بياع القلوب
27-07-2004, 10:32 PM
MICHAEL Moore is a man with a mission, which is to bring about regime change in Washington. His film Fahrenheit 9/11 (based on a book covering a similar theme) is a polemical work designed to embarrass President Bush and his Republican Party associates by suggesting that their political decisions (notably over Iraq) were driven by less than honorable motives.
In this regard Moore is pushing at an open door because the invasion of Iraq has certainly raised many questions about why the Bush administration acted as it did. Fahrenheit 9/11 won the best film award at this year s Cannes film festival. That a movie lambasting Bush won an award in France the country most critical of his foreign policy initiatives should hardly come as a surprise. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a crude political cartoon. That it has been accepted as serious commentary on contemporary American public life is a measure of the dumbing down that is now part of Western news coverage with its sound bites, celebrities and stories about firefighters rescuing kittens stuck in trees.
In Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore claims that as a result of the close ties between President Bush and senior Saudi officials and personal friendship with members of the Bin Laden family the latter were illicitly spirited out of the United States after the 9/11 attacks. This was at a time when all other flights were grounded. This allowed Moore to fulminate against Bush accusing him of making concessions to Saudis not allowed to anyone else. Unfortunately for Moore as the bipartisan Congressional 9/11 Report makes clear the facts on which he based his allegations are simply wrong. The 9/11 Commission found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened, the report states.
Furthermore the FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures. According to the Commission: They (FBI) concluded that none of the passengers was connected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion. Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.
Besides, the Committee found no evidence of political intervention None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.
All this may disappoint the conspiracy theorists who have their own axe to grind and who certainly never allow the facts to get in the way of a good story. When it comes to gilding the lily Moore is no exception.
Saudi Gazette
In this regard Moore is pushing at an open door because the invasion of Iraq has certainly raised many questions about why the Bush administration acted as it did. Fahrenheit 9/11 won the best film award at this year s Cannes film festival. That a movie lambasting Bush won an award in France the country most critical of his foreign policy initiatives should hardly come as a surprise. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a crude political cartoon. That it has been accepted as serious commentary on contemporary American public life is a measure of the dumbing down that is now part of Western news coverage with its sound bites, celebrities and stories about firefighters rescuing kittens stuck in trees.
In Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore claims that as a result of the close ties between President Bush and senior Saudi officials and personal friendship with members of the Bin Laden family the latter were illicitly spirited out of the United States after the 9/11 attacks. This was at a time when all other flights were grounded. This allowed Moore to fulminate against Bush accusing him of making concessions to Saudis not allowed to anyone else. Unfortunately for Moore as the bipartisan Congressional 9/11 Report makes clear the facts on which he based his allegations are simply wrong. The 9/11 Commission found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened, the report states.
Furthermore the FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures. According to the Commission: They (FBI) concluded that none of the passengers was connected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion. Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.
Besides, the Committee found no evidence of political intervention None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.
All this may disappoint the conspiracy theorists who have their own axe to grind and who certainly never allow the facts to get in the way of a good story. When it comes to gilding the lily Moore is no exception.
Saudi Gazette