Fahrenheit 9/11

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Moore

Reviewed by Joseph Kirschke

It was election night 2000, and the U.S. presidential race was in a dead heat between Democrat Al Gore and Republican hopeful George W. Bush. Suddenly, Gore was reported, according to most of the major television networks, to have won Florida, a crucial state. Fireworks and cheers erupted throughout the country, heralding the ascent of the then-vice president to the Oval Office.

But then, by a convergence of a set of truly remarkable circumstances, it was not to be.

“Was it all just a dream?” intones Michael Moore at the beginning of his latest documentary in which he mercilessly and, effectively, savages the House of Bush.

With President Bush squaring off against Democratic Senator John Kerry in November, Moore, a writer and documentary filmmaker has been heating things up with his latest attack against the American right and the White House Administration it supports. Many conservatives, furious, are refusing to see the film saying it is filled with propaganda while liberals, democrats and others are flocking to the theaters. Whatever your political orientation, it is not to be ignored.

At the end of the vote count, it turned out that the notoriously conservative FOX television network – where a senior producer, John Ellis, was a relative of George W. – called the race in favor of Bush; the other major networks followed suit. Then, “it helps,” added Moore dryly, when one's brother – in this case, Jeb Bush -- is governor of the state in question.

“We are going to win Florida,” Bush told reporters on the campaign trail smugly, while seated beside his brother on a private jet. “Mark my words – you can write that down.”

Before long, an intense legal battle erupted between the Gore and the Bush camps over critical electoral college votes in Florida which would end up deciding the race – despite the fact that Gore ultimately received some 500,000 votes more than Bush nationwide. By the time the race was appealed to the Supreme Court – where sat justices with family members who were directly employed by the Bush re-election campaign – their decision was anything but a foregone conclusion.

“It turns out none of this was a dream,” deadpanned Moore. “It's what really happened.”

Upon taking office, said Moore, the son of former President George H.W. Bush did “what any of us would do – go on vacation,” before offering the viewer various scenes of Bush on his farm in Crawford, Texas doing everything from signing autographs to playing with his dog to chain-sawing a tree

In his first eight months in office, moreover, as Moore's documentary notes, Bush spent more than 40 percent of his time in office on vacation – more than any other president in United States history.

On the night of September 10, 2001, President Bush, while visiting his brother in Florida went to sleep on a bed of French linens, according to Moore.

What happened next was a pure nightmare. In one of the most shocking moments of the film, after showing footage of people crying while watching people jumping out of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11 th , Moore shows Bush opting to go ahead with a photo opportunity at an elementary school in Florida.

Then his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, can be seen whispering into his ear that the second plane had struck the north tower. While showing a clearly dumbstruck commander-in-chief, Moore continues, “not knowing what to do without anyone telling him what to do – with no secret service to take him to safety, he just sat there and continued to read ‘My Pet Goat' with the children.”

“Nearly seven minutes passed – with nobody doing anything,” Moore added. “As the minutes went by was he thinking ‘I've been hanging around with the wrong crowd? ‘Which one screwed me?'” Images of visiting Saudi Arabian dignitaries then flash across the screen, as Moore notes that 15 of the September 11 th hijackers were from the Kingdom the Bush clan has such close ties to.

Moore also links Bush through documents and business ties to a man named James Bath the Texas money manager to none other than the family of Osama bin Laden.

This is a powerful film that, through some careful footwork, pieces together the outrageous degree to which the Bush family is involved with the shadowy Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its bin Laden family – and how a war was waged against Iraq under totally false pretences as a means of ostensibly winning “the war on terror”.

There are moments when this movie drags slightly and – as in many of Moore's works – descends into a slightly preachy, boring tone. In particular, there is one scene when Moore and his camera follow a pair of Marines trying to recruit young soldiers in a supermarket parking lot. By pointing out the fact that most urban young people -- poor minorities in particular – can't get through college without some kind of military background, Moore breaks little ground.

But through some harrowing and truly gruesome footage of Iraq – accompanied, of course with Bush stepping off an F-16 onto an aircraft carrier announcing “major combat actions” were “over” – he mostly gets his point across.

As usual, Bush is the one who gets the last laugh. At one point in the movie, he addresses a group of reporters on a putting green in a polo shirt. “We must stop the terror,” he insists. “I call on all you nations to do everything that you can … to stop these terrorist killers.”

Then, after angling up to his golf ball and raising his nine-iron he instructs his witnesses “Now watch this drive.”