"Ann" wrote in message I'm no Bush lover, I really
don't have anyone to vote for in November.
But I have read and read and read, and have come to the conclusion
that Michael Moore is a big fat liar, just as bad as any of the rest
of them. The hollywood morons are all the same, rich, living in a
dream world playing make-believe for money, yet so many in this
country listen to them and give them credance. We have no one out
there worth voting for, and that idiot Moore is doing nothing to help
that, he's just lining his pockets.

Ann, I do want you to know that I read Dave Kopel's critique of 9/11 from
beginning to end. (I don't want you to go out to the garden believing that
no liberal would bother to do so). He did make some valid points about how
information in the film had been manipulated. The majority of questionable
items were in what I call the "editorialist" segments of the film. However,
at least half of Kopel's points themselves come from suspect sources. Just
as an example, NO ONE, and I mean no thinking person outside certain fanatic
right-wing elements, accepts Stephen Hayes' analysis of CIA thinking about
Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda relationships as outlined in his Weekly
Standard as valid -mostly because the CIA and intelligence principals
involved in the memos and in the intelligence have told the entire world
that Hayes has it all wrong. Yet, Kopel uses him and his articles to claim
that Moore was inaccurate in his denial of those relationships without
mentioning that most people don't agree with Hayes. That is virtually the
same thing that he spends a lot of time criticizing Moore of doing. Again,
he quotes Christopher Hitchens saying that everything in Afghanistan is just
hunky-dory - which is an assessment that most of the intelligence
communities of the world strenuously disagree with - in fact, the British
intelligence agency just yesterday announced that Afghanistan was in
imminent danger of imploding.
I do agree that it's troubling that Moore doesn't acknowledge that the
placement and juxtapositions of some of his clips tend to generate some
wrong impressions - again, much of this happens in the "editorializing"
sections of the film. Quite a few of the "deceits" mentioned by Kopel are
actually bits of information from sources other than Moore which themselves
might not be accurate, but which do support Moore's view of events - so
clearly, he hasn't had the motivation to try to verify those sources and
someone who was concerned with the whole truth would have gone to more
effort to make all sources "clean". But Moore has never pretended to be
anything other than what he is - a VERY angry man.
I think it's wonderful that these many websites and sources are doing
their best to put Moore's feet to the fire. And it's very healthy that they
help us to put his claims in perspective and view the outrageous ones with a
good deal of skepticism. But the same energy should also be devoted to
putting the claims of government officials to the fire - ALL THE TIME. They
are equally guilty of manipulating facts to get what they want
accomplished - perhaps more guilty - and, unfortunately, some of what they
want accomplished can have very dangerous consequences for all of us -
unlike this film, which really has no power to effect world events, other
than to encourage us to vote for someone other than Bush, which most of the
viewers of the film were going to do anyway.