The Shrine

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/f911notes/">here</a>

Here it is: Moore's support for his facts in 9/11. This one is for you Tess (and you too, old man, I know you're still there)</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I don't think anybody is really disputing his facts itself, but he's not refuting the counterarguments, either.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '><blockquote>FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "On March 19th, 2003, George W. Bush and the United States military invaded Iraq, which had never attacked or threatened to attack the United States. A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen."

* "Iraq has never threatened nor been implicated in any attack against U.S. territory and the CIA has reported no Iraqi-sponsored attacks against American interests since 1991." Stephen Zunes, "An Annotated Overview of the Foreign Policy Segments of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address," Foreign Policy In Focus, January 29, 2003. Segments of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address," Foreign Policy In Focus, January 29, 2003</blockquote>My definition of "never" is, well, "never," not "has not happened since 1991."<blockquote> FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The Coalition of the Willing included Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, Romania, The Netherlands, and Afghanistan.

* White House list of Coalition members, March 20th, 2003: <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases ... ockquote>I don't think anyone questioned him on that. However, he's trying to make a point the wrong way. The US has over 100,000 troops over there. The next largest deployment are British troops with about 10,000. After that, I can't remembe who has the next largest deployment, but they're all around a thousand or less. So if he had just gone from the top down in order of troop deployment, he could have easily demonstrated that the "Coalition of the Willing" was mostly the United States, followed in a distant second by Britian. It's better to be accurate than funny.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Jon Stewart need to make his own documentary.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>He claims "never murdered an American citizen" and the report says "no Iraqi-sponsered attacks on American interests since 1991". Technically, an "interest" is not a "citizen", could also be a business or property that belongs to an American company (among many other non-living things). Technically, his "support" doesn't even support what he said, it just says that there's been no attack that had any American involvement either whatsoever - either direct or indirect - since 1991 but says nothing on citizens before then. That explanation is basically a waste of space.

And I think the point he was making with the Coalition was that other than Britian, there was no real presence from any country. I've always thought he should have said "other than the UK, we have these other powerful allies such as..." which would have allowed him to be both more accurate and funny at the same time as getting his point across, but he's all about shock value, we know that.

He does often go for the shock value rather than present the facts outright, which is one of the things he does a little more in this film over his others. Personally, I don't like it and would rather he present it a little more intellectually, but that's the tradeoff. He shocks people and they listen. Most people are simply lazy and will not simply listen to a good argument, particularly in a society that shuns away from any sort of verbal confrontation whatsover (I'm talkig generally here...). Just like Spacey's character from the end of Usual Suspects says: "You can't just tap people on the shoulder anymore, you have to hit them over the head with a sledgehammer". This is the exact philosophy Moore works off of. Not my choice, but it'll get more people to listen and pay attention. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>If you have to splice hairs to demonstrate that what you've said is technically correct, you've failed as a director of a documentary. He should choose his words to avoid possible confusion. And I find your rationale disturbing: "I have to mislead for their own good."</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Mislead? Well, no, particularly in this case. You basically have to have literally lived in the dark ages to not know that Britian was in the way (or even Spain). So does he need to say "Sure, Britian came along, but what about these other countries that made up our coalition:.....". That's basically what he said, just without the Britian part. You'll just playing semantics now. All he's done is ~emphasis~ the smaller countries. There's no actual direct misleading (ie. saying these countries were the backbone of the coalition with no one else involved) going on. Like I said before, he can't really provide the facts in an intellectual manner because no one listens, hence the shock value. At least people will listen this way. So, he has chosen his words carefully, specifically so in order to get a rouse out of people or to shock them so they listen. Otherwise, most people will just ignore it. As i said before, this isn't my choice, I would prefer the intellectual approach, but it simply wouldn't work on a mass level. Unlike you, I accept the tradeoff of the shock vs intellectual in order to actually get people to listen. Look at all the debate that's going on all over all types of media. There are lots of people who may not have had much of an opinion or passion regarding this subject matter (one way or the other) before who do now.

To me, that's a positive step and worth him making an op-ed piece that people are calling a documentary (I can show you footage where he says it's not a documentary). This is the new style of documentary out now, so we'd all better get used to it (see Supersize Me, Fog of War, The Corporation, and The Control Room; all excellent "documentaries"). They're not documentaries in the pure sense (like Spellbound) anymore. Entertainment = bigger bucks and as the studios have proven, that's all that matters, particularly when you're trying to make a point.

Incidentally, why didn't people slam him for Roger & Me or The Big One? Technically, they're not documentaries either. I think the answer is simple: Farenheit and Columbine were much more politically charges and people cared more.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I've been starting to post on my work forum. I think from the practice here, it's made me a total dispatcher of knowledge over there. Weak arguments are presented, and I combat them with a ton of evidence. I'm not learning anything over there, which is kinda disappointing. There's barely any "opponents" over there worth mentioning. Here's an example post about somebody in favor of Bush:

<i> well i dont want a pres. that is going to say yeah we are going to be attacked again, just a matter of when and how...

would rather have a president say we are going to do everything to make sure we don't get attacked again.

bush was for the death penalty, so if you mess up you will be punished and the terrorist messed up, so i say put him back in for another 4 years</i>

This level of politicial intelligence is typical. They don't know they are being manipulated by the media and their own administration. Keep in mind this is a fairly intelligent call center, and there are a (surprisingly) lot of Republicans that roost there. In some cases, this is really how they think.

Therefore, in order to sway the vote for a democracy that doesn't know any better, it's best to manipulate the public in the same matter that the millions of Fox News viewers are being manipulated. I don't like it, but every dirty trick pulled on one side must be pulled on the other side.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>That's not lack of intelligence, it's a lack of critical thinking. More manipulation does not encourage critical thinking.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>No, it doesn't. But, in a country where a majority of its population doesn't think about their own actions and votes at the same time, it wouldn't be fair for only one side to manipulate the public.</div>