inside the glass house

Fahrenheit 9/11: Moore's heat-seeking missile on Bush
NEW YORK -- A riveting new documentary titled "Fahrenheit 9/11," which focuses on the monumental political blunders of the Bush administration, has turned out to be a cultural phenomenon in the United States.

With more than $60 million in box office earnings over the last two weeks -- and with projections of over $100 million before the end of this year -- it is set to be the most successful documentary in Hollywood movie history.

The film is such a devastating and incendiary attack on the Bush administration that it may even influence American voters in the presidential elections scheduled for November this year.

Never before in US history has there been a transparently politically-motivated film released so close to a presidential election with the intention of ousting an incumbent from office.

The DVD version is expected to be released in October even though pirated copies of the documentary are being hawked in the backstreets of New York -- and perhaps in the video stores in Colombo.

Michael Moore -- who wrote, produced and directed the movie -- is an iconoclast who has been ruthlessly tearing down people from their high-rise pedestals.

And he makes no bones about his intention to drive President Bush out of the White House, come November. And he thinks his movie will be a contributory factor.

Moore's last two documentaries -- "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine" -- were venomously critical of both corporate America and the country's powerful gun lobby.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is not only critical of President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq but also denigrates the Bush administration for perpetuating a series of lies to justify the military attack.

At a personal level, the movie ridicules the president and makes him look insensitive to the killings of both civilians in Iraq and American soldiers in combat.

The documentary also traces the close links between the Bush family and Saudi royalty (including the Bush family's business links with the bin Laden family); the unsuccessful attempts to blame Saddam Hussein for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US; and the misleading rationale for a war based on the premise that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Moore tugs at the heartstrings of American audiences by showing the gory killings of civilians in Iraq (as an Iraqi woman wails on-screen and invokes divine retribution on the Bush administration for killings of her innocent family members in a US bombing raid) and spotlights on US marine recruiters who seek blacks, Hispanics and unemployed youth to join the army with promises of a bright future (in Iraq?).

Perhaps one of Moore's most interesting revelations is that just one member of the US Congress has a son fighting in Iraq. So Moore ambushes several US Congressmen in the precincts of Capitol Hill to ask them whether they ever thought of sending their sons or daughters to the killing fields in Iraq.

There is a shot of one Congressman running away from the camera and refusing to even make a comment -- an incident that portrays the hypocrisy and double standards of politicians who are willing to send hundreds of soldiers to their deaths in a senseless war but not their own children.

As the movie gets standing ovations from anti-Bush audiences throughout the country, it has been criticised by right wing conservatives and Bush supporters. Moore has been accused of taking incidents out of context and being very selective in his judgements of the Bush administration.

Don Bartlett, the White House communications director, dismissed "Fahrenheit 9/11" with the comment: "This is a film that doesn't require us to actually view it to know it's filled with factual inaccuracies.'' But does the White House, which took the country to war on false premises, have a monopoly on lies?

Last week even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has vowed to stand by Bush right or wrong, was forced to admit that Iraq's so-called stockpile of weapons of mass destruction may never be found.

"What I have to accept," Blair told a committee of the House of Commons, "is that I was very, very confident that we would find them. I was very confident when I spoke to you this time last year that the Iraq Survey Group would find them. I have to accept that we have not found them -- that we may not find them."

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was wrong. The Pentagon was wrong. And so was the Bush administration. Moore's documentary depicts a scene where Secretary of State Colin Powell provides virtually irrefutable evidence -- or so he thinks -- before the UN Security Council charging Iraq with possessing weapons of mass destruction. But the evidence he was provided by the CIA has turned out to be a lemon.

As the movie gains increasing audiences in the US, at least two theatre chains, sympathetic to the Bush administration, have refused to screen the film. The studio that produced the documentary has cried foul and accused the theatres of censoring free speech and violating the First Amendment. Disney Studios, the original financier of the movie, bailed out early realizing the movie was a political hot potato.

Presumably, Moore has no known political ambitions. But sooner or later, someone is going to draft him to run for president of the United States one day.

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