Michael Moore attacking Bush and 2A Again

[NIGHTWATCH]

"WHY are you protecting the Second Amendment rights [Americans' "right" to bear arms] of potential terrorists? IN the days after September 11, the FBI began running a check to see if any of the 186 "suspects" the Feds had rounded up had purchased any guns in the months leading up to September 11 (two of them had). When your Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, heard about this, he immediately shut down the search. I truly love how you have rounded up hundreds of people and shipped them out of the country on immigration charges. You can waive rights, but when it comes to the right to own an AK-47, oh no! That right they can have - and you will defend their right to have it. Who is really aiding the terrorists here?"-Michael Moore



Why is Bush protecting the 1st Amendment rights of this rancid traitor on foreign soil? Who is really aiding the enemies of America Mr. Moore?






SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR YOU MR BUSH


Nov 4 2003


Oscar winner Michael Moore puts US President Goerge W Bush on the spot over terrorism...


Michael Moore


_


This month arch enemies President George Bush and Oscar winner Michael Moore both arrive in Britain.


But while George Bush flies in on November 19 to thank his buddy Tony Blair for support in Iraq, writer and film maker Moore is here this week condemning the two leaders' war on terror.


A new poll has shown 51 per cent of Americans now disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq.


And perhaps his most impassioned opponent is Moore, who in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror yesterday, branded the deaths of young soldiers in the war as "disgraceful and disgusting".


Now, in an extract from his provocative new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, controversial author Moore asks a series of questions which cut to the heart of US motives in Iraq and demands: 'Mr Bush, what is going on here?'


1IS IT true that the Bin Laden family has had business relations with you and your family on and off for the past 25 years?


MOST people might be surprised to learn that you and your father have known them for a long time. What exactly is the extent of this relationship, Mr Bush?


The Bin Ladens are one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Their huge construction firm virtually built the country. They built some of the airstrips America used in your dad's Gulf War.


They have extensive dealings with Citigroup, General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and the Fremont Group. They have donated $2million (£1.2million) to your alma mater, Harvard. They own property in Texas, Florida and Massachusetts. In short, they have their hands deep in our pants.


After leaving office, your father became a highly paid consultant for the Carlyle Group, one of the nation's largest defence contractors. One of the investors in the Carlyle Group - to the tune of at least $2million - was the Bin Laden family. Until 1994, you headed a company called CaterAir, owned by the Carlyle Group.


It was no secret to the CIA that Osama Bin Laden had access to his family fortune.


2 WHAT is the "special relationship" between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family?


THE entire royal family seems to be indebted to you - or is it the other way round? A major chunk of the American economy is built on Saudi money. They have a trillion dollars invested in our stock market and another trillion dollars in our banks.


If they chose suddenly to remove it, our corporations and financial institutions would be sent into a tailspin. Couple that with the fact that the 1.5 million barrels of oil we need daily from the Saudis could also vanish on a mere royal whim and we begin to see how not only you, but all of us, are dependent on the House of Saud.


George, is this good for our national security? Who is it good for? You? Pops?


3 WHY did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days after September 11 and pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly them out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?


MIGHT it have been possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have known something?


4 WHO attacked the US on 9/11 - a guy on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or your friend, Saudi Arabia?


YOU got us all repeating by like parrots that it was Osama who was responsible. But then I started hearing strange stories about Osama's kidneys.


How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, hooked up to dialysis, have directed and overseen the actions of 19 terrorists for two years in the US, plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets? Why, when Congress released its own investigation into September 11, did you, Mr Bush, censor 28 pages that deal with the Saudis' role in the attack?


What if 9/11 was not a "terrorist" attack but, rather, a military attack against the United States? George, apparently you were a pilot once. How hard is it to hit a five-storey building at more than 500 miles an hour?


The Pentagon is only five storeys high. Had the pilots been off by just a hair, they'd have been in the river.


You do not get this skilled at flying jumbo jets by being taught on a video game machine at some minor flight training school in Arizona. You learn to do this in the air force. Someone's air force.


The Saudi air force?


5 WHY are you protecting the Second Amendment rights [Americans' "right" to bear arms] of potential terrorists?


IN the days after September 11, the FBI began running a check to see if any of the 186 "suspects" the Feds had rounded up had purchased any guns in the months leading up to September 11 (two of them had).


When your Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, heard about this, he immediately shut down the search.


I truly love how you have rounded up hundreds of people and shipped them out of the country on immigration charges. You can waive rights, but when it comes to the right to own an AK-47, oh no! That right they can have - and you will defend their right to have it. Who is really aiding the terrorists here?


6 WERE you aware that, while you were governor of Texas, the Taliban travelled there to meet your oil and gas company friends?


THEY came to meet Unocal, the huge oil and energy giant, to discuss Unocal's desire to build a natural-gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and into Pakistan. Representatives of your administration met the Taliban or conveyed messages to them during the summer of 2001.


Were you discussing their offer to hand over Bin Laden? Were you threatening them with force? Were you discussing a new pipeline?


7 WHAT exactly was that look on your face in the Florida classroom on the morning of September 11 when your chief of staff told you: "America is under attack"?


WERE you thinking you should have taken reports the CIA had given you the month before more seriously? You had been told al-Qaeda was planning attacks in the US and planes would possibly be used. Or were you just scared witless?


Or... maybe, just maybe, you were sitting there thinking about your Saudi friends - the royals and the Bin Ladens. People you knew all too well that might have been up to no good. Would questions be asked?


Would the Democrats have the guts to dig into your family's past with these people? Would the truth ever come out?


©Michael Moore 2003.


LINK- http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnew...EVEN-QUESTIONS-FOR-YOU-MR-BUSH-name_page.html

 

[MarkDido]

I have the option of responding to Moore's screed, or taking a dump.....

I think taking a dump would be more productive.

 

[foghornl]

Seven questions for you, [ahem] Mr. Moore.
Ready?

Q1-7:

Why are you such a fat lieing socialist pompous gasbag, who wouldn't know the truth even when it slapped you down ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

 

[Langenator]

What, you didn't know that "Stupid White Men" was an autobiography?

Oh, and Mr Moore, in answer to your queston, "Dude, Where's My Country?"-it's located in Europe, between Germany and the English Channel.

 

[synoptic]

http://clintoncrimes.tripod.com/ClintonsBinLadenGateMotherofallScandals/id10.html

Myth: Michael Moore was on the Daily Show on Comedy Central and alleged that when all the nation's planes were grounded for 3 days after 9/11, the Bush Administration gave permission for a private Saudi jet to visit 5 cities to pick up around 20 members of the bin Laden family, over the objections of the FBI.



Fact: This just goes to show what a little bit of fact flipped onto its side and then spewed by a public figure can do. Yes, a couple of flights arranged by the Saudi government did collect a number of Osama bin Laden's America-based relatives and whisk them to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, but this didn't take place during the FAA-imposed ban on air travel in the US. The two flights in question took wing on September 18 and 19, days after the ban on air travel was lifted.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all flights in the United States grounded immediately following the terrorist attacks, and that ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or were repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.)

Whether bin Laden's relatives left of their own accord, whether they were urged to leave by the Saudi government, or whether they were told to leave by the FBI is a bit murky, as officials issued conflicting statements:

A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington denied claims yesterday that the bin Ladens had been told by the FBI and the Saudi government to return. He said: "There was no official warning from the government that they should go but maybe they thought it would be better if they went home."1

. . . many US-based relatives of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist who is accused of masterminding the hijackings, returned to Saudi Arabia on chartered jets. A Saudi diplomat said his government and the FBI advised the bin Ladens to leave for their own safety . . . He said all Saudi citizens who flew home were first interviewed by the FBI and that none who wanted to go home were detained.

Whether bin Laden family members left voluntarily or at the urging of the FBI or the Saudi government, they clearly did not depart on a "secret flight" a mere "two days" after the September 11 terrorist attacks, while all other air traffic was grounded. The September 18 flight was a Boeing 727 privately chartered by the bin Laden family, which left Boston with a mere five passengers on board. The September 19 flight, arranged and paid for by the Saudi government, collected about 20 passengers from a number of cities, including Los Angeles, Orlando, and Boston. Neither flight was paid for or arranged by the U.S. government, took off "secretly," or departed during the FAA-imposed ban on air travel.

How Michael Moore could have spun all of this into the tale he now spouts is beyond us. Yet spout it he does, as in this excerpt from a 2 January 2002 interview with Al D'Amato and Alan Colmes of the FOX Network:

Why don't we look at the connections between the Bush family and Saudi Arabia, why this country will not really go after where the money probably came from? Why did this country allow the bin Laden jet?

Let me ask you this, Al. Why did this country allow the bin Laden family, two days after -- two days after September 11 -- to fly around America and pick up all the bin Laden relatives, about 24 of them, and take them to Europe? Not a single one of them was interrogated by the FBI. Do you think, if your brother was accused of killing somebody, and they couldn't find him, that they might come and talk to you, maybe ask you a few questions?

The sum total of the evidence Moore cites is a 30 September 2001 New York Times article, most of which negates what he claims:

In his first interview since the attacks, Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, also said that private planes carrying the kingdom's deputy defense minister and the governor of Mecca, both members of the royal family, were grounded and initially caught up in the F.B.I. dragnet. Both planes, one jumbo jet carrying 100 family members, and the other 40, were eventually allowed to leave when airports reopened and passports were checked.

Note that these planes were grounded, they were "caught up in the F.B.I. dragnet," and they were not allowed to leave until "airports reopened and passports were checked." This is hardly evidence of "secret flights" taking off "two days" after the attacks "over the objections of the FBI."

Moore seems to have fixated on a single sentence in that article:

The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.

Note that this is a single-source item, that it is wrong about the date on which the flight it describes took place, and that even if it were literally true, it still belies Moore's claim that bin Laden family members were ferried out of the country before the FBI had a chance to question them -- as do other news accounts:

Dozens of Saudi citizens were flown back to Saudi Arabia at their government's expense, while the bin Ladens are believed to have paid their own way, according to a Saudi diplomat. All of those who took up the Saudi government's offer to fly home were reportedly questioned by the FBI before being allowed to board the flights.

So, to summarize:

No flights took bin Laden family members out of the USA "two days" after the September 11 attacks. The flights Moore decries took place a week after the attacks, and they left only after the FAA had allowed regular passenger air travel to resume.

Bin Laden family members were not allowed to slip out of the USA "over the objections of the FBI" or before the FBI had an opportunity to "interrogate" them, as nearly every news account of these flights mentions that the FBI questioned the departing Saudis, grounded their planes, and supervised their departures.

The flights which carried bin Laden family members back to Saudi Arabia were not "secret," as the press reported on them within days of their occurrence. (One could hardly expect that either the U.S. or the Saudi government was going to provide the world with advance notice about the departure of planes carrying people who had good reason to fear for their lives.)

Of course it was reasonable for the members of the bin Laden family to fear retaliation and to seek the asylum of their own country, especially in those first dark weeks following the attacks when Americans were frustrated about having no one within their grasp whom they could punish for the horrors visited upon New York and Washington: just consider the September 16 stabbing of a 20-year-old Saudi man who was studying at Boston University, an assault the police and the community believed had been motivated merely by the victim's nationality. And of course it was reasonable that the Saudi goverment would be concerned for their safety, and that the U.S. government would allow them to travel to a more safe location once it was feasible for them to do so.

Some folks play fast and loose with the facts when they've an axe to grind, however, and in Moore's case his axe is "the dastardly Republicans and how they're responsible for every ill ever visited upon the USA." In this case, inventing a bin Laden jet that secretly flew out of the country while the rest of us were barred from the skies, and peopling it with folks who were spirited out of the FBI's grasp by a U.S. president intent upon paying back some unnamed (but darkly hinted at) favor, is a handy way of reinforcing the stereotype of Republicans as callous and greedy politicians whose paramount values involve money, not people. -Snopes.com

 

[TonyB]

Does the CIA still wack people???????

 

[son of a gun]

Moore has his new book out and he will do just about anything to get publicity, pretty soon he will be famous enough that skeletons from his closet will start falling out.

 

[DF357]

Moore and the Democrats....

go by the motto: "There is no such thing as reality, only perception." Unfortunately in politics, they are correct.

Thanks to whomever it is who uses this as a signature. It's one of the most profound phrases I've seen.

 

[Iain]

So you want the CIA to whack a dissenting voice? And you guys hate Stalin? Seems to me you may like some of his ideas.

There are some interesting questions in there, even given Moore's somewhat loose attitude to facts.

We all need people to ask these questions of our governments, regardless of what we think about their politics, socialist or otherwise, that partly helps to protect our democracy and our freedom from the very people we elect.

 

[spacemanspiff]

a 'dissenting voice' usually should be a credible one, to begin with. since moore is NOT credible, why should anyone be poisoned by his lies and treachery?

mind you, this is the same one who has made millions off writing books about how big business tramples the little guy, not to mention he capitalized on the deaths at columbine. if he was so concerned shouldnt he be donating his millions to those who dont have adequate health care? or to the families of those who were killed?
noooo, those millions are for him and him only! the pompous fool should be kicked out of the country.

 

[OF]

Yeah, Tony really really and for true wants the CIA to whack Moore. Lighten up, Francis.

- Gabe

 

[OF]

Easy there Spiff, you STALIN-LOVER!!!

- Gabe

 

[Iain]

I wasn't exactly being serious either gabe, but then us English people often forget to put those little smilie things in.

Spiff, you make a good point about the necessary credibility of the 'dissenting voice', but we also need to bear in mind that the credibility of a person is of course going to be affected by our own political viewpoint. For many Moore is as credible as it gets, and for others Coulter fills that role.

 

[spacemanspiff]

i would go so far as to venture that if moore used the actual statistics and never altered any of the facts in writing his books or filming his movies, he'd be much more respected by people like us.
but the antis only rely upon emotional outbursts like 'if it saves just one!' or 'its for the children!'.... they try to make it appear that if you dont agree with them, well you must be insane and irrational. they ask questions like "would you describe your gun loving buddy as a two-ton maneating behemoth; or is he more like a cannibalistic human?"
"well my buddy is human, not behemoth....."
"so you admit your gun loving buddy is a cannibal?! ban all guns now!"

if moore used the actual numbers found at un-biased sources, and stopped pushing for retailors like walmart to stop selling ammunition, (among other things) then i might stop thinking of him as a waste of dna.

 

[OF]

For many Moore is as credible as it gets

Uhhh... The guy is lying. It's that simple. It doesn't matter what his views are. He's a liar. It has nothing to do with point of view. His politics are irrelevant so far as his ethics are concerned.

- Gabe

 

[Iain]

I do agree with a lot of what you guys are saying, and think that everyone, not just Moore, would be better served by knowing and sticking to the facts. Unfortunately (for the sake of clear-cut and brief arguments) many dispute what the facts actually are, for example citing Coulter as fact when discussing things with a 'socialist' isn't going to cut any ice, just like them citing Moore at you isn't going to work. We all have our 'facts' and they come about through the framework of beliefs that we have. Of course there are real and indisputable facts, and Moore is certainly not always on the right side of them.

 

[TonyB]

Oh yeah..I was joking....long live free speech
But you know accidents DO happen..I have an Uncle Dom...well nevermind

 

[Travis McGee]

"Hmmm... There's no Michael Moore in here, but there is this Norbert Nottingham. Must be a coincidence, like it says in the front of the book."

 

[Bill Hook]

I have the option of responding to Moore's screed, or taking a dump.....
I think taking a dump would be more productive.

The end result of MM's screed or your bodily functions are the same, a big pile of pooh.

MM is the avatar of the left-wing tinfoil hatters. He even thinks white bread is racist.

 

[OF]

We all have our 'facts' and they come about through the framework of beliefs that we have. Of course there are real and indisputable facts, and Moore is certainly not always on the right side of them.

Yes, there are facts and there are "facts". Hopefully, intelligent people can discern between the two. Moore is a liar, as is evidenced by the fact that he's 'not on the right side' of facts, which is some kind of verbose alternative way of stating that he's lying, apparently. He's a liar, and as also evidenced by the facts, it is impossible come to the conclusion that he is ignorant of his lies, which makes him without honor as well. That is not interpretive or political, it is logical.

Statement: "Michael Moore is a liar and without honor" He also happens to be large and fat. So the statement "Michael Moore is a big fat honorless liar" is also demonstrably true.

I fail to see how any of that is "interpretation". I also fail to see what Ann Coulter has to do with any of this, other than presenting some sort of data point for a silly moral equivalency argument in defense of Moore, the liar.

- Gabe

 

[tyme]

As synoptic's post indicates at the end, Snopes covers the whole thing. Rather more extensively, too. That bit is just part of it.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flight.htm

 

[Moparmike]

Oscar winner Michael Moore...

Does this "award" somehow lend credit and make his opinion more valid on a subject in which he does not specialize in? I dont understand. "Oscar winner" is not a title. It states he won an award, not that he is deserving of our unwavering awe, respect, and admiration. It does not mean that he is anymore qualified to speak on international terrorism or politics than I am qualified to speak on Lee Iacoca's carreer, or that because I am a gun owner it means that I am qualified to be unquestionably believed when I speak about guns.

"Owner of three guns Moparmike, using unquestionable logic stated in a press confrence today that Sarah Brady weighs the same as a duck, and should be burned because she floats like all witches. Wood, witches, and ducks all float, and Sarah Brady floats. Therefore, she is a witch."

Now then, does that make any friggin sense?

 

[Black92LX]

I truly love how you have rounded up hundreds of people and shipped them out of the country on immigration charges. You can waive rights, but when it comes to the right to own an AK-47, oh no!

BECAUSE THEY AREN'T CITIZENS. and the rules don't apply in the same way. what a moron. he spoke at my university last week and i wanted to be sick. surprisingly enough he didn't mention guns once.

 

[cracked butt]

Does this "award" somehow lend credit and make his opinion more valid on a subject in which he does not specialize in? I dont understand. "Oscar winner" is not a title. It states he won an award, not that he is deserving of our unwavering awe, respect, and admiration. It does not mean that he is anymore qualified to speak on international terrorism or politics than I am qualified to speak on Lee Iacoca's carreer, or that because I am a gun owner it means that I am qualified to be unquestionably believed when I speak about guns.

AS opposed to say, the 'Honorable' senator Kennedy?

 

[hansolo]

Michael Moore

"Soylent Green"