Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911
1. The Gore “victory” rally isn’t celebrating a Florida win. It
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.
4. Investigation by the Palm Beach Post and others shows
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.
13. Moore lied to a TV reporter in claiming that Fahrenheit
discloses Clarke’s decision to the audience. Clarke called the
Saudi exit material in Fahrenheit a “mistake” by Moore.
14. Contrary to what Fahrenheit claims, the September 11
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.
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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.
government, as Fahrenheit shows, but American coddling of
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
invested in the U.S. The figure appears in his book House of
Bush, House of Saud , but neither of Unger’s cited sources
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.
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