presents clips from an interview between Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar and CNN's Larry King in which Bandar describes Osama Bin Laden as a "simple and very quiet guy." Moore then intones the following over video of Bush in a Florida classroom after being told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center:

Hmm. A simple and quiet guy whose family who just happened to have a business relationship with the family of George W. Bush. Is that what he was thinking about? Because if the public knew this, it wouldn't look very good.

"Just happened" to have a business relationship? What does Moore mean? He doesn't say precisely, of course, but he draws a series of tenuous and often circumstantial links between Bin Laden family investments and Bush's actions as President.

For instance, Moore shows that the White House blacked out the name of another Texas Air National Guard pilot who was suspended along with Bush - James R. Bath - in service records released earlier this year. He suggests that the White House was not concerned about privacy and instead wanted to hide Bath's links to Bush:

Why didn't Bush want the press and the public to see Bath's name on his military records? Perhaps he was worried that the American people would find out that at one time James R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens.


Moore notes that Bath was retained by Salem Bin Laden, and describes Bush's founding of the Arbusto oil company. James Moore, an author, appears next, saying in an interview that "there's no indication" Bush Sr. funded Arbusto and that the source of the firm's investments is unknown. Michael Moore then piles on the innuendo in his narration:

So where did George W. Bush get his money?... [archival clip of Bush saying "I'm George Bush"] One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath. Bush's good friend James Bath was hired by the Bin Laden family to manage its money in Texas and invest in businesses. And James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush.

This phrasing suggests that Bath invested Bin Laden family money in Arbusto. But as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball note in an online Newsweek column and Matt Labash points out in a Weekly Standard article on the film, Bath has stated this investment was his money, not the Bin Ladens'. Moore presents no evidence to the contrary.

The film also notes investments in United Defense, a military contractor, by the Carlyle Group, a firm that Bush and his father have been involved with which counts members of the Bin Laden family among its investors. He states:

September 11 guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year. Just six weeks after 9/11, Carlyle filed to take United Defense public and in December, made a one-day profit of $237 million. But sadly, with so much attention focused on the Bin Laden family being important Carlyle investors, the Bin Ladens eventually had to withdraw.


Moore's phrasing suggests that the Bin Ladens profited from the post-Sept. 11 buildup with the United Defense IPO but were forced to withdraw after the stock sale. However, Labash notes that the Bin Ladens withdrew before the initial filing, not afterward, missing the big payday Moore insinuates that they received.

Finally, Moore drops a big number - $1.4 billion - claiming "That's how much the Saudi royals and their associates have given the Bush family, their friends and their related businesses in the past three decades," adding that "$1.4 billion doesn't just buy a lot of flights out of the country. It buys a lot of love." But Isikoff and Hosenball show that nearly 90% of that total comes from contracts awarded by the Saudi government to BDM, a defense contractor owned by Carlyle. But when the contracts were awarded and BDM received the Saudi funds, Bush Sr. had no official involvement with the firm, though he made one paid speech and took an overseas trip on its behalf. He didn't actually join Carlyle's Asian advisory board until after the firm had sold BDM. And though George W. Bush had previously served on the board of another Carlyle company, he left it before BDM received the first Saudi contract. As usual, the connections are loose and circumstantial at best.

Afghanistan/Iraq/homeland security motives

Moore also offers a number of suggestions that the Bush administration's military actions abroad and efforts to increase homeland security were motivated by nefarious hidden agendas.

For instance, here is his description of the US campaign against the Taliban government of Afghanistan:

The United States began bombing Afghanistan just four weeks after 9/11. Mr. Bush said he was doing so because the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been harboring Bin Laden... [montage of clips of Bush saying the US would "smoke out" Bin Laden] For all his tough talk, Bush really didn't do much.


Moore then shows former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke criticizing the war, saying it took two months for US special forces to be deployed in the area of Afghanistan where Bin Laden was hiding. This fact is portrayed as an indication of a hidden motive:

Two months? A mass murderer who attacked the United States was given a two-month head start? Who in their right mind would do that?... [clip of Bush] Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.


Moore proceeds with the heavy-handed narrative, suggesting he is unraveling the alleged hidden story of the US war in Afghanistan through a series of loose juxtapositions:

In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton.

[clips of Bush and Cheney talking about Halliburton from 2000]

And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush's #1 campaign contributor: Kenneth Lay and the good people of Enron. Only the British press covered this trip.

Contrary's to Moore's implication, the fact that Bush was governor of Texas at the time of the Taliban/Unocal meeting does nothing to prove that he was somehow involved in the meeting. Governors are obviously not responsible for every business dealing that takes place in their state. Nonetheless, Moore slips his name in to link him to the deal.

The filmmaker continues his narration by directly linking the 1997 deal with a 2001 visit to the US by a Taliban envoy:

Then, in 2001, just five and a half months before 9/11, the Bush administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States and help improve the image of the Taliban government.

[clip of envoy press conference]

Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department to meet with US officials. Why on earth would the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader to visit the United States knowing that the Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies? Well, I guess 9/11 put a stop to that.

This rhetorical question is entirely disingenuous. Moore suggests that the US was indifferent to the Taliban's harboring of Bin Laden, but Isikoff and Hosenball point out that the administration met with the envoy in part to discuss the fate of Bin Laden, who they were pressing the Taliban to turn over.

Moore then implies that the war was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline:

When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete, we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former advisor to Unocal. Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal advisor. I guess you can probably see where this is leading. Faster than you can say black gold Texas tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea.


But as Ken Silverstein wrote in The American Prospect back in 2002 and Isikoff and Hosenball show in their article about "Fahrenheit," Unocal dropped support for the pipeline in 1998 (the company has issued a press release making this point). In 2002, Afghanistan did sign the agreement Moore described, but Unocal is not involved in the project, which is still in its planning stages and may never come to fruition.

Later, Moore presents a series of anecdotal examples of what he sees as misguided efforts to improve homeland security: FBI questioning of a man who made derogatory statements about President Bush at a gym, infiltration of a peace group in Fresno by a sheriff's detective on an anti-terrorism task force, a mother who was forced to drink her breast milk during an airport security screening to prove that it was not a toxic substance, and the decision to allow airline passengers to carry lighters and matches onto planes while banning other items. Again, based on this flimsy collection of evidence, Moore suggests a hidden motive:

Ok, let me see if I got this straight. Old guys in the gym - bad. Peace groups in Fresno - bad. Breast milk - really bad. But matches and lighters on a plane - hey, no problem. Was this really about our safety? Or was something else going on?

He then shows a series of clips arguing that Oregon state troopers are underfunded and have little manpower. Without making any argument about how this relates to the rest of the country or the federal government's actions, Moore jumps right into more implications of conspiracy and nefarious motives, keying off a trooper's wish for a manual on how to catch terrorists:

Of course, the Bush administration didn't hand out a manual on how to deal with the terrorist threat because the terrorist threat wasn't what this was all about. They just wanted us to be fearful enough so that we'd get behind what their real plan was.

Again, Moore's meaning when he says "what this was all about" is unclear, but it appears to be a reference to the emphasis on homeland security after September 11. "Their real plan" is, as the movie later makes clear, a reference to the war in Iraq. But regardless of any previous plans to invade Iraq, the argument makes no sense. The breast milk example, for instance, indicates an overzealous devotion to homeland security, not indifference to it. And Oregon's state budgetary woes are hardly proof that the federal government's homeland security effort was insincere.

Ashcroft and the FBI

In his discussion of homeland security, Moore takes a cheap shot at John Ashcroft, stating, "In 2000, he was running for re-election as Senator from Missouri against a man who died the month before the election. The voters preferred the dead guy." Of course, the governor of Missouri who succeeded Mel Carnahan, the so-called "dead guy," had promised to appoint Jean Carnahan, the governor's widow, to the Senate if her late husband won the election, a fact voters clearly understood.

On a more serious note, after suggesting that Ashcroft was unconcerned about terrorism before September 11, Moore uses phrasing that exaggerates how widespread knowledge of the Al Qaeda plot was before the attacks inside the FBI and Justice Department:

[Ashcroft's] own FBI knew that summer that there were Al Qaeda members in the US and that Bin Laden was sending his agents to flight schools around the country. But Ashcroft's Justice Department turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.

This implies far more prior knowledge about flight school activity than actually existed. As the 9/11 Commission found in a staff statement (72K Adobe PDF), the so-called "Phoenix memo" from an FBI agent in Arizona suggesting a possible effort by Bin Laden to send agents to flight schools was not widely circulated within the FBI and did not reach Ashcroft's desk:

His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the Osama Bin Laden unit and the Radical Fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees, but did not even see the memo until after September 11. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11. The New York field office took no action. It was not shared outside the FBI.


Before Sept. 11, the Minneapolis FBI also investigated Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was enrolled in a flight school there, but no Al Qaeda connections were discovered until after the attacks. Again, saying the FBI "knew" of a plot to send agents to flight schools is overstated.

"You can't refute what's said in the film"

During a recent interview on "Late Night with David Letterman," the host identified the problems with the circumstantial argument of the film in a series of probing questions to Moore:

When you look at the film in total, are there things there - if I were smarter, could I refute some of these points? Shall I believe you that everything means exactly what it looks like? I mean, the presentation is overwhelming, but could a smarter man than me come in and say, "Yes, this happened, but it means nothing," "Yes, that happened but it means nothing"? But put together in a puzzle it creates one inarguable, compelling circumstance.

Moore's response to Letterman (after a joking aside) sums up the problem with his work. Despite proclamations that the film is satirical and represents his opinion, Moore still makes strong claims about its veracity:

You can't refute what's said in the film. It's all there, the facts are all there, the footage is all there.


Sadly, as with most of Moore's work, this is simply not true.

[Joe]

It's better to read it at the actual site though, there are supporting hyperlinks.

[Guardsman Bass]

Thank God/Allah/Holy Spirit/Jeebus for spinsanity.

Two months? A mass murderer who attacked the United States was given a two-month head start? Who in their right mind would do that?... [clip of Bush] Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.

If you read Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, about the decisions the Bush Administration made leading to the war in Iraq, it tells why it took so long to go into Afghanistan- they simply had NO battle plan for an invasion, period. Not even an outline; Franks had to come up with it from scratch, and thus was reportedly HIGHLY pissed off when presented with the Iraq agenda so soon after the Afghan invasion.

As for the connections between the Bush family and the Saudis, that's not great, but it is to be expected. They both were in the oil industry.[/quote]

[Ma Deuce]

I love Spinsanity's creative titles for their articles .

[CaptainChewbacca]

We have plans to invade a lot of countries, but Afghanistan? oops, we missed one

I think Franks did an excellent job.

[phongn]

We have plans to invade a lot of countries, but Afghanistan? oops, we missed one

Even if we did have some plan deep in some Pentagon filing cabinet, it probably would have to be found and updated. Then we'd have to move the proper forces into theatre and do a few other things.

[Cairber]

Wow..I talked about not wanting to see this movie because of Moore's history of factual inaccuracy and I got lamb basted by people in other 911 thread. After reading this and watching numerous other reports, I am glad to say it was the right choice

[Andrew J.]

Yeah yeah, we all know the first half of the movie is kind of weak. The good stuff's in the Iraq war part, in the second half. This is just more nitpicking froma site which, from what I can see, does nothing but bitch about stuff politicians say.

[Glocksman]

Yeah yeah, we all know the first half of the movie is kind of weak. The good stuff's in the Iraq war part, in the second half. This is just more nitpicking froma site which, from what I can see, does nothing but bitch about stuff politicians say.

And this is a bad thing?

The guys at Spinsanity do a good job of separating the truth from all of the bullshit that all sides of the political spedtrum throw up.

As far as the 'good stuff' goes, I haven't seen the movie yet (and I won't until I can check it out from the library), but here's an article by David Kopel on the 'fifty six deceits' in F 9/11.

To be fair to Moore, some of Kopel's 'deceits' are just differences over what a particular piece of footage represents, but others are clear distortions of the truth.

Fahrenheit shows Condoleezza Rice saying, “Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.” The audience laughs derisively. Here is what Rice really said:

Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.

I agree with Hayes that there is significant evidence suggesting possible Iraqi involvement in 9/11, but Moore deceptively cut the Rice quote to fool the audience into thinking she was making a particular claim, even though she was pointedly not making such a claim.

Bush “supported closing veterans hospitals” says Moore. The Bush Department of Veteran’s Affairs did propose closing seven hospitals in areas with declining populations where the hospitals were underutilized, and whose veterans could be served by other hospitals. Moore does not say that the Department also proposed building new hospitals in areas where needs were growing, and also building blind rehabilitation centers and spinal cord injury centers. (For more, see the Final Report of the independent commission on veterans hospitals, which agrees with some of the Bush proposals, and with some of the objections raised by critics.)



According to Moore, Bush “tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans.” What Bush proposed was raising the prescription co-pay from $7 to $15, for veterans with incomes of over $24,000 a year. Prescription costs would have remained very heavily subsidized by taxpayers.



Bush, announces Moore, “proposed cutting combat soldiers’ pay by 33%.” Not exactly. In addition to regular military salaries, soldiers in certain areas (not just combat zones) receive an “imminent danger” bonus of $150 a month. In April 2003, Congress retroactively enacted a special increase of $75, for the fiscal year of Oct. 1, 2002 through Sept. 30, 2003. At first, the Bush administration did not support renewing the special bonus, but then changed its position



Likewise, Congress had passed a special one-year increase in the family separation allowance (for service personnel stationed in places where their families cannot join them) from $100 to $250. Bush’s initial opposition to extending the special increase was presented by Moore as “cutting assistance to their families by 60%.” (Edward Epstein, “Pentagon reverses course, won’t cut troops’ pay,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 15, 2003.)



Even if one characterizes not renewing a special bonus as a “cut,” Fahrenheit misleads the viewer into thinking that the cuts applied to total compensation, rather than only to pay supplements which constitute only a small percentage of a soldier’s income. An enlisted man with four months of experience receives an annual salary more than $27,000. (Rod Powers, “What the Recruiter Never Told You: Military Pay.”)

Lila Lipscomb

Deceit 52

Moore exploits the grief of Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. She denounces Bush and the War. But there are many mothers and relatives of US soldiers, alive and dead, who served there who don’t agree with her. Don’t look for them in this agit-prop “film.”

Schlussel.



Fahrenheit wallows in pity for Mrs. Lipscomb. “I was tired of seeing people like Mrs. Lipscomb suffer,” he claims. Yet Moore’s website takes a different view:

I’m sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

Michael Moore, “Heads Up... from Michael Moore,” MichaelMoore.com, April 14, 2004.

IMHO, Kopel goes off the reservation when he accuses Moore of 'working with terrorists' to distribute his film, but that doesn't make his other observations about Moore's errors, deceits and contradictions of his past statements any less compelling.

Shit, and it's not just conservatives or libertarians who have a problem with Moore. Even Richard Cohen trashes him.

Link

I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning box office success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out, but instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance.

Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by how prosaic and boring the movie was - nothing new and utterly predictable - but I recoiled from Moore's methodology, if it can be called that.

The case against Bush is too hard and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done. The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way, and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments critical of Bush.

During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me that some people supported Richard Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters. Beware history repeating itself.

Interesting.

[KrauserKrauser]

I think he should rename the movie, "I hate Bush and now I'll show you mis-truths and misquotes and hope you do to." Oh and I damn tired of all the CNN, MSNBC and other news anchors continually berating Disney for trying to stop Moore from getting his movie out when that was a complete fabrication by Moore.

[Elfdart]

Michael Moore's track record with the truth is considerably better than Spinsanity's. Spinsanity is a collection of cavillers, nitpickers and shysters who think they're "balanced" because they claim the nutty Right's outright lies are the equivalent of Michael Moore's facts, which only clubhouse lawyers dispute. They are not alone.

Funny how in order for Michael Isikoff to "debunk" Moore's movie, Isikoff has to deliberatley misquote both the movie AND Craig Unger's book.

Even funnier is that when the very journalists who are made to look like liars, bownnosers and all-around assholes can't find any but the most trivial "errors", they either misquote the movie, make shit up, or (my favorite) claim that the movie implies X, Y and Z and that the dimwitted audience is too gullible and stupid to notice.

It's funny to watch the smugly stupid who think they're bursting ballons, but are held aloft by their own bags of gas.

[MKSheppard]

Michael Moore's track record with the truth is considerably better than Spinsanity's. Spinsanity is a collection of cavillers, nitpickers and shysters who think they're "balanced"

http://www.spinsanity.org/book/

All the President's Spin, the first book from the editors of the acclaimed nonpartisan website Spinsanity, unmasks the tactics of deception and media manipulation that George W. Bush has used to sell his agenda to the American people.

From his campaigns for tax cuts to the debate over war in Iraq, President Bush has employed an unprecedented onslaught of half-truths and strategically ambiguous language to twist and distort the facts. Fritz, Keefer, and Nyhan's powerful critique of Bush's record of policy deception explains why the media has failed to hold him accountable and demonstrates the threat these tactics pose to honest political debate.

This is the essential book for every citizen who wants to understand how George W. Bush has misled the nation and why, if left unchallenged, all the President's spin could soon become standard practice -- a devastating development for our democracy.

********************8

You were saying Elf Fart?

[Glocksman]

Michael Moore's track record with the truth is considerably better than Spinsanity's. Spinsanity is a collection of cavillers, nitpickers and shysters who think they're "balanced" because they claim the nutty Right's outright lies are the equivalent of Michael Moore's facts, which only clubhouse lawyers dispute. They are not alone.

So Moore didn't hack up that Condi Rice clip in order to have her appear to say something that is the exact opposite of what she really said?
Then I would think he needs to sic his lawyers on Kopel with a libel suit, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen, as the truth is an absolute defense against libel.
Like I've said before, a few errors may be mistakes but a shitload of 'minor' errors and distortions constitutes a pattern to keep in mind.
I believed Moore's claims about Bush cutting the pay and benefits of the troops until I read that piece.

If that's the standard of the rest of Moore's 'facts', then the movie is full of shit from end to end.

Even if you dismiss Spinsanity as 'shysters', what about liberals such as Richard Cohen? He's no right wing nut, and he dislikes the movie even worse than Kopel. He's dead on when he calls Moore a part of the loony left.

The Democrats had better take seriously his warning about people supporting Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters.

Kerry has enough baggage without carrying Moore and the nutjobs at International ANSWER along with him.

It's funny to watch the smugly stupid who think they're bursting ballons, but are held aloft by their own bags of gas.

It sure is, and that's what makes your posts so entertaining.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Informative, but since this still leaves the major part of the film virtually untouched, the coverage of the Iraq war, it means that unless I've missed some scathing review showing that the military is perfectly happy in Iraq and that the war is completely justifiable, this part of the movie is virtually unchallenged.

[Elfdart]

Richard Cohen is a gutless weenie. Don't take my word for it. Try today's Daily Howler, a site devoted to debunking lies, deceit and nonsense -unlike Spinsanity.

www.dailyhowler.com/dh070204.shtml

[MKSheppard]

Richard Cohen is a gutless weenie. Don't take my word for it. Try today's Daily Howler, a site devoted to debunking lies, deceit and nonsense -unlike Spinsanity.

Are you fucking brain damaged elf-tard, or are you blind?

Here's the same thing in nice big letters for you:

All the President's Spin, the first book from the editors of the acclaimed nonpartisan website Spinsanity, unmasks the tactics of deception and media manipulation that George W. Bush has used to sell his agenda to the American people.

From his campaigns for tax cuts to the debate over war in Iraq, President Bush has employed an unprecedented onslaught of half-truths and strategically ambiguous language to twist and distort the facts. Fritz, Keefer, and Nyhan's powerful critique of Bush's record of policy deception explains why the media has failed to hold him accountable and demonstrates the threat these tactics pose to honest political debate.

This is the essential book for every citizen who wants to understand how George W. Bush has misled the nation and why, if left unchallenged, all the President's spin could soon become standard practice -- a devastating development for our democracy.

Yes, spinsanity is a biased right wing site. Fucking Whack-A-Loon.

[Glocksman]

Informative, but since this still leaves the major part of the film virtually untouched, the coverage of the Iraq war, it means that unless I've missed some scathing review showing that the military is perfectly happy in Iraq and that the war is completely justifiable, this part of the movie is virtually unchallenged.

Kopel touches on that:

Media Attitudes

Deceit 47

In very selectively edited clips, Moore poses the absurd notion that the main news anchors—Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel—wholeheartedly support Bush and the War in Iraq….Has Moore forgotten the hour-long Saddam softball interview Rather did just prior to the war, [or] Jennings’ condescending coverage…?

Schlussel.

Jennings is shown delivering a broadcast in which he says, “Iraqi opposition has faded in the face of American power.” But Jennings was simply stating an undeniable fact, as he stood next to a map showing that Saddam’s army had collapsed everywhere, and all Iraqi cities were in Coalition hands. Despite what Moore implies, Jennings strongly opposed the liberation of Iraq. (Tim Graham, “Peter’s Peace Platoon. ABC’s Crusade Against ‘Arrogant’ American Power,” Media Research Center, March 18, 2003.)

You can take this report for whatever its worth, but the media wasn't universally cheerleading GWB and the invasion like Fox News was doing.

I'm sure that the great majority of the military isn't happy being thousands of miles away from home, but I haven't heard of any war in which the military was happy fighting, so claiming the army isn't 'happy' is just plain stupid.

As far as the justifications go, the war wasn't justified as the claims made about WMD and threats to the US turned out to be false. That much is true.

What's bullshit are Moore's innuendoes about a conspiracy.

[Glocksman]

Richard Cohen is a gutless weenie. Don't take my word for it. Try today's Daily Howler, a site devoted to debunking lies, deceit and nonsense -unlike Spinsanity.

www.dailyhowler.com/dh070204.shtml

The Daily Howler?

Yep, now there's a guy with no biases.

What's next, claiming that the DU boards are really full of nonpartisan centrists?

[Elfdart]

Richard Cohen is a gutless weenie. Don't take my word for it. Try today's Daily Howler, a site devoted to debunking lies, deceit and nonsense -unlike Spinsanity.

Are you fucking brain damaged elf-tard, or are you blind?

Here's the same thing in nice big letters for you:

All the President's Spin, the first book from the editors of the acclaimed nonpartisan website Spinsanity, unmasks the tactics of deception and media manipulation that George W. Bush has used to sell his agenda to the American people.

From his campaigns for tax cuts to the debate over war in Iraq, President Bush has employed an unprecedented onslaught of half-truths and strategically ambiguous language to twist and distort the facts. Fritz, Keefer, and Nyhan's powerful critique of Bush's record of policy deception explains why the media has failed to hold him accountable and demonstrates the threat these tactics pose to honest political debate.

This is the essential book for every citizen who wants to understand how George W. Bush has misled the nation and why, if left unchallenged, all the President's spin could soon become standard practice -- a devastating development for our democracy.

Bullshit in large boldface fallacy.

Yes, spinsanity is a biased right wing site. Fucking Whack-A-Loon.

Do you believe all the ad copy you read? Jeff Craig loves rubes like you, numbnuts.

[MKSheppard]

Do you believe all the ad copy you read? Jeff Craig loves rubes like you, numbnuts.

Hey whack-a-loon fucknut. They're having a book published that Fucking tears to pieces W's spin machine. Hardly the work of little RNC stosstruppen.

Now fuck off, shitstain, we have better things to do than listen to your
bullshit.

[Elfdart]

Do you believe all the ad copy you read? Jeff Craig loves rubes like you, numbnuts.

Hey whack-a-loon fucknut. They're having a book published that Fucking tears to pieces W's spin machine. Hardly the work of little RNC stosstruppen.

Now fuck off, shitstain, we have better things to do than listen to your
bullshit.

My point, if you had read the first one was that Spinsanity (1) Plays fast and loose with facts (see mediamatters.org, who recently busted Spinsanity's bullshit) and thus has little room to bitch about Michael Moore's "innuendo" and (2) created a false dichotomy between the outright lies of cranks like Rush Windbag, Bill O'LIEly and Ann "thrax" Coulter and the biased reporting of Michael Moore.

People like Brendan Nyhan, Richard Cohen and other castrato liberals are pantywaists who who believe the Left should abide by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules while the Right should be free to do as it pleases. As Paul Krugman pointed out, for some reason self-appointed media watchdogs make sure to curry-comb every line of one of Michael Moore's movies in search of undotted "i"s and uncrossed "t"s, rather than the proven outright lies of Bush, his administration and their media camp followers.

Flame away, Shep.

[MKSheppard]

As Paul Krugman pointed out, for some reason self-appointed media watchdogs make sure to curry-comb every line of one of Michael Moore's movies in search of undotted "i"s and uncrossed "t"s, rather than the proven outright lies of Bush, his administration and their media camp followers.

Then why do I see a book being published tearing apart the outright
lies of Bush and his administration by spinsanity?

You do not pass go, you retarded moron.

[Ma Deuce]

Elfdart, I think it's worth noting noting that right-wingers often accuse Spinsanity of bias as well: Ann Coulter for example, called it a "big Democrat site", because they have frequently ripped apart her spin and outright lies as well (In fact, they have twice as many articles on her than Moore).

[Joe]

People like Brendan Nyhan, Richard Cohen and other castrato liberals are pantywaists who who believe the Left should abide by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules while the Right should be free to do as it pleases. As Paul Krugman pointed out, for some reason self-appointed media watchdogs make sure to curry-comb every line of one of Michael Moore's movies in search of undotted "i"s and uncrossed "t"s, rather than the proven outright lies of Bush, his administration and their media camp followers.

Usually there's a new article every week or so picking apart something that Bush or someone in his administration said. You've obviously never read Spinsanity.