Fahrenheit 9/11

Maximum, You do not understand what you are talking about.

1. The war's justification was not humanitarian. There are far worse humanitarian crises in, say, Congo or Sudan, and addressing these would be far less expensive and dangerous than the current Iraqi occupation.

2. The Iraqis do not and will not enjoy true sovereignty. They must allow the U.S. to build 7 to 13 permanent military bases on their soil. Iraqi oil contract also must be bid on by multinational corporations. I could go on, but suffice it to say, this is not sovereignty.

3. The most important and log term consequence of the war will be the perceived legitimacy it confers upon the cause of Islamic Jihad across the Muslim world. We will soon be reaping Dubya and Blair's shitty harvest.

Everyone, please read this! :

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/books/09BOOK.html?position=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1089389047-h1DXDGEhdGHiqriZXb0Lbg

The logic is hard to argue with, and the implications are terrifying.

 

web page

Please read above Maximum, if you still think we went into Iraq for Saddem since supposely it was WMD. YOu really are talking out of your ass.

 

Just got back from F911...it was near excellent 4.5/5 in my opinion. A strong condemnation of the Bush administration as a whole. The coverups and stupidity exibited were shocking against the reality of death in war.

Mr Bungle: While I was insulted by your comment which was in bad taste ("sex, virgin, .5" penis, etc., blah, blah), I also have to thank you because no one else I know was leading me to see this. Reason being: I still think Michael Moore has stupid opinions (on other matters) and I didn't want to give him any money.

The thing keeping this movie from being flawless was some of his voiceovers in which he would insinuate certain ideas without plausable cause. This of course and other manipulations keep the movie down. There was enough damning raw footage that he could have fairly included the other side of storys (ex: he mostly showed downtrodden marines, only showed things that helped his cause,etc) and it would still be enough to prove his points.

Also, I stand by everything I had already posted in this thread except for this one statement:
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I think it's totally wrong that Moore used a movie such as this to attack Bush when many of his views are not proven, or anywhere near proven facts.

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While Moore uses unproven theories, I'm glad he made the movie. /versus/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

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only showed things that helped his cause

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This is a statement that I often hear from people who are too afraid to agree with people whom they previously opposed. It's pointless to point out this obvious face since it applies to every scenario in the universe. It's obvious that things are multi faceted. What I'm getting at is that if one of the facets is compelling enough to make you decide absolutely on a certain issue, isn't that already enough? What's the point of seeing the other side of the issue?

For example, you need a car to get around and you are trying to decide if you will buy one. There are two sides to this issue, 1) buy, 2) not buy. Say you have enough money and you are convinced enough that you will go with choice 1, although you are aware of the other option, what's the point of even considering option 2 if you are more than convinced enough with option 1?

Of course you can counteract what I just said with something like "You should always read all your choices on a multiple choice question." In this case, something of that nature would be a stupid counter argument. Say the question was "What is 1 + 1." If the subject of the test is arithmetics, and you see the choice "2", you don't need to consider the other choices. I guess what I'm saying here is..... despite all the other issues and factors at hand involving the Bush administration and Iraq, seeing the footage of blown up babies and innocent families losing their family members is enough to convince me that this whole fiasco is wrong.

 

Srider, I agree with what you said. When you know one thing is right, why consider the alternative? However if we all think we're right, we would never look elsewhere and people would be living delusions. But if we know that we know that we're right...true. Though I don't trust too many people, including myself, to be that sure. Too many factors involved.

I said that because the things Moore says are hotly issues, so they must be proven. Also, more "conservatives" like myself wouldn't be so opposed to seeing it if instead of beings so in your face, it had a more, "here are the facts (both sides), you decide" presentation. Actually, now that I'm writing this, it was like that, but the newsmedia made me think it has all, anti-Bush, Bush sucks,, etc. without substance. But substance...it had.

 

Exactly, the same media that blasted France and Germany for their objections against a clear cut proven case(WMD), the same media who said that Powell´s UN presentation was conclusive proof of Iraq having WMD when in reality he showed jackshit, the same media that took a week to simply report on the fact(a week after euro media reported it so they were kinda forced)that Bush his aluminum tube claim was disproven by the UN BEFORE he delivered his state of the union addres etcetera etcetera.
That should tell you something.
This movie is as unkind to that press as it is to Bush, of course they are gonna send their attack dogs at Moore and attack the credibility of him as well as his movie since it also makes a case against THEM and their sick complicity in what has gone on the last couple of years.

As for the movie, the facts are FACTS, the editorialising is his own(come on who´s your daddy).
There is a shitload of stuff going from deliberate misstatements to outright lies by the administration that Moore didnt go into.
Go educate yourself, then go vote with a clear conscience.

 

Saw it last night with my gf. We both came to the same conclusions about the film, namely that it was very entertaining but highly manipulative.

The best parts were the previously unscreened footage inside Iraq showing the civilian horror and the conditions of fear the troops operate under. I think it's important people are made aware of the real horror of war and the sacrifices made.

On the other hand the footage showing bush at the school on 9/11 and other scenes portraying hm as a stupid yokel annoyed us both. Very manipulative and utterly pointless at the same time. You could take ANY world leader you wanted and string footage together that made him look like a retard and that's exactly what Moore did.

Some other bits I found highly manipulative:

1. Clips from company meetings with individuals talking about the money made from oil. This section implied that somehow these companies would be diretly receiving cash from Iraq crude exports, when in fcat any money recieved must come as a ersult of the economy of Iraq imporoving. Iraq has full control over the money made from its oil exports. Also, what exactly is wrong with a company making money from helping to reconstruct a crippled country? What the film should be highlighting is the bias towards American companies winning these deals.

2. The whole thing with the Bin-laden family being allowed to leave American after 9/11. Moore fails to mention how the Bin Laden family have dis-owned Osama and probably have as much information on his whereabouts as you or I. They were obviously removed for their personal safety in the same way the parents of a murderer are protected under US and British law.

3. The clips of Iraq pre-invasion showing children playing and smiling, and Saddam dancing with his brothers in a pair of shades. In other words he totaly ignored the conditions in Iraq or the brutality of Saddam. Might of been a good contrast if he'd spoken to victims of the gas attacks in 89 or the relatives of sons who were minced alive when Hussein used to feed them feet first into industrial plastic grinders.

Besides these points I thought there were some very good sections on how the goverment in trhe US has spread fear post 9/11. I totally agree with Moore on this point and it ties in with his theories about gun crime in Bowling for Columbine.

 

Point 1: This is so wrong it aint even funny, Iraq has NO control about what happens with the income of its oil fields, look it up most of it is tied to reparations and non negotiable deals.

Point 2: Wrong as well and addressed in the movie, even after the Cole bombing late 90s when the Bin Ladin family apparently disowned him members of the Bin Ladin family had contact with Osama and knew where he was at, there is foorage in the movie of one of Bin Ladins half brothers at a wedding with Osama in Afghanistan.

Point 3: We get bombarded with that all the fucking time from the legit press, this movie was about showing what they dont.

 

Questions for war supporters:

1. Was Saddam's regime the most brutal and oppressive in the world at the time of the invasion?

2. How can attacking a country with no WMD and no connections to Islamic Jihad be part of the "War on Terror?"

And Maximum, don't fault Moore for making Bush look like a dumbass. Bush does this himself anytime he speaks extemporaneously. Seriously, we can argue about the this fucked up war, but it is next to impossible to argue that Bush himself is possessed of much knowledge or insight. Just listen to him at press conferences (which he rarely holds because he and his handlers know he's a dumbass) or read quotations from his pitiful attempts at speaking the English language. It is embarrassing that he is America's leader and representative to the world, and that's before you even take into account his disasterous actions as Commander in Chief.

 

The fucking Guy said ECONOMICISM! /versus/images/graemlins/mad.gif

He went to Yale for Fuck Sake!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Just so you know, this 'Islamic' or Muslim Jihad business that you all carry on so fondly about isn't what the vast majority of Muslims believe in. Liken the Jihad to the Armageddon or Ragnarok, they're all essentially the same spirit. What we have here is a splinter faction of the Islamic faith, one that even regular muslims would disown. They take the teachings and pervert them to extremes.

OF COURSE, there is another parallel to be drawn here. These terrorist groups are Islamic, right? They also bear a very strong semblance to a more familiar group, one that is much closer to all of you I am sure.

Have you heard of the Christian Identity faith? These people are unarguably christian, because they very closely believe the teachings of Christ and the word of the bible. BUT. Christian Identity believes in one true race. You can take a guess now what race they believe in, that is the one true heir to god's kingdom. Yeah. WHITES.

They're not terrorists though. They're hate groups. At the best, they're misguided christians. But we don't see any relation between them and these Jihad-fighting muslims, because we are not familiar with muslims in the slightest. On the other hand, most of us are familiar with the christian faith enough to know that the "Christian Identity" people really aren't very christian at all. Perhaps, and I'm asking you to evaluate with your minds and not your hearts, but these terrorists are the same kind of group as the christian identity.

If you can find a muslim who isn't afraid to reveal his ro her faith to you, I would very much so recommend having a good deep conversation about what being muslim really is. You may be surprised.

EDIT: Here's a page of Christian Faith yahoos. Enjoi.
http://www.kingidentity.com/

 

1. I coudn't tell you. I don't think a scale of butality exists to grade different countries. But to ignore Iraq as harmless would be equally stupid. For starters there's the thousands - yes thousands - of civilians killed each year in prison camps and torture chambers. As I previously mentioned individuals wer minced alive in industrial plastic grinders for the amusement of Saddams sons. Several members of the Iraq football team were tirtured or killed after the world cup. Not forgetting the thousands gassed in Kurdish states, the draining of the marshes in the north and the invasion of Kuwait.

I think most countries at the UN were sick to death of these thugs running an oil rich country into the ground and destabalising the whole region. To be perfectly honest this action against Iraq should have been taken over a decade ago but the united nations could never come to an agreement and nations like France would never enforce the resolution they voted for. We took decisive anction against the enthic cleansing in Eastern Europe so whay did the international community allow Iraq to be run like this for so long? That's the question we should be asking our politicians.

As for the link to terrorists, I say again that a driect link between Islamic fundamentalist groups and Iraq was never proposed over here - only a few American politicials suggested this. Tony Blair's main case for war was the fear of terrorists making deals with Saddam and gaining possession of chemical/biological weapons, which the intelligence community believed he possesed.

And it's a reasonable concern. The kind of brainwashed fanatics who can steer passenger jets into buildings to commit mass murder wouldn't blink an eyelid at releasing a chemical bomb or briefcase-nuke, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people.

These weren't just some people pissed at American policy towards Israel, their driving motivation is the reestablishment of the three holy cities under muslim rule and the totall extermination of all Christians and Jewish people from the planet. Now how do you reason with people who want that?

 

Seems like you are at least a lil brainwashed yourself.

 

Wow! Dubya approved my post. I feel honored.

Maximum, you are being willfully stupid here. The war cannot be justified by somone's imagining Saddam giving his imaginary weapons to terrorist friends that we imagine he has. Nor can it be justified on humanitarian grounds when we calmly watch unprecedented humanitarian disaster unfold in Africa without doing much. Thank you for showing us that there are morons on both sides of the Atlantic.

Painty, I have not tried to blame all Muslims for terrorism. Islamic Jihad refers to the Pan-Islamic world's radical violent confrontational sects. You are correct that there are fundamentalist lunatics in other religions, though I would argue that none are as dangerous as Islamic Jihad. If you are Muslim that obviously doesn't make you guilty of anything.

Really, I see bin Laden, Bush, and Sharon as representing the three extremes of the three major religions. They are feeding off of each other, performing a dance of death that has the potential to kill millions if the escalation is not stopped.

 

Our President is a True HIck, 4 years in a row he rejected invitations of going to the NAACP convetion. /versus/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

Well, stupid or not these remarks reflect my opinion on the whole matter. And whether or not the intelligence and justification for war was correct I think the removal of Saddam is a positive step forward for the middle east.

 

The lofty idea of freeing an oppressed people from a cruel dictator is indeed a noble goal. Unfortunately, in this case, it's whitewashing. We're not invading Central American and Central African countries to save their people. Why not? Because those countries have no oil. They're dirt poor. There's no benefit to the US or to US corporations to invade those countries. Even as bad as places like Michael Moore's hometown of Flint are, there are places in Mexico that make the houses of Flint look like Beverly Hills. In Iraq, corporations can milk the governments of both Iraq and the US of millions of dollars. These other countries? Hell, the corporations can't make jack off of them. They'd be stuck milking the US government, and you'd see a huge backlash from the poorest US citizens when they found out that their welfare was being cut so we could aid the poor in another country.

In addition, most of those countries are surrounded by countries that are just as inhumane as they are. Iraq's invasion was tolerated because Iraq had alienated pretty much the entire Middle East - they had no allies at all. Marine invasions (marine = from sea) across an entire ocean are pretty much impossible. You need a nearby secure area to stockpile supplies and troops for the invasion. In WW2 it was Britain, in Afghanistan it was Pakistan. While you can succeed in the initial invasion, you'll get kicked back out very fast without supplies and troops to solidify your beachhead. And military actions are expensive. Extremely expensive. Look at the gas (diesel) mileage on a tank. Look at the cost of the missiles. It's why we haven't invade Mexico and Canada. It would cost us much more than we could possibly make. If we were such noble humanitarians, we would have been at war with China long long long ago - they've got oppression down to a fine art. We're not humanitarians. We're just charging at a red flag that's being waved in front of us.

Invading and setting up puppet governments is a bad sign historically for the invading government, and we've done it several times in the past twenty years. You're much better invading to conquer - your resources are being used on your own country, not on placing a figurehead government in place that's going to stab you in the back when it's feasible. This is an unhealthy path for the US to follow, and it doesn't bode well for continuance of the government. You create grudging allies for ten to twenty years who resent you, and then they've secured their power base and tell you to go to hell. You destroy diplomatic relations with countries weaker than you by doing this. You expend money, manpower, and credibility for a temporary solution, not for a long term gain.

Rome got away with this by being utterly brutal to countries and leaders who did this - they'd go in, destroy the leader, find a turncoat, and set up a government. If their turncoat turned against them or if they wanted the resources of the country, they'd invade again and annex the territory after eradicating all the former leaders. Common practice was to marry officers off to daughters of influential families to cement ties - it became in your best interests to keep amicable relations with Rome, because your family was now part of Rome. Why did they do this? Because they knew they were going to make enemies by messing in other nation's affairs no matter what they did. People feared Rome even as they hated it. The people of the world today don't fear the US - we wage war like carebears. I imagine the Japanese were sitting back saying, "WTF is this? Drop the atomic bomb! This is war! We're tired of being the only ones!" The world is not afraid of us. They resent us. We are uniting them against us. And we're not presenting a united front against them. Outsourcing? Free trade agreements? Deregulation? It's looking bad for the U.S. It really really is.

 

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I think most countries at the UN were sick to death of these thugs running an oil rich country into the ground and destabalising the whole region.

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Er, weren't most of the countries in the UN asking for sanctions against Iraq to be lifted?

The only reason people were concerned with Iraq was because the world's 3rd largest land army was under the control of a dictator who finally had ended a war with Iran. Iraq had the potential to mess with a huge portion of the world's oil supply, and tried to do so once (not entirely without provocation, of course, but that's a different story). If Iraq had been Afghanistan, known for its great national resources such as rocks, boulders, and poor people, the majority of the UN wouldn't have cared one bit.


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We took decisive anction against the enthic cleansing in Eastern Europe so whay did the international community allow Iraq to be run like this for so long? That's the question we should be asking our politicians


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We went into WW2 on the side of Britain and France because US companies had tons of money invested in Britain and France through post war (WW 1) loans, and they were most likely going to lose to Germany, which means all that money is gooooone. The vast majority of people didn't know about concentration camps until we invaded - not even our soldiers. Our leaders could have cared less about what Hitler was doing. Stalin was just as bad to Russians. If you go back and study the period, we sat out on the war as long as we could because there were just as many German and Italian immigrants clamoring for the US to aid Germany as there were French and English immigrants clamoring for us to aid them. There was a demonstration of 22,000 people in Times Square asking for the US to support Germany. Our government decided to go to war against Germany, not our populace. Germany was more than willing to leave us alone, but when we started shipping supplies overseas, they finally started torpedoing our ships.

 

I was talking about Milosevic, not WW2.

And while we're on the topic of WW2, your statement that the US intervened mainly due to money is the most retarded dissolusioned cynical outpouring I've ever heard from a whining conspiracy-theorist like yourself.

If our goverments were as corrupt as you so ridiculously claim why didn't the United states claim mainland Europe after it helped liberate it from the Nazis?

Also, the idea that nations help other nations out of self interest is hardly a revolutionary statement. Isn't that basic fucking human nature? Yes. Saddam was removed becasue Iraq is strategically, militarily and economically more important that other troubled parts of the world, but that goes withoput fucking saying dosen't it? It still dosen't take away from the fact that removing Saddam was a positive thing to accomplish, particularly for the peopel of Iraq. Please let's not forget them when you dribble out our self-rightious nonsense.

Nowhere did I say the coalition acted solely.out a crusading moral cause, although I did mention that this was certainly a part of the equation especially for nations like Romania who've been butt fucked by oppressive regimes in the past.