From Andrew Sullivan, three lies by Michael Moore, the lying liar:
<font size=4>I Condi Rice did not say Saddam was behind 9/11:>>But, you protest, I saw Condoleezza Rice in Fahrenheit 9-11 tell a reporter that, “indeed,” there was a relationship!
ROLL FILM:
<font size=3><font color=blue>
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.” <font size=4><font color=black>
CUT.
Pretty damning stuff, isn’t it? But that was the truncated, Michael Moore version. Now for the full, unexpurgated quote:
<font size=3><font color=blue>
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”
<font color=black>
spectator.se
<font size=4>
II - no UNOCAL/Taliban/Bush conspiracy :
It’s time to point out another of Michael Moore’s whopping lies and distortions. This one concerns the Taliban’s trip to Texas. (In the quoted text below, NARRATOR is Michael Moore.)
<font size=3><font color=blue>
NARRATOR: Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas. In 1997 while George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton.In 1997 George W. Bush was indeed Governor of Texas, and Bill Clinton (a Democrat) was President of the United States. Note that Moore does not state that Bush had anything to do with the Taliban meeting, because Bush indeed had nothing to do with it. He only states that Bush was governor at the time (a fact), thereby implying that he had something to do with the meeting (a lie). The Taliban’s entry into the United States was requested by the Unocal corporation and cleared by Clinton’s State Department.
<font size=4><font color=black>
As far as Unocal and the pipeline deal goes, according to everything I can find Unocal pulled out of the deal. This BBC article from May 30, 2002, states, <font size=3><font color=blue>“The US company Unocal led a consortium in the 1990s which undertook feasibility studies, but it pulled out of the project in 1998.”<font size=4><font color=black> When the pipeline deal was signed in 2002, Unocal issued this press release denying their involvement. <font size=3><font color=blue>“Unocal Chairman Charles R. Williamson told Unocal stockholders today that Unocal has no plans or interest in becoming involved in any projects in Afghanistan, including natural gas or crude oil pipelines. He made the statement in response to recent erroneous news reports about Unocal and the pipeline project in Afghanistan.”
<font color=black>
moorewatch.com
<font size=4>
III - House of Saud is not Bush's "daddy":
In his new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” film-maker Michael Moore makes the eye-popping claim that Saudi Arabian interests “have given” $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush. This, Moore suggests, helps explain one of the principal themes of the film: that the Bush White House has shown remarkable solicitude to the Saudi royals, even to the point of compromising the war on terror. When you and your associates get money like that, Moore says at one point in the movie, “who you gonna like? Who’s your Daddy?”
But a cursory examination of the claim reveals some flaws in Moore’s arithmetic—not to mention his logic. Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.
Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm. True enough, the former president was paid for one speech to Carlyle and then made an overseas trip on the firm’s behalf the previous fall, right around the time BDM was sold. But Ullman insists any link between the former president’s relations with Carlyle and the Saudi contracts to BDM that were awarded years earlier is entirely bogus. <font color=blue>“The figure is inaccurate and misleading,” said Ullman. “The movie clearly implies that the Saudis gave $1.4 billion to the Bushes and their friends. But most of it went to a Carlyle Group company before Bush even joined the firm. Bush had nothing to do with BDM.”
<font size=3><font color=black>
msnbc.msn.com |
