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Thank You, Michael Moore
By William Rivers Pitt
Jun 26, 2004, 10:48

"The light at the end of the tunnel could be the bulb in a film projector."

- Jeanette Castillo

Screens in Bartlett, Chattanooga, Jackson, Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee will be showing it. Screens in Layton and West Jordan, Utah will be showing it. If you find yourself in Leawood, Merriam, Shawnee or Wichita, Kansas, you can see it. The same goes for Centerville, Fairfax and Abington, Virginia. If you happen to be in Akron, Bexley, Dublin or Elyria, Ohio, you're all set. Hoover, Montgomery and Mobile, Alabama will not be left out.

Laramie, Wyoming? It's there. Bozeman, Montana? Indeed. Should you call home Grand Island, Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, you have not been forgotten. The largest mall in the country, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, will have it in its theater. If you are a soldier at Camp Lejune or Fort Bragg, about to be shipped to Iraq, you can see it in nearby Fayetteville, North Carolina.

These towns, large and small, along with towns large and small from sea to shining sea and straight through the American heartland, will begin screening Michael Moore's documentary, 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' beginning at 12:01a.m. Friday morning, the 25th of June, 2004. For the majority of people who will see this movie, in those towns large and small, the experience will be nothing short of a mind-bomb.

The Who once sang about how the hypnotized never lie, but as we have seen, people hypnotized by television and deliberately enforced fear can certainly support a war, and a President, which are fundamentally at odds with basic American decency. In fact, people hypnotized by television and deliberately enforced fear will feed themselves into the meat grinder with "God Bless America" on their lips.

Michael Moore's film will snap that hypnosis, but good. Those Americans who believed what their President told them because they saw it on the TV will, after less than two hours in their local theater, look at both their television and their President with doubt and loathing when they walk from the darkness into the bright light of day. There are millions of Americans who believed what they were told - about 9/11, about Iraq, about George W. Bush himself - who will come into that bright light with the realization that they have been lied to.

Speaking personally, none of the data in this film surprised me. Having spent every day of the last three years working to expose as many Americans as possible to the truth of the man they call President, Mr. Moore was unlikely to explode any shells across my bow. The connections between Bush, the Saudis, the Carlyle Group and the 9/11 attacks were there. The connections between Cheney and Halliburton were there. The connections between Enron, Unocal, natural gas pipelines, the war in Afghanistan and a little-known country called Turkmenistan were there. I enjoyed the fact that Moore showed off unredacted copies of Bush's military service record, allowing us to see the parts of those documents which had been blacked out. I found no fact, no assertion in this film to question or doubt. I have done my homework, and as was made painfully clear, Michael Moore did his.

Most Americans don't know about this stuff, and seeing it fully documented and meticulously researched on the big screen will be, to say the least, revelatory. Yes, Virginia, there are billions of dollars to be made off this Iraq war for Bush's friends. The second door on the left is the recruiting office. Sign on the line that is dotted, and be the first kid on your block to die for the benefit of Carlyle's stock options. Be sure to save your pennies beforehand, however, because the Army will dock your pay for the days you are dead. It's policy, you see.

Mr. Moore put two daggers into me with this film, the first of which had to do with American soldiers. Trooper after trooper spoke frankly for Moore's camera, condemning both the war and the people who thrust them into it. Several scenes graphically explained what happens to a soldier's body when it is caught in an explosion. The result is ruinous, and the cries of the wounded and the dying will ring in my ears forever.

The most wrenching scenes in the film center around a woman named Lila, who loves her country, loves her flag, and above all loves her children whom she actively persuaded to join the armed services. We learn that Lila has a son in Iraq, and because of that, she despises those protesting the invasion. We find out later that her son was killed in Karbala on April 2nd, when his Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. We watch her read her son's last letter home, in which he rages against Bush and the war. We last see Lila standing at the gates of the White House, tears boiling from her eyes, as she discovers her true enemy, the one who took her baby from her.

The other dagger Moore put into me came during his montage of the media coverage of the war. Journalist after journalist is shown rhapsodizing Bush, his administration and the war. Each and every one of them carried forth that which we now know to be bald-faced lies: That Iraq had WMDs, that Iraq was a threat, that we had to go, and that everything is fine. It was a slideshow of the nonsense Americans have been spoon-fed for far too long.

If you doubt this, Sidney Blumenthal's aggressive and effective actual journalism, as found in his most recent report titled 'Reality is Unraveling for Bush,' should help you along. "Most of the media was on the bandwagon or intimidated," writes Blumenthal. "Cheney himself called the president of the corporation that owned one of the networks to complain about an errant commentator. Political aides directed by Karl Rove ceaselessly called editors and producers with veiled threats about access that was not granted in any case. The press would not bite the hand that would not feed it."

With a single stroke, Michael Moore has undone three years of poor, slanted, biased, factually bereft, compromised television journalism. This, in the end, is the final greatness of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Not only will Americans get a sense of the depth of the deception they have endured, but 'journalists' all across the country will be forced to endure the humiliation they so richly deserve.

I was privileged to see this film in the company of three groups - Military Families Speak Out, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and Veterans for Peace - which have stood against this disastrous war from day one. Many in the theater had family in Iraq, or had lost family in Iraq, or had lost family on 9/11 and seen their beloved dead used as an excuse for unwarranted war, and there was not a dry eye in the house.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is not a victory for anyone. We the People should have known better, We the People should have been given the facts before sending 851 of our children to die. We the People have been betrayed, by our leaders and by a media that profited, and profits still, from the daily sale of lies. This film drove that horrid fact home with a mallet, and it hurt.

I was reminded, as I filed out with this company of heroes, of a portion of Shakespeare's rendition of Henry's speech before Agincourt:

He that outlives this day and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say, 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'


Many of us were not hypnotized. Millions of us took to the streets in this country and around the world, to try and stop this madness before it was unleashed. The people in that theater with me had done this, had never stopped doing this, though their President and their media named them traitor. They were right. They were right. They were right.

Michael Moore has unleashed a wolf within Mr. Bush's fences. There is no getting around it. Perhaps, now that it is far too late, we as a nation will wake up. On the day of that awakening, those of us who never stopped standing, never stopped marching, learned to live without sleep, learned to live in a nation that scorned truth for televised fantasy, those patriots I was with tonight in that theater can pause for breath. We can sit upon the grass on a bright day, strip our sleeves, and show our scars.

© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org
http://truthout.org/
Article on AxisofLogic.com

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Love,
Greg

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Supreme Rebuke
The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A22

SINCE THE OUTSET of the war on terrorism, the Bush administration, across a wide range of issues, has had a simple message for the federal judiciary: Trust us and don't interfere. Yesterday, in a pair of much-awaited rulings, the court delivered its response. First, the justices declared that U.S. citizens designated as enemy fighters are entitled to a "fair opportunity" to challenge their detentions and "unquestionably [have] the right to access to counsel" in doing so. Then the justices held that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the detentions of noncitizens held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Trust, even during wartime, has limits.

The most important decision of the day came in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the Louisiana-born Saudi man who has been held in a military brig for the past two years after being captured in Afghanistan. The decision is more historic still for transcending the court's frequent ideological divide. Eight justices rejected the government's contention that Mr. Hamdi could be locked up indefinitely, incommunicado, on the strength of a two-page, hearsay affidavit and without any opportunity to respond to the government's allegations.

The justices did not agree on the proper resolution of the case: A four-member plurality led by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor held -- as we have argued -- that an American who fights with the enemy may be detained as an enemy fighter but must have a meaningful opportunity to contest the designation. Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that Congress's authorization of the use of force did not include the authority to detain Americans. Justices Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens argued that Mr. Hamdi was entitled either to be tried or freed. Only Justice Clarence Thomas would have affirmed the government's position.

Consequently, the case not only guarantees that Mr. Hamdi will get to tell the courts his side of the story but also sends a powerful message that Americans cannot just disappear at the hands of their government. Even during wartime, the government must be held to account -- albeit not necessarily in a full-fledged criminal trial -- before an American can be locked up. That's important not just for Mr. Hamdi but for liberty generally. And it means that the other American held as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla, will at last get a hearing as well. The court dismissed Mr. Padilla's case, finding that it had been filed in the wrong court. But the decision in Hamdi means that in any renewed litigation, more than the government's say-so will be needed to keep Mr. Padilla behind bars.

The court's skepticism about the government's position extended even to that case where precedent was most strongly on the administration's side. The government had a powerful argument that Guantanamo lies outside the court's jurisdiction, an argument with which we agreed. Yet the administration's willful failure for so long to construct at Guantanamo a review process in which the public could have confidence makes the court's decision to intervene something of a self-inflicted wound for the administration.

It isn't clear what, in practice, the decision will mean. If the result is to spur the administration to improve review and inject a measure of outside oversight, it could prove constructive. But there are dangers as well. Holding that jurisdiction exists to consider these cases is not the same as saying they have legal merit, so the decision is far from a promise of meaningful review of Guantanamo detentions, and it could prove quite disruptive. The decision's logic seems to imply that any detainee held anywhere by U.S. forces -- even someone such as Saddam Hussein or Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- could have access to U.S. courts. However irresponsible the executive branch has been, the judiciary is ill-positioned to manage every overseas detention.

What should be clear, however, is that the judiciary will not sit still for assertions of unbridled executive power. As the war on terrorism progresses, the administration will need -- at long last -- to submit to the oversight and transparency it has so assiduously resisted.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Link to article

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I'm not quite as optimistic as the article's author that this will reign in the administration's "assertions of unbridled executive power" or force it to submit to oversight and transparency ... but it's a great big step in the right direction!

Love,
Greg

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but I'd be willing to bet that we won't have any elections at all this November....

They will stop them from happening at all....just to 'keep us safe'

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I don't know where the idea first came from, if it was from me or if I picked it up on the web or from the Spaceman's radio show, but I've had a dreadful feeling about the November elections.

A year or so ago I had a horrible dream that GW was assinated on the eve of the '04 election. He was standing on a podium in a large hall addressing a packed house. Hamid Karzi (I think?) was standing beside him - they were annoucing a special something about Afganistan. At least I think it was Karzi about Afganistan. Maybe it was the new Iraqi leader - at the time there was no Iraqi leader? Anyway, a person in the front row stood up and opened up something that looked small and non-descript, but as he did so a cloud of highly poisionous gas was released. Everyone near him, including those on the podium died instantly.

What was freaky about the dream, was that I was dreaming it as though I was watching the events unfold on live tv.

A bunch of other stuff happened, but the thing that I remember was the anchor person at the CNN newsdesk saying that with GW gone, Cheney was President and the election post-poned due to the terrosist attack. I woke up feeling sick. I'm no fan of GW, but I've often felt that he's been set up as a sacrfical lamb, and this type of scenario would not be beyond the reach of "them".

Anyway, FWIW, I was remembering that tonight, and I hope and pray that nothing interfere's with your elections - too bad you didn't have someone a little better to choose between though!

Love,
Terri

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I have never seen so many wheelchairs in a movie all at once....

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I noticed the same thing, Dani! And the very wide age range in general, too.

This is "grass roots" in the purest sense of the term!

Bravo to the hip-hopsters! I've never been able to grok the music, but if they are there to stand up and vote rather than just rapping they sure have my respect.

As this awareness and sentiment gathers momentum, the Bush gang is going to find a very ugly situation facing them if they try to pull an "elections canceled due to terrorism" ploy!

Love,
Greg