Oh. Did I miss a letter? Oh well….
Michael Moore, in A July 4th op-ed for the LA Times;
But, in high school, things changed. Nine boys from my school came back home from Vietnam in boxes. Draped over each coffin was the American flag. I knew that they also had made a sacrifice. But their sacrifice wasn’t for their country: They were sent to die by men who lied to them.
James Lileks;
For some reason that intrigued me: “nine boys from my school”. So I googled around, and found the Casualty list for the Vietnam War. There were six casualties from Davison, Michigan. (He didn�t go to high school in Flint. He didn�t live in Flint. You knew that, right? He lived in a suburb.) They weren’t boys. They were men. The earliest was killed in 1967, and there were two casualties in that year. Two in 1969, one in 1968, and one in 1970. Moore was born in 1954, so he would have entered high school in 1969, after which there were four casualties. (One of which died of a heart attack.) Two were drafted, incidentally. The rest – if I’m reading the site correctly – appeared to have enlisted.
Just so we’re not throwing them around as props, we should give their names. They were Gary Thompson, Martin Scott, David Bonesteel, Howard Doyle, David Ex, and Lowell Holden.
This, of course, is why Mr.Ambush Schlockumentary will only grant interviews when he can screen the questions in advance.
Lileks concludes – “There you have it. He wants the flag to stand for clean water. This from a man who waddles up to the deep well of American freedom, fumbles with his zipper, and pisses in it.”
Go read the whole gory dissection.
I can’t believe Halliburton has their tentacles in our water!!!
This has been pointed out elsewhere but bears repeating. The right wing is attacking Moore on the same grounds that the left wing is attacking Bush. While many of Moore’s old films suffer from out and out lies, it appears that F/911, at least according to Spinsanity, does not out and out lie but rather goes right to the edge of a lie and invites the viewer to reach it’s own conclusion, which based on what is presented in the movie, will invariably be the opposite of the truth. i.e. the Saudi connection, Moore never blatantly says the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were started becuase the Suadi’s wanted them but it is clear that is the conclusion he wants viewers to make. However, since this is exactly what Bush did, i.e. stating again and again the “connections” between Al Quaida and Iraq, it seems really odd to see right wingers attack Moore for doing this but either give Bush a pass, or try and argue that because he didn’t actually say Iraq was behind 9-11, he isn’t lying. And now we see that Moore, like Bush, won’t give interviews unless the questions are given to him in advance.
The difference being, that a film maker, even one as political as Moore does not have to answer to the public. Bush does.
Not only that, Bob –
Michael Moore is the only person I can think of who is really materially profiting from the deaths of soldiers and civilans in Iraq.
Anyone who’s ever worked on a US government contract will tell you that you’ll never really get rich off of them. They pay on time. That’s why people go after the work.