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I just posted the comment below on the Agonist comment board, in response to editor Sean-Paul Kelley's report on a recent Fahrenheit 9/11 panel in San Antonio. "Where Moore went overboard is to suggest that Bush's family's financial ties to the Saudis were in any way a factor in the President's decision to go to war in Iraq," Kelley quotes Jan Jarboe-Russell, who he describes as "thoughtful and even-handed" and "known for her progressive stance on issues," despite the fact that "neither the [San Antonio Express-News] nor Texas Monthly, two publications she writes for, are beacons of the Left."
My comment:
I wasn't left with the impression that was what Moore was saying; maybe he did and I just discounted it, unlike the "liberal" who is making such a big deal of it. The "Saudi connection" part of the film gives a quite plausible reason why the Bushies were asleep at the switch on 9/11 and then sought to cover it up afterward. The Iraq part of the film mentions the standard reasons for the invasion--WMDs, "terrorist" activity, oil. I think it takes work to conflate the two parts of the film into "the Saudis wanted us to invade Iraq." The closest line I could find in the transcript is "I wonder if Mr. Bush told Prince Bandar not to worry because he already had a plan in motion"--which suggests Bush had a way of diverting attention from the Saudi connection and meeting some other Administration goals, not that Prince Bandar was a "factor" in the decision. Why do so-called liberals work so hard to undermine this movie?