DS: My immediate response to Moore refusing to talk to the Anti-Moore documentary guy is: good point.
That bothers me a little too, but notice he isn't trying to sue the guy for using his name in the title of the documentary. And what the Daily Show piece proved is that the guy hammering Moore is a bit of a dufuss. So Moore is refusing an interview with a guy who up front is saying,"You're an asshole, and the entire premise of my piece is character assassination aimed at you personally."
Still, Moore should appear in the dork's movie. First mistake the man has made during the F911 saga. (His problem is he's acting like a republican. He's using his power to set the agenda instead of supporting the free flow of ideas with an interview. But still, I'd take a bullet for him before I would for George II.)
Not that anyone doesn't have the right to slam him any way they see fit. Return fire is just part of the kind of political advocacy that Moore is engaged in and it leads to an active dialogue that I'm confident he supports.
Georges: You are now living in the first era of my adult life where an administration was successful at diffusing and diverting attention from their own actions on a vitally improtant issue by pointing to the previous administration. Clinton didn't do it, Bush I didn't do it, Reagan didn't do it, Carter didn't do it. There was kind of a gentlemen's agreement that the retired president doesn't take shots at sitting presidents, and the sitting president doesn't take shots at the previous administration. Clinton's book doesn't nail Bush. But the favor is not being returned, and the result is just plain misleading.
Even if the Clinton administration was lax, it was positively ambitious in comparison to the Bush administration leading up to 9/11. You've got members of the anti-terrorism community begging to meet with the president, but he was too busy in Texas. These folks were unable to even contact the president directly for the entire month leading up to 9/11. They ignored a memo entitled: "Bin Laden to attack US" Instead of beefing up, on 9/11 national security advisor Condi Rice was to give a speech on the administration's primary national security initiatave: More funding for Star Wars.
And when it happened?... Here's something interesting I found surfing:
"We've all seen the video. It figures prominently in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11". It is the video of George Bush at Booker Elementary School being informed by Andy Card of the second impact of a passenger jetliner into the World Trade Center, then sitting there for several minutes reading about goats.
What damns the Bush administration is not what is in this video, but what SHOULD be in the video and is not. Ostensibly, Bush and Card are reacting to a surprise attack, but Bush does not act surprised, and Andrew Card does not act like a man delivering an unexpected piece of news but instead is merely delivering a progress report to which he already knows Bush will not have an
immediate response.
There is one more thing that should be in this video and isn't, and that is the Secret Service, the protective detail whose one and only job is the President's safety.
The fictional Sherlock Holmes solved the crime in "Silver Blaze" deducing that it is the owner of the house who is the criminal. How does he know?
Because the dog did not bark. The only criminal who could carry out the crime and not arouse the dog was a criminal the dog already knew as a friend, the dog's owner.
Now let us turn our Sherlockian logic on 9-11. Hijacked aircraft were wandering across the eastern half of the country. In theory nobody could have known how many there are or if more planes were not in the process of being hijacked.
How could they? Two of the planes had crashed into the World
Trade Center. There is an airport only four miles from Booker Elementary School, and Bush's presence at the school was in the news media days in advance. The Sarasota Herald Tribune announced Bush's visit to Booker on September 8th, given the 9-11 planners three days to include Bush as a target for a diving jetliner.
Nobody could have safely assumed he was not a
target.
And yet the Secret Service did not rush in and remove the President to a secure location, or at least to the safety of the armored Presidential Limousine. That's their job. That's what they do in the case of a real surprise attack with so many unknowns. They don't do anything else.
But the Secret Service did nothing. The dog did not bark.
Bush defenders try to explain away Bush's inaction as not wanting to upset the children. Michael Moore explains away Bush's inaction by suggesting he hadn't been told to leave. But Michael Moore failed to follow that line of reasoning through to its logical conclusion; where were the people whose job
it is to get the President to a place of safety in event of attack, the people who would have, SHOULD have, pulled Bush out of there, children and public appearances be damned!
The Secret Service did nothing. The dog did not bark.
If the events of 9-11 were really a surprise to the United States
Government, then there is no way that the Secret Service could know there wasn't a hijacked or stolen plane headed towards Booker Elementary School that very second.
The Secret Service did nothing. The dog did not bark.
The Secret Service should be in that video but they are not. From their inaction, it is clear that the Secret Service KNEW FOR A FACT THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS NOT A TARGET OF ONE OF THE HIJACKED PLANES.
And the only way anyone could know that for a fact at that moment is to have known what the targets of the hijacked planes were, at that exact moment, standing there in
the school.
The Secret Service did nothing. The dog did not bark."
EVERYONE, PUT ANY PRESIDENT'S NAME IN THIS SCENERIO. REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. IF THIS IS THE STORY... AND IT IS... SHOULDN'T WE BE ASKING SOME PRETTY POINTED QUESTIONS?
What non-conspiracy related explaination is there for the most important potential casualty sitting in the same spot that has been advertised when your country is under suprise attack? Doesn't it just make sense that you take him to another location immediately?
Add this to the list along with "why weren't jets scrambled immediately after contact was lost with the airliners on 9/11, when professional golfer Payne fucking Stewart's plane was escorted when it went out of communication some time beofre."
Georges, I'm going to read the report myself before commenting any more on it's findings. I'm sure it's at least as comprehensive and forthright as the Warren Commission on Kennedy's assassination.
Questions... Questions... Questions...
