'Fahrenheit 9-11' Review By A Traditional Conservative
George W. Bush did not approve this message
by David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org
Published 2004.07.09
Revised: 2004.09.12 (see revison notes)


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I'm not George W. Bush, and he did not approve this message.

I paid to see 'Fahrenheit 9/11' last night, and I'm glad I did. Watching the crowd reaction in Carbondale, Illinois was a lesson in itself.

I would not call the movie a straight up documentary. I would call it a docu-op-ed, or a documentary opinion editorial.

I was well aware of the criticisms from both sides before seeing this film, so I was looking for certain things --- both included and excluded from the film.

Included in the film:
· > criticism of G.W. Bush for his handling and response to the actual 9-11 attack,
· > criticism of allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of the U.S. the day after the attacks without being questioned while every other American citizen was grounded and under suspicion,
· > criticism of Bush family's long established business dealings with the Bin Laden family and the Saudi regime,
· > criticism of the well documented visits by the Taliban to Texas in the late 90s regarding the Caspian - Turnministan - Afghanistan - Pakistan - Arabian Sea right-of-way for oil and gas pipelines. Yeah, oil and natural gas. Seems everywhere it is, there is an uprising that requires the U.S. military to be there. THAT alone should raise questions in the minds of objective Americans if any are paying attention. One wonders where American oil companies would be without the U.S. military.)
· > criticism of the Bush family interest in profiteering from the sale of implements of war through its business relationship with the Carlyle Group,
· > criticism and questions regarding the source of the money keeping G.W. Bush businesses afloat when they all shared one common denominator: they were failing,
· > criticism of G.W. Bush's military records and who and what was redacted from the records Bush released, and how that redacted person fits into the Bush/Saudi connection,
· > criticism of G.W. Bush's penchant for vacations while America needed a president,
· > criticism of the decision to go into Afghanistan but not go after Bin Laden,
· > criticism of the White House fever to invade Iraq and justify that by tying the invasion to 9-11 and WMD lies, innuendo and selective use of 'intelligence,'
· > criticism of congress for passing the USA Patriot Act without having read it. There is a great scene where Moore is interviewing one of the leading black congressmen. Moore is asking how they could pass such a law without having read it first. The congressman replies something like this , " Sit down my son. We [the members of the U.S. House of Representatives] don't read any of these bills we pass. Do you realize what that would mean? " And you wonder why I keep saying that to take back our government and reduce its size, scope and cost, we need to retake the U.S. House ...
· > ---
· > criticism of the 'liberal' media for backing the Bush desire to invade Iraq,
· > criticism of the 'liberal' media for failing to ask the tough questions that would have held persons accountable for 9-11 failings and exposed the non-justification for the invasion of Iraq,
· > criticism of the Democrats in congress for not fighting either the election fiasco (certainly many objective election fraud questions abound on both sides) or the administration's unilateral decisions to go to war. Daschel does not come out of this film looking good. Neither do any of the democratic US Senators ),
· > criticism of the American people themselves for blindly following a call to war like cattle would be herded towards the slaughter,
· > criticism of the US Senate for its failure to produce ONE signature of support for the many House members protesting the obvious confusion and legitimate questions regarding the 2000 Florida election count,
· > criticism of the people who were conveniently in place in Florida to administer the votes who were also in place in the Bush campaign, (Note here that I voted for Bush. Sorry.)
· > and more...

I find ALL these criticisms to be VALID and it is way over due that this information be collected for the American people to see in one sitting.

This film panders to NO ONE --- not the Dems, the GOP, or even the audience as it makes the point that Americans simply don't think things through any more --- even things of great importance to their very lives, freedoms and prosperity. Americans comply without question to this message: " Send your kid to unjustified wars to kill other kids and get blown up in the process. Don't ask any questions. Asking questions is unpatriotic. It's only your son - your daughter - your blood. Wave your plastic American flag made in communist China and support the wealthy and powerful who both profit from war and who can wage war on their own authority. "

These 'elites,' who Bush calls his 'base' in the film, don't give a second thought about your particular situation in life.

Our president's family has business dealings with the Saudis, Bin Ladens and arms dealers. His family makes millions from oil and war to mention just two areas of gross and obvious conflict of interest.

And Kerry is no better.

All that can be said for electing Kerry is that with a Dem as president and the GOP in control of congress we can have gridlock in WDC. The voting strategy in November should be to elect gridlock. We'll get the blind partisan Dems fighting the blind partisan GOP. This will not be hard to do. In this circumstance, there will be little incentive for them to work together to pass MORE LAWS that can only end up increasing the size, scope and cost of government while they reduce our liberties and thrust us deeper into the quagmire of the international tar pit of world government.

Not included in the film:
· > well established links to Israel concerning 9-11,
· > total failure on the part of our defense and intelligence communities to detect and stop the attacks,
· > total failure on the part of our law enforcement agencies to hold ANYONE in government accountable for these failings,
· > no mention made of the prior-knowledge held by FBI field agents who tried to get the information to the FBI HQ but were blocked repeatedly by higher ups. Some of these agents later went to David Shippers who helped the House Republicans prosecute Bill Clinton's impeachment... Shippers was appalled that NOBODY at the DOJ or in Congress would even LOOK at the evidence from these FBI field agents... Shippers is on audio tape saying, " The next step is tyranny. " ,
· > no mention of the stock market put options placed on 9-11 affected corporations just prior to the attack, i.e., direct evidence of prior-knowledge and profiteering. The 9-11 commission did not touch this either. Yet, it is obvious that to find those who knew this was going down, we need to simply follow the money,
· > no mention of the apparent 'stand-down' of our air defenses whether that stand-down was intentional or unintentional, the results of the stand down and the scale of the stand down is beyond belief to anyone who considers the timeline of events for more than five minutes,
· > the many questions surrounding the identity of the planes and passengers, the dual flights from Logan, the discrepancy among ALL the passenger lists, the ability of a plane to completely burn up with absolutely nothing left to identify it while the DNA of every passenger on board survives the fire and is identified!, and many other nauseating questions concerning the flights, the passengers, the hijackers and the stand down...,
· > and so much more...

The NIST engineers reported that steel failure from fire was not a factor in the WTC collapse

I've heard the criticism from the 9-11 private investigators saying Moore is covering up things by not going into all this detail and all these leads. I don't agree. Moore focused on Bush/Saudi/arms dealer/oil business and Iraq invasion. It took him nearly two hours to do this. To go into every item screaming out for investigation surrounding 9-11 would take 40 hours or more of very tight editing on a well-written script to explore. These unhappy critics, whose favorite aspect of 9-11 investigation was not included in Moore's film, should get to work on their own documentary.

There are many good documentaries on 9-11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq with outstanding research available. Seeing any one of them puts the 9-11 commission's work to shame and is even more damning to those controlling our government than this film. But I would suggest to Moore that he do a sequel dealing with these other 9-11 questions. He has the ability to get this to the public, while other 9-11 researchers and documentary filmmakers evidently do not.

I've also heard much criticism of the film by partisan supporters of Bush. Bush deserves every exposure and kick to the stomach this film provides just for balance. I say that as a life-long Republican and a former U.S. House candidate running on the GOP ticket. These critics can go to Fox News or Drudge every day to get their daily dose of Kerry criticism. What ALL these partisans miss is that BOTH parties are essentially the same, and neither presidential candidate (Kerry or Bush) is worth the esteemed position of POTUS. Our nation is in a mess requiring serious attention by the people.

This movie is not 'Bowling for Columbine.' In my opinion, that film was a piece of garbage for a variety of reasons. But 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is worthy of viewing and discussion.

I would recommend buying a copy of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and passing it around to your friends and associates. It would take a person months of dedicated work to get the material presented in this film. I will stress that there are better films on this whole 9-11 episode, but they are not presented in a fashion that will keep in check the average American's very short attention span and the need for an 'entertainment fix.' This film mixes entertainment with a spider web of political connections in such a way that it is informative while being entertaining, emotional, maddening and revolting, all at the same time. This film will help wake Americans up, and we all need an awakening.

Americans have not been paying attention to the government we have allowed to emerge over the decades. The government before us now has a distinctly ugly nature. Americans, in general, have paid lip service to our responsibilities as informed citizens. We simply haven't remained informed and engaged.

Our foreign policies have made the U.S. the most hated nation on the face of the earth. The policies of G.W. Bush have made him the most hated man on the face of the earth. How did Americans allow this to happen to their nation and to their office of U.S. President?

We've paid out ever increasing tax dollars without question as to how they are being spent or whom they are enriching. We have not demanded a Return On Investment accounting of our tax dollars. NASA alone is missing over one half TRILLION dollars. But who seems to notice or care? We have, in effect, been funding our own demise as a free and prosperous nation, and we have funded the international destruction of the moral foundation of America's good will and founding principles.

If this nation is going to reclaim its title as the nation 'of the people, by the people and for the people, " then we must restore our constitutional separation of powers, install a congress that is going to actually read the bills before making them law and restrain the growth and cost of government by defunding unnecessary and extra-constitutional initiatives.

If this nation is going to reclaim its moral standing and respect in the world, we are going to have to recall our military and CIA from its global interventions into the sovereign affairs of other nations and begin to repair our national heritage and principles upon which this nation was founded. It's time we followed our founders' advice and traded with other nations and engage in cultural exchange with them, but otherwise, stay out of their internal politics and struggles.

Those who say these wars are not about oil, will be the first to criticize recalling our troops. The Middle East, they will say, is in our national strategic interest. Why? It's not because we need the sand or the goods from the Middle East that you WON'T find at Wal-Mart. Our national strategic interest in the Middle East is oil and natural gas. These ardent supporters of global war will deny that oil is the reason we are there, but they will defend being there because of the oil.

America has the genius and the ability to produce new forms of renewable energy. Let's get to it. Let's get on with a national emergency effort to develop the New Energy technologies that will make America self-sufficient in energy and which will transform the socio-political and economic face of the globe.

Let's defeat terrorism by stopping foreign policies that create it. Let's stop fighting for other peoples' oil and let's let them live in peace and sovereignty. That will remove any reason they have to commit terrorism against us.

Being self-sufficient in our energy supplies will do more to end terrorism than any other single thing we can do. The wars we need to be fighting are here at home, not abroad. We need a war on American soil to make America self-sufficient in clean, renewable, inexpensive and decentralized energy. Let's spend the money we are using in this war on Iraq and Afghanistan to fund New Energy development here at home. We'll find out very quickly that once we leave their countries, they will go back to their own business of rebuilding from the destruction we have left behind.

I am not saying that all Moore's facts are all correct, but I am saying that in total, this film presents a legitimate big picture to the American people they have not received from either the 9-11 commission, the mainstream media or their government.

In the summary of my collegiate paper on communications, I said, " In every attempt at communication, there is an inherent lack of communication. " That certainly applies to this film, but that does not negate the communication that DOES come through this film, and THAT communication is very much needed.

Now back to the audience...

Three films:
· > The Exorcist,
· > The Passion,
· > Fahrenheit 9/11

These films stand out for theater viewing because of the reaction of the theater crowds.
In 'The Exorcist,' when it first came out in the early 1970s, I watched people get up and flee the theater. One fainted and fell down the steps of the balcony where I was sitting.
In 'The Passion,' other than some gentle weeping, people were deadly quiet during and after the movie, and many seemed stunned by what they had seen.
In 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' there were laughs, grunts, swearing, some crying, and at the end, universal applause from the crowd.

It is this universal applause that struck me as being very bad news in November for George W. Bush, the self-described War President, with the so-so golf swing, and whose self-described base is the elite of this nation. I wonder how many in his elite base are on the front lines fighting in Iraq right now?

David Sadler
Www.david-sadler.org