Is Bush Finished?

was held before the polls had even opened.

2. Like all the other networks, Fox mistakenly said that Gore

had won in Florida. The first network to retract the Florida

mistake was CBS, not Fox.

3. A 6-month study by a consortium of major newspapers

shows that Bush would have won the Florida recount under

any of the terms which Gore sought in his lawsuits.

that race was not a reason why election officials mistakenly

disqualified some voters because they were incorrectly

thought to have felony convictions.

5. Bush’s Presidency before 9/11 was not in serious trouble.

No commentator said that he looked like a lame-duck president.

Congress had passed his #1 bill (the tax cut) and was

on the way to passing his #2 bill (the education bill). The

scene at the end of the movie in which Bush tells a rich audience

“I call you my base,” was from an October 2000 charity

fund-raiser. Both Gore and Bush spoke at the fund-raiser

and, as is the custom at the fund-raiser, made fun of themselves.

6. “In his first eight months in office before September

11th, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the

Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time.” As the

Washington Post reported, the figure includes weekends, and

includes time in “vacation locations” such as Camp David,

where Bush was working—as when he met with Tony Blair.

7. In the golf course scene (about the middle of the movie),

Bush had just heard about a terrorist attack on Israel. He

called the press together to make a quick statement condemning

the terrorism against Israel. He was not speaking

about attacks on the United States.

8. There is no evidence that Bush did not read the Aug. 6,

2001 Presidential Daily Briefing about al Qaeda.

9. He never claimed that the title’s “vagueness” was an

excuse for not reading it.

10. The Briefing did not say “said that Osama bin Laden was

planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.” It said

that the FBI has “not been able to corroborate” such a threat.

11. The Saudis left the U.S. only after air travel was opened

for the general public.

12. According to Richard Clarke and the September 11

Commission, Clarke personally approved the Saudi departures,

and the decision went no higher in the chain of command.

discloses Clarke’s decision to the audience. Clarke called the

Commission found that many Saudis were asked “detailed

questions” before being allowed to leave.

15. James Bath did not invest bin Laden family money

in Bush’s energy company Arbusto. He invested his own

money.

16. Bath’s name was blacked-out from an Alabama National

Guard record released by the White House—as required by

federal law, which prohibits the disclosure of health-related

personal information.

17. Prince Bandar has way too much influence on the U.S.

the Saudi tyranny is a long-standing bi-partisan tradition, not

a Bush invention.

18. Harken Energy: Bush only sold the stock after company

lawyers told him it was OK.

19. The reason that Bush “beat the rap” was because there

was no evidence he had engaged in insider trading.

20. The Carlyle Group is not a Bush playground. Many Bush

opponents are investors, including George Soros.

21. The Bush administration dealt Carlyle a huge financial

blow by canceling the Crusader missile, one of the few weapons

cancellations in the Bush administration.

22. The bin Ladens dropped out of Carlyle before the stock

sale. Of the 1.4 billion that the Saudis invested in companies

with Bush connections, the vast majority of the money was

invested in Carlyle before George H.W. Bush joined the firm.

23. Craig Unger claims that the Saudis have $860 billion

support such a large figure.

24. Moore claims that the Saudis “own 7% of America.”

But even if you believe Unger’s fictitious $860 billion figure,

the Saudis own only about 7% of total foreign investment

in America, which is over 10 trillion dollars. Only if all of

America were owned by foreigners could Moore’s claim be

correct.

25. The Saudi embassy does not receive special protection.

It is not the only foreign embassy which is guarded by the

U.S. Secret Service. An international treaty signed by the

U.S. requires the U.S. to protect any embassy which asks for

protection.

26. Moore’s insinuation that Bush runs U.S. foreign policy

according to Saudi instructions is contradicted by the

Afghanistan invasion (which toppled the Taliban regime

which the Saudis strongly supported), and by the Iraq War

(which the Saudis opposed, in part because Iraqi oil will

compete with Saudi oil).

27. As Governor of Texas, Bush never met with Taliban representatives.

28. The proposed Unocal pipeline was supported by the

Clinton administration, but Unocal abandoned the pipeline

idea in 1998.

29. The new Afghani government has signed a protocol to

build a pipeline, but it is an entirely different pipeline, in a

location hundreds of miles distant from the Unocal proposal.

30. Construction has not begun on the new pipeline.

Although Moore claims that “Enron stood to benefit” from

the pipeline, Enron has never had any participation in either

pipeline.

31. The Bush administration did not “welcome” Taliban diplomats

in March 2001, but instead condemned them for failing

to hand over Osama bin Laden.

32. Despite Moore’s pose in the movie, he opposed the

Afghanistan War, and—in December 2002—claimed that

Osama bin Laden might be innocent.

33. In claiming that the Afghanistan invasion was a mere

ruse to protect the Saudis, Moore omits the results of liberation

in Afghanistan: destruction of al Qaeda training camps,

the creation of free elections, more freedom for women, and

the homecoming of 1.5 million refugees from the Taliban.