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Edited on Fri Oct-24-03 01:20 AM by Selwynn
Salon isn't what I would call a "conservative" source. One Moore stupid white man
With his factually challenged bestseller, Michael Moore becomes an unfortunate poster boy for dissent.April 3, 2002 | Michael Moore's latest success might be his most remarkable. At a time when the public remains strongly supportive of the Bush administration -- and few dissenting voices have risen above the din -- his book "Stupid White Men" stands atop the New York Times bestseller list for a third week running. And at a time when some Republican leaders are using Bush's popularity to equate any criticism of U.S. policy with treason, Moore's success should be a reason for any democracy-loving American to cheer. It should be, but it isn't. http://www.salon.com/politics/col/spinsanity/2002/04/03/moore/index_np.htmlDifferent examples include the following, which have been posted here thousands of times, but oh well - people like to criticize spinacity, without being able to challenge the legitimacy of even on of their true observations of Moores innacuracies and mistakes. Instead they just bash the site. The bottom line is, and lie told by an Angel is still a lie and a truth told by a Devil is still a truth. All that matters is: can you dispute the factuality of the claims at inaccuracy being made? They are well evidenced - do you dispute them? If so please show me on what grounds, for I'd like to know the truth as well. And the fact that even Salon is pointing out the problems with Moore ought to give anyone with a rational brain cell a moment of pause. Here or are some of the facts: Consider, for instance, his claim that "two-thirds of came from just over seven hundred individuals." Given the $2,000 federal limit on individual donations, this claim is obviously false. To back it up, he cites the Center for Responsive Politics Web site (opensecrets.org) and an August 2000 article from the New York Times. As opensecrets.org clearly indicates, however, only 52.6 percent of Bush's total $193 million in campaign funds came from individuals. The Times article Moore references actually states that 739 people gave two-thirds of the soft money raised by the Republican Party (which uses its money for "party-building" activities that support all GOP candidates, not just Bush) in the 2000 election cycle as of June of that year. Whether out of malice or laziness, Moore conflates the party's soft money with Bush's campaign funds.
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In a discussion of Pentagon spending, he refers to the "$250 billion the Pentagon plans to spend in 2001 to build 2800 new Joint Strike Fighter planes" and states that "the proposed increase in monies for the Pentagon over the next four years is $1.6 trillion." To back this up, he refers to the Web site of the peace activist group Council for a Livable World. CLW's own analysis of the 2001 budget, however, shows that $250 billion is the total multiyear cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program, not the amount spent in one year. $1.6 trillion, meanwhile, was the total amount of money requested by the Pentagon at the time for 2001-2005. It covers five years, not four, and is a total budget request, not a "proposed increase" over previously requested budget levels. It shouldn't even take this much research, however, to determine that out of the total defense budget request of $305.4 billion in 2001, $250 billion was never intended to go toward one type of plane, nor that an increase of $400 billion per year in military spending was never proposed.
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Page xiii: Moore claims that News Corp, the parent of HarperCollins, which published Stupid White Men, "dumped in some bookstores with no advertising, no reviews, and the offer of a three-city tour: Arlington! Denver! Somewhere in Jersey! In other words, the book was sent to the gallows for a quick and painless death." Yet in a February 5, 2002 letter on his web site, Moore stated that "HarperCollins is doing their best to get the book out there - but now, even they have run into resistance, with some bookstores telling them that they are not interested in having me come to their stores on the book tour" because of the controversial nature of the book. Later in the letter, he added that "I'll be hitting a couple dozen cities on the book tour, and I'll probably add a few more (if you'd like me to come to your town, let me or HarperCollins know!)." And directly contradicting his assertion in Dude, Moore wrote in a February 13 letter that his tour "initially included only three cities: New York, L.A., and Denver." Clearly, he is spinning the publicity campaign for his own book.
Page 9: Moore, writing about the connections between the Carlyle Group (a private investment firm with a politically powerful board of directors including George H. W. Bush Sr.) and the Bin Ladens, states that "After September 11, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal both ran stories pointing out this strange coincidence. Your first response, Bush, was to ignore it, hoping, I guess, that the story would go away. Your father and his buddies at Carlyle did not renounce the Bin Laden investment. Your army of pundits went into spin control... And then the video footage came out. It showed a number of the 'good' Bin Ladens - including Osama's mother, a sister and two brothers - with Osama at his son's wedding." Moore is distorting the timeline of when that information came out: He cites Al Jazeera (no date) and two articles published before September 11, 2001 (the articles date from Feb. 28, 2001 and March 1, 2001), not after.
Pages 15 and 16: Moore asserts that Osama Bin Laden requires dialysis for a kidney condition. Moore continues by asking "how could have really pulled this off while his skin was turning green?" In fact, as one of Moore's own sources (a January 19, 2002 New York Times article) notes, the nature and severity of Bin Laden's health problems is in dispute. The Times quotes an unnamed official who says that "While there have been a lot of rumors about the status of his health, we do not have evidence to support that he has had kidney failure or is on dialysis." Yet another of Moore's sources, an Associated Press article of March 25, 2000, notes that in spite of questions about his health, "it has been business as usual for Bin Laden," and cites an unnammed Western intelligence official stating that "He is still operating an enormous terrorist network around the world."
Pages 17 to 19: Moore offers the suggestion that the Saudi government was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Ignoring the mountains of evidence connecting the hijackers to Al Qaeda, he asks, "What if September 11 was not a 'terrorist' attack, but, rather, a military attack against the United States?" (his italics) A few paragraphs later, he asks "did certain factions within the Saudi royal family execute the attack on September 11?" While leaks detailing classified sections of a congressional report suggest that the Suadi government provided some financial assistance to the hijackers (a charge denied by the Saudi government), there this no evidence that the Saudi government or Saudi officials helped plan the September 11 attacks.
Page 20: Moore quotes a New Yorker piece on page 4 of his book noting that "Once the FAA permitted overseas flights , the jet flew to Europe." (Other reports have added credence to this version of events). But Moore writes on page 20 that "while thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in U.S. history, you got a free trip to gay Paree!" In addition, a September 20, 2001 Boston Globe article notes that the Bin Ladens apparently chartered their own plane - they did not get a "free trip" as Moore suggests.
Page 23: Moore twists around the order of Attorney General John Ashcroft's claims in a Senate hearing in December 2001. Slamming Ashcroft for refusing to give the FBI permission to examine records of background checks for gun purchases by suspected terrorists, Moore writes "The Senate (and the public) only found out about Ashcroft's orders to stop the search for terrorists' gun files until December 2001, when Ashcroft not only proudly admitted to doing this in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but went on to attack anyone who would question his actions to protect the hijackers' gun rights. He told the panel that critics of his anti-terror practices were 'providing ammunition to America's enemies... To those who would scare peace-loving people with phantoms of 'lost liberty,' my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." Ashcroft actually made the statement (which we condemned at the time) in his opening remarks, well before he addressed the issue of gun checks. Moore's framing makes it appear as though Ashcroft's controversial statement was made with direct reference to the issue of checking firearms records.
Page 43 (and all of chapter 2): Moore uses fake quotes as chapter headings, implying that Bush (or administration officials) said things they never said. The most problematic is "#3 Whopper with Bacon: 'Iraq has ties to Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda!'" (page 53) He quotes Bush repeatedly stating that "We know has ties to Al Qaeda" - but provides no source suggesting the administration tied Saddam to Bin Laden personally.
Page 53: Moore repeats a well-debunked myth about Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark. he writes that "Clark has said that he received phone calls on September 11 and in the weeks after from people at 'think tanks' and from people within the White House telling him to use his position as a pundit for CNN to 'connect' September 11 to Saddam Hussein." Yet, as we have demonstrated, despite a somewhat ambiguous statement on "Meet the Press" last June, Clark has been consistent in his claim that it was a member of a think tank who contacted him, not the White House. A recent report in the Toronto Star identified the source of the call as a member of a Middle Eastern think tank based in Montreal. Moore also makes a second mistake in pluralizng the single call Clark has always referred to into "calls."
Page 58: Moore claims that the U.S. "oversaw the assassination of Lumumba" in 1961. However, according to a July, 2000 US News & World Report article, Lumumba was actually killed by Belgian operatives (though, as that article makes clear, the CIA apparently did have its own plot to assassinate him).
Page 67: Moore claims that, in building the famous Maginot Line, France "built the bunkers facing the wrong way and Germans were deep into France before you could say 'garcon, stinky cheese, please!'" In fact, the Maginot Line was built with many of the heavy weapons facing back and to the flanks of the line, to allow the bunkers to support each other, and the German invasion avoided it entirely, coming through the Ardennes north of the line.
Page 69: Moore misrepresents US contributions to the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq as "trade." He writes, "There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq's leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports. That's $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator." The money was actually used to purchase food and other UN-approved humanitarian aid. (For details on the program, see this report to Congress.)
Pages 74 and 75: Moore writes on page 74 that "between these two bombing campaigns , according to some estimates, 9,000 civilians were murdered." On the next page, he writes that "A British-American research group in London announced estimates of civilian deaths due to the war at between 6,806 and 7,797." Those claims come from two controversial sources: Marc Herold's "Daily Casualty Count" for the Afghan campaign, and the Iraq Body Count web site. As we have noted elsewhere, Herold's estimates of up to 3,600 civilian deaths are considerably higher than estimates from other media organizations, which range from a few hundred to 1,200. Herold's methodology, which relied upon on media reports (including reports using Taliban sources) and information from NGOs, has also come under fire. (Herold wrote a letter responding to our previous criticism). As Moore himself notes, the Iraq Body Count relies on a very similar methodology, with the same sort of problems - media and NGO reports are not always accurate, and the sources cited in those reports have not been critically evaluated by the researchers. Rather than simply citing these figures as coming from a "British-American research group," Moore owes it to his readers to provide a more accurate representation of his source.
Page 82: Criticizing Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations last February, Moore mocks his claim that "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." Moore writes, "Just days earlier, Powell apparently was not so sure. During a gathering of CIA officials reviewing the evidence against Saddam Hussein, Powell tossed the papers in the air and declared: 'I'm not reading this. This is bullshit." In context, he makes appear as though Powell had included the same suspect evidence he had called "bullshit" in the speech he eventually gave. However, the US News & World Report article that Moore cites details the process by which Powell winnowed out pieces of evidence he was uncomfortable presenting. The article concludes: "And plenty was cut . Sometimes it was because information wasn't credible, sometimes because Powell didn't want his speech to get too long, sometimes because Tenet insisted on protecting sources and methods."
Page 110: During his criticism of the proposed Terrorism Information Awareness project, Moore claims that "There is usually very little in the way of an electronic or paper trail when it comes to terrorists. They lay low and pay cash. You and me, we leave trails everywhere - credit cards, cell phones, medical records, online; everything we do. Who is really being watched here?" Moore evidently forgot about the credit cards used by the Sept. 11 hijackers, which authorities used after the attacks to help retrace their steps.
Pages 111-112: Moore lists a number of examples of what he implies are abuses of the Patriot Act. He writes, "To date, there are at least thirty-four documented cases of FBI abuse under the Patriot Act - and at least another 966 individuals have filed formal complaints. Many of these people were just minding their own business, or seeking to partake in our free society. Consider these examples." The examples he cites, however, have nothing to do with Patriot Act or the FBI. He lists an anti-globalization activist who was questioned by "immigration officials" and a "State department agent"; a New York judge who asked a defendant if she was a terrorist; French journalists detained at the Los Angeles Airport; a local police officer in Vermont entering a teacher's classroom to photograph an anti-Bush art display; a college student questioned by Secret Service agents about "anti-American" material; and a Green Party activist questioned on his way to Prague. None of the incidents he lists happened as a result of the Patriot Act, however, nor did any of them involve the FBI as Moore implies (the French journalists were detained for improper travel documents, and the Green Party activist was questioned by the Secret Service, as Moore's own sources note).
Page 160: Moore notes that the 2003 Bush tax cut will likely reduce revenue to the states. Attacking the cut, he implies that the cuts led to early school closings in Oregon: "Take the kids in Oregon, whose schools were shut down early this year because they ran out of tax money." Oregon, however, passed a law in May 2003 decoupling its state income tax system from the federal government's, insuring that the 2003 tax cut would have no impact on the state's budget. In addition, one of Moore's own sources (a June 8, 2003 article in the New York Times Magazine) notes that the situation is far more complicated than Moore makes it out to be: Oregon voters had rejected a referendum earlier in the year that would have raised taxes to pay for schools and other spending.
Page 180: Moore claims that "The overwhelming support for the war in Iraq came only after the war began. Before the war, the majority of Americans said that we should not be invading Iraq unless we have the backing of all of our allies and the United Nations" (he provides no source for the claim). In fact, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted on March 17, which asked "Would you support or oppose the United States going to war with Iraq?" showed 71 percent in favor (59 percent were in favor one week earlier). Another Washington Post/ABC News poll taken Feburary 9 found 66 percent in favor of taking action against Iraq; when those who said they supported such action were asked if they would still support it without the backing of the United Nations, total support fell to 50 percent, with 47 percent opposed.
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The distortions begin with the film's title. Lyons reports that, contrary to the title of the film, the two boys who committed the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., did not bowl the morning before the shooting. Although early news reports did state that they had attended a bowling class in the morning, police told Lyons it's simply not true. This is similar to Moore's continued repetition of the lie that the U.S. gave millions of dollars in aid ($43 million last year and $245 million in total) to the Taliban government of Afghanistan when, in fact, that aid consisted of food aid and food security programs administered by the U.N. and non-governmental agencies to relieve a famine. Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer did assert that the money was given directly to the Taliban, but his claims directly contradict this statement by Secretary of State Colin Powell and have been debunked by numerous articles (including our own).
In two other cases, Lyons found that Moore blatantly misconstrued the facts in order to make a point. The film makes reference to "weapons of mass destruction" being manufactured in Littleton, questioning whether there is a connection between that activity and the Columbine shooting. In fact, the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.
And in a distortion of reality that is comparable to the altered Bush '88 campaign commercial that I noted, Lyons found that the scene in a bank in Michigan that that opens the film was staged. Customers who open long-term CDs at the bank actually have to go to a gun store to pick up the weapon after a background check. Yet the film clearly indicates that the bank itself stores and hands out guns to customers and Moore even jokes as he walks out, "Here's my first question: do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" (This clip from the film can be viewed here in clip 3.)
Lyons also notes a previously reported but striking omission in Moore's film. In it, he tells the story of a young boy who shot and killed a classmate after his mother was forced to leave him with her brother while she took a job, a tragedy Moore blamed on the requirements of a Michigan welfare-to-work program. But he fails to mention that her brother kept drugs and guns in his home and, according to previous article for the Weekly Standard's website by Matt Labash, his home was "a crack house, where guns were often traded for drugs."
When the most popular documentary of the year is riddled with blatant lies and distortions, it's a cause for concern. When the film is part of a pattern by one of the nation's most prominent political celebrities, it's disturbing. And when the media gives Michael Moore free reign to spread his lies and distortions with very little critical analysis, it's a sad comment on our democracy.
Update (12/4):As some readers have noted in this post's comments, Moore attempts to explain some of these discrepancies in a FAQ on the film's website. While he says the bank that gives out guns is real, he doesn't address Lyons' claim that guns are not actually distributed at the bank itself and that Moore staged that scene. He admits that the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton now makes rockets to take satellites into space (as well as "top secret Pentagon projects"), but doesn't explain how, given that fact, he can justify his reference in the film to "weapons of mass destruction" being made there. Finally, on a separate page, Moore admits that the U.S.'s aid to Afghanistan was for humanitarian purposes, although he ignores the fact that the aid was distributed through the U.N. and non-governmental organizations. He criticizes the aid on the basis that other countries, such as Bangladesh, got less, suggesting there may have been shady dealings. But on the central issue of whether the money actually went to the Taliban government of Afghanistan, Moore once again dodges the question.
Can you invalidate these claims? Or show for me how the are factually incorrect?
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