The past several weeks I've focused on other projects that still consume an inordinate amount of time. Specifically, I've been working on revamping a web site for my brother-in-law's start-up business. The fact that I'm a novice at working with html (despite my several years experience with WYSIWYG web authoring) wasn't a deterrent to him. I guess when funds are limited; lack of experience is no excuse. The business is offering some cool products and while the site isn't fancy, it hopefully will be a good tool. Over time I'll be working to refine and improve it.
RaptureReady Gear™...old site.....preview of the new site.

While there is much to go, I've got the first iteration of the site format together and it is nearly functional. Later this week we'll take it live and start on a few of the additional areas to make the site a bit more of a destination. The result of this narrow focus is that while I've been pretty much kept up with the news, and have formed several ideas and comments along the way, there's been little time to formulate into commentary on this blog. Thus the dearth of postings.

Just a few quick comments though. Michael Moore. I watched his interview with Bill O'Reilly during the Democratic Convention and was struck by several things. His inability to concede that President Bush did not lie to the American public about Iraq but was the recipient of faulty information from both the CIA and British intelligence. Both of those organizations, plus the Russian intelligence services have conceded that they had come to the same conclusions, Iraq had and was acquiring more WMD’s. (I wonder in the face of the premier intelligence agencies of the world coming to the same analytical conclusions, was there an effort by Saddam to provide this disinformation to discredit and embarrass the administration?)

Bush acted on that information in a proactive manner to protect America from the possibility of attack. Moore says it doesn't matter that Bush may have had faulty intelligence, that he repeated it to the American public and then acted on it constituted a lie. Huh? So if someone told Moore that a particular script would result in a blockbuster movie and Moore sold it to a number of investors for millions of dollars, then the production was a bust and everyone lost all of their investment, Moore would be a liar for acting in good faith on the information he had?

The other thing I noticed about Moore is that he constantly referred to our military men and women as "children." Time after time he made statements such as, to paraphrase, "Bush sending our children to Iraq to die," and asking O'Reilly if he would "send his children to Iraq or Fallujah to die?"

First of all, they are not "children" but grown men and women, some certainly young adults, but adults nonetheless. To imply that they were incapable of, in Moore's opinion, making a mature decision to join the military, unawares of the potential for deployment to a war zone, and are thus being abused by their commander-in-chief by going to do the jobs they are primarily trained for, is patronizing and demeaning. While certainly no sane person passionately desires to be subjected to the horrors of combat, at the same time they go knowing they have a job to do, it is a job they have volunteered for by enlisting and they have been trained and equipped to carry out their orders.

Secondly, President Bush did not send our soldiers to Iraq "to die." They went there to drive out a brutal dictator who, WMD’s or not, was a threat to the US and world peace as well as to the Iraqi people. The sad fact of military combat is that there will be loss of life, it is inevitable. But our military men and women did not go there to die, but to win freedom for the Iraqi people and secure the peace. That this has been difficult to achieve over the past year is testament to the very necessity of the action taken to secure it. To say our men and women went there to die is to concede defeat and demean the sacrifice of those who have given their lives for the Iraqi people and for their country.

Finally, anyone viewing Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 needs to keep in mind that Moore is a filmmaker. As such, remember that the operational mode for a filmmaker is to have in hand a concept, a script, to know the end result of what you want to produce, and then craft your product to achieve the desired result. Moore followed this pattern in creating F-9/11. He knew what he wanted the finished product to achieve, smearing President Bush in the most negative way possible. Then he set about adjusting time lines, changing scenarios and fact to achieve that end. Truth wasn't an issue. Smearing Bush was the objective and nothing would get in the way, certainly not truth.

Moore's fast and loose playing with the facts of the allegations he makes has been documented by such sources as Newsweek. Yet he continues deliberately misleading a blind American pubic. His product is not documentary; it is not the search for the truth. It is a thinly veiled political campaign to spread lies and innuendo to try to bring down President Bush. To think otherwise is to remain oblivious to the obvious.
Most people know the movie Titanic is fiction, but there is a number who think it is the truth of what really happened. While there are diehard Bush haters who swallow Moore's celluloid diatribe, hopefully, most people will realize F-9/11 is fiction as well and write off Michael Moore as a truly angry white male with no passion for the truth.
Be sure to visit Letters From Iraq