Why the media has a bad reputation

Today, I was listening to the national news on the radio half heartedly and heard a story with the headline that 80% of blacks would not return to New Orleans. Wow, I thought. 80% of blacks won't return. That's huge. I think I heard a blurb on the TV about it, too. And I saw a headline from an AP article on the internet (one that would have made it into newspapers). Wow! That's huge. Then I read the story.

The headline and the first paragraph did not contain the caveat of the story. The second paragraph did. The caveat was that 80% of blacks would not return "if the city's returning population was limited to neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina." In other words, if only those from undamaged areas returned, 80% of the blacks would not return. If . . . .

It is an interesting statistic. The study that it came from certainly shows that more blacks were hurt in the city than whites, but the 80% number is meaningless. Many, many blacks are returning to damaged neighborhoods and many more will return. The 80% number doesn't come close to telling us reality. It is a figure than an amateur statistician would use when all the facts aren't considered. It tells us nothing.

But it is so striking that it just makes a great headline. Any headline that makes me say "Wow" is going to sell papers and commercial time. The trouble is: I really had to search and hear the story three times before I understood it. I don't have time to read every story three times from three different sources. I work. I have a family. Isn't the media supposed to educate me about the world? If I cannot get my information relatively quickly, I won't be able to get it. If the information is buried or is misleading, am I really being educated? What good is the media if it doesn't educate?

That's why I don't like the media. They sensationalize everything so as to sell newspapers and commercial time, but such sensationalism hurts their ability to education, yet the media is there to educate (or is supposed to be). The media has abrogated its role as an educator in favor of a roll as an entertainer. As such, it cannot be trusted as an educator. In their defense, most of the problem is that the public wants to be entertained. That's our fault. Nevertheless, the media still wears the verneer of an educator. That is misleading. Because of this and political bias, the media has a well-deserved poor reputation.

Politics as Usual-Samuel Alito

Supreme court nominee, Samuel Alito, said he was a life-long Republican, didn't believe in Roe v. Wade, and was a conservative. He said this in a memo in a bid to get a job with the Reagan Administration back in 1985. I suppose he should have said he was a life-long Democrat, was pro-abortion, and was a liberal socialist. Maybe he would have gotten the job then.

First of all, are you kidding me? I know a Supreme Court nominee is a big deal, but are we really going to go that far back and look at what someone said when they were trying to get a job with the Reagan Administration? I wonder what I have put on my resumes and cover letter in the past to try to get a job. I once tried to get a job with a Republican think-tank and I definitely tried to come off as more conservative than I really am to try to get the job. Is that going to be a big deal for me 20 years from now?

And, don't get me wrong, but who nominated this guy anyway? Was it . . . George Bush? Of course, he's very liberal, so I suspect we are surprised that Judge Alito might be a little on the conservative side. Are we so stupid that we expected a liberal judge? (More than that, most judges are ex-prosecutors, so what do you expect?????)

I just don't get that liberal groups are making so much of what was on Alito's resume 20 years ago.

Actually, I do get it. Liberals are looking for something to fight about. If they would have found allegations of sexual harassment, they would have used that. If they would have found a drunk driving incident, they would have used that. Instead, these groups are touting this 20 year old cover letter with a straight face. I guess they have nothing else.

Does it say that we are too stupid to make up are own minds using good judgment? Is America Too Stupid? Reasonable people will not use a 20 year old cover letter (unless it said something illegal or unethical) to make a decision like this. But liberal groups think that it will (Some conservative groups would think like this as well). What does it say about what they think of us?

The fact is that when we were all young we tried to sell ourselves to get a job or to win a girl or to get ahead. Heck, we did the same when we were old too. Therefore, regarding this 20 year old cover letter, I say "So what?" Alito is Bush's choice. Bush is president. Next time there is a democrat president, he can pick one, too.

Huricane Katrina

Just what was the Federal Government supposed to do? I hear all the nay-sayers. I admit that this is a very bad situation. But give me some concrete examples of what the government was supposed to do. The damage is so widespread that it took days just to assess what was needed. Why do we need to blame someone? Politics?

Cindy Sheehan-Using her son's memory to get attention

I was angry when my father died because the whole world kept on moving along, yet my father was dead. My life had been turned upside down, but the people around me at school and on my rowing team kept moving along like nothing happened. One day, a few days after my father's death, I overheard two girls talking whom I had never met. They were talking about a student whose step-father had died recently. For a second, though there was no way they knew my father or either of my father's step-children and that my thought made no logical sense, I thought they were talking about my father. I was disappointed to realize that they were not. Here, at my small college, another death had occurred in the life of a student. My father's death was special at the college for a moment and then someone else's father's death was special. Or not. I was not special. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe millions, happen every day. Each one means something special to someone. It's just that I was the only one (along with a few relatives) who felt my father's death and who held him to be special.

As a writer, I wanted others to feel my pain. Even though I was wrong about this death being special in the greater scheme of things (my father was young, too, though not nearly as young as Ms. Sheehan's son), I wanted to get attention about it. I wanted to write about it. My father's death made me start writing poetry and eventually fiction. I became an English Major and eventually received an MA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis. That I am writing this is, in part, a result of the death of my father. I felt that writing would get across my pain and that people would feel sorry for me.

Well, I learned to write much better, but I never did interest people in the pain I felt for my father's death. At the time he died, I was 19, immature and with a lack of understanding about the world. Maturity would come later. If anything, writing made me understand that it is personally therapeutic in nature, but, when writing for others, one has to understand one's audience. What happened to me was not unique. Many people lose parents at a young age. Many people aren't even so lucky to have 19 good years with a wonderful father. My story was entirely uninteresting and it was arrogant of me to think that I could sell a novel about the death of my father.

The same is true of Cindy Sheehan. Her son died. Her pain must run so deep that only those who have lost a child can fathom it. Her son was special in that he was fighting for us and for the US Government. Her pain, while natural and sincere, is not special. Everyone experiences it at one time or another. We grieve. Some of us move on. Some of us are destroyed by it. But pain is a part of life. One can say we experience growth through pain, but that's not the point. The point is that pain is not special. To say that you are any more special than anyone else is to be arrogant. I came to realize this after many years of thought, so don't expect Cindy Sheehan to come to this realization any time soon.

I will let her have her grief, but she has absolutely no more nor less authority to speak about the necessity of this war than anyone else. One might argue that she has less authority than I do. I have two young children who are alive and cannot fend for themselves. If I believe that the war is necessary for their safety, then I have more to lose than she does and I thus have more moral authority to speak for or against it.

Also, didn't she say Pres. Bush was respectful at their first meeting? And now she's changed her story about the first meeting and wants a second one. Doesn't that sound overtly political.

Moreover, has anyone asked about what her son thought about the war. I don't know what her son thought, but I believe in this war. If my mother did not and used my death for my country to further her own political agenda, I would not be happy.

Also, he didn't have to go into the military. Wrong or right, he was going to go to war if the President called. When you go in the military, you don't get to wonder about the righteousness of whatever wars you are sent to. You know this or should know this when you sign up.

Additionally, most of the families of the fallen soldiers in this war believe in the righteousness of it. Why are we focusing on this one woman? There are two answers: Anything controversial makes a good story and politics.

Cindy Sheehan deserves our sympathy, but not our respect. She can believe she is special for the moment, but ultimately she is nothing more than a pawn of the left. Pawns are never special.

The Gitmo Prisoners Have Gone Too Far

I represent prisoners in my job as a public defender. I sympathise with them. I try to get them their freedom. I engage them in conversation. I identify with them.

But . . . if a prisoner defies the gaurds, the prisoner has to sufer the consequences. If a prisoner throws urine on a guard, the prisoner must be punished. And the punishment must be immediate. If a prisoner tries to harm a guard, the punishment must be immediate and severe. If you are going to keep prisoners and keep them secure (for their own safety as well as that of the guards and the public), you can't let prisoners get away with some of the defiance that has gone on at Gitmo. If you do, the prisoners will break more and more rules and take more and more risks. Someone, perhaps a prisoner, will eventually get hurt. The rules are not just for the safety of the guards. And, even if the rules were just for guard safety, isn't that a good thing???

Frankly, this idea that there is prisoner abuse is absurd. Prisoners abuse themselves by defying guards. Guards are trained to use restrained, but they are human beings, too. It would be a fairly extraordinary human being who would be able to use restraint after having urine thrown on him.

Yet, the military is disciplining some of these guards who were clearly provoked. I fear that we are getting too soft. Some think that if we just show respect that we will change the minds of the prisoners at Gitmo and guards and prisoners can coexist peacefully. There are two things wrong with that. One, the prisoners at Gitmo would like to kill their guards and a lot more Americans if they could. Second, in any prison or detention facility, freedom is taken away. That automatically causes tension. People are hardwired to react with defiance when imprisoned.

What will we do with the terrorists? I do not know. But as long as they are imprisoned, the gaurds there must be given a free hand in the discipline of the prisoners. No torture. But the prisoners cannot be allowed to get away with punching or throwing urine at guards.

AP: Papers Show Inmates Defy Gitmo Troops

By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Military authorities have previously disclosed some incidents of guard retaliation at Guantanamo Bay, which resulted in mostly minor disciplinary proceedings. What emerges from 278 pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press is the degree of defiance by the terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.
The prisoners banged on their cells to protest the heat. They doused guards with whatever liquid was handy — from spit to urine. Sometimes they struck their jailers, one swinging a steel chair at a military police officer.

And the American MPs at times retaliated with force — punches, pepper spray and a splash of cleaning fluid in the face, according to the newly released documents that detail military investigations and eyewitness accounts of alleged abuse.

Some prisoners at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba have gone on the attack, as in April 2003 when a detainee got out of his cell during a search for contraband food and knocked out a guard's tooth with a punch to the mouth and bit him before he was subdued by MPs. One soldier delivered two blows to the inmate's head with a handheld radio, the documents show.

"Several guards were trying to hold down the detainee who was putting up heavy resistance," recounted a translator who saw the incident. "The detainee was covered in blood as were some of the guards."

The soldier who struck the inmate, and was dropped in rank to private first class as a result, described it as a close call. "The detainee was fighting as if he really wanted to hurt us. ... We all saved each other's lives in my opinion," he wrote.

The documents, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by AP, are far from a comprehensive look at Guantanamo and do not provide full details about each incident.

Names and some other identifying details have been blacked out by military censors. Handwriting at times isn't legible and pages appear to be missing or out of sequence. In some cases, it is not possible to decipher who did what to whom. Disciplinary measures against the troops were either relatively minor or unclear in some reports.

The internal investigative reports do, however, provide a snapshot of life behind the wire at Guantanamo, depicting a tense, hostile and sometimes chaotic place.

In one of the more serious incidents described in the documents, detainees told guards that an MP threw the cleaning liquid Pine-Sol in the eyes of a prisoner in the middle of one night in January 2004. In a written statement, another soldier said he came in immediately afterward to find what smelled like cleaning liquid dripping from the cell.

"The detainee could be seen rubbing his eyes intensely and moaning in pain," he said.

Documents show that the guard, from the 661st Military Police Company, did not admit throwing the cleaning fluid when questioned about it that night but did say the detainee had spit on him, and may have thrown urine.

A medic on the cell block flushed the detainee's eyes with water, a witness said.

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Department of Defense

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Department of Defense investigative memo written six months later concluded the soldier had mistreated detainees twice — the second offense involved cursing at inmates — and that his superiors failed to report either episode.

Investigators recommended disciplinary action against the soldier and a probe into why the incident wasn't reported up the chain of command, but the outcome is unclear from the papers.

In a statement to investigators, one service member said he hadn't seen the Pine-Sol incident but noted that U.S. personnel have been taught to use restraint with detainees: "The training we have received here at Guantanamo Bay has always stressed ... that no matter what happens on the block do not retaliate ... it will just get you into trouble."

Still, tensions between prisoners and guards have been high since the first suspects arrived in early 2002, hooded and shackled, mostly from the battlefields of

Afghanistan

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Afghanistan.

The detainees' defiance discussed in the documents ranged from mild — prisoners getting matching haircuts in a show of solidarity or refusing orders to stop practicing martial arts in the exercise yard — to hostile acts like spitting or throwing unknown liquids at the MPs. One soldier used pepper spray on prisoners because, he said in a report to superiors, he feared that the unknown liquids hurled could pose a health danger.

One soldier told military investigators he punched a detainee's face because the man spit at him and hit him as he tried to put him in restraints at the prison hospital in October 2004.

"My instincts took over after the hitting and spitting," said the soldier. Documents show authorities recommended that the punishment include reduction in rank to E-4, loss of a month's pay and extra duty for 45 days, though the outcome is unclear.

In the prison camp's early days, inmates showed their anger over the heat and the practice of leaving lights on in their cells at night by banging on the bars throughout one guard shift in September 2002, the documents say. One detainee who was believed to be leading the protest threw what an MP said smelled like water from the toilet on him. The MP tried to spray water from a hose in response, but the detainee blocked it with a mat.

The guard who tried to spray the detainee was charged with assault, given a reduction in rank to private first class, which was suspended, and reassigned to other duties at Guantanamo.

In another case, an inmate threw a partially full urine bottle at an MP in May 2002, apparently because he believed the soldier had intentionally kicked his hospital bed. When the soldier threw the urinal back, the detainee grabbed a steel chair and swung it at guards before they subdued him.

A military witness defended the MP, writing: "I believe (name deleted) to be a good and honest soldier ... and just influenced by negative elements among us." The documents don't make clear what punishment, if any, the MP got.

Military officials at Guantanamo did not respond this week to questions about relations between guards and detainees at the camp, which has held some 700 prisoners from 45 countries since it opened. There are about 540 detainees there now.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is based on information contained in 278 pages of U.S. military documents dealing with investigations of alleged abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The Associated Press obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

I think Terri Schiavo is already dead

I don't mean that in some sarcastic way. I mean that in the most respectful way possible. If life is sacred, then the question is: What is life? If you can't hear, smell, feel, see, taste, understand what is going on, and understand that you exist, are you really alive? I don't think so.

Terri Schiavo's parents still think that she can respond to them and that she can recover. I have heard from no qualified physicians who believe that. Instead, 18 experts have stated that she is in a persistent vegetative state, meaning her higher brain functions have ceased and will not come back. The parents are really hoping against hope that there daughter will come back to them and the tragedy of the condition gives them this false hope, because smiling and certain eye movements are really very primitive. The parents seem to me to be very niave scientifically, although I understand their grief.

To some extent, it does not matter what happens now. She is already dead and no act of congress, the courts, or the president of the United States can bring her back from death. No doctor can either. However, the question is who is to make the decision about the feeding tube.

Legally, the next of kin. That means the husband. Not the parents. I make decisions for my wife when she is incapable, not her parents who live 1500 miles away. As for the fact that Terri never told her parents what her wishes were, but did tell her husband, that makes sense. My wife and I speak about all important things like that. We live together. We speak all the time. While I am close to my mom, she hasn't a clue what is going on with me really. A person will usually often talk to his or her spouse (the person who would make the decision anyway). Not the parents.

As such, the arguments put forth by the parents and the right to lifers make little sense to me. I think abortion is immoral in most cases, but, here, life is not the issue. Life is more than just the body and the body, in this case, is all that is left. Let the body dies, stop functioning, or whatever you want to call it and let everyone involved grieve and move on with their lives.

Life is sacred, but it requires brain function

In a persistent vegatative state, almost all brain function has disappeared but it can seem as though the victim is reacting, even smiling at people talking to them.

"It's common for family members to make the claim that they believe the person is aware and knows they are there," said Bryan Jennett in an interview published Monday in USAToday. Jennett wrote the first clinical description of a vegetative state. She said there are about 10,000 similar cases in the United States.

The smiles and tears are simply neurological reflexes, experts say.

Schiavo, 41, has been at the center of growing international attention since her feeding tube was removed on Friday. She was stricken at 27, when her heart stopped, causing irreparable damage to her brain.

Schiavo entered a persistent vegetative state, which is described by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as "a condition in which individuals have lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retain noncognitive function and a preserved sleep-wake cycle."

People with this condition will exhibit spontaneous movements and their eyes may open in response to external stimuli. They may also grimace, cry, laugh and "appear somewhat normal" the institute said. However, the patient cannot speak or obey commands and all higher cerebral powers have been lost. Without higher cerebral powers, one cannot think, move, feel, hear, see, smell, or understand that they exist.

To determine if a person has entered a persistent vegetative state, neurologists must find a total absence of all signs of consciousness, the conclusion reached by 18 experts who have examined Schiavo.

Her parents, however, hang onto the hope that Schiavo might one day recover, as was the case of a 38-year-old woman, Sarah Scantin, who emerged from a coma after 20 years. However, doctors stress that a patient's brain must be alive to recover from a coma, while much of the brain has died in a vegetative state.

Schiavo's parents have released photos and video clips of Schiavo smiling with wide-open eyes in an attempt to gain support for their bid to keep her alive.

Schiavo's doctors told the Florida Court of Appeals that her heart stoppage was was caused by a sharp drop of potassium in her bloodstream, which was most likely caused by intense dieting.

Reasons to Go to War With Iraq

1. Install a Democracy in Iraq that will infect the rest of the Arab world. Democracy will eventually quiet terrorists who are born when they feel they have no power.

2. Saddam had WMD or planned on getting WMD in the future.

3. To ensure that Saddam did not have WMD and would not give WMD to any terrorist group. Why take Saddam's word for it when he used to have WMD, went to great lengths to hide it from the UN, has actually used WMD extensively, made us think he had WMD, and Saddam had ties to terrorist groups including Al Qaida.

4. Saddam supported terrorist groups including Al Qaida and suicide bombers in Palestine (although there is no clear evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11).

5. Saddam thumbed his nose at the US for over 10 years. In order to ensure that rogue nations don't feel secure in the knowledge that the US can be bullied, we have to show the world the opposite. We have to project strength and that we will back up our words with deeds if necessary. The world is a dangerous place. If a nation thinks we won't go to war over an issue, that nation will feel it is in a much stronger bargaining position and may act more belligerent.

6. Saddam thumbed his nose at the UN for over 10 years. If the resolutions have no teeth, the resolutions aren't worth the paper they are written on.

7. Saddam committed crimes against humanity. He killed hundreds of thousands. He tortured. He oppressed.

8. Saddam fired on US and other air craft patrolling the no fly zone between the first and second gulf wars. This is an act of war in itself.

9. People were suffering under Saddam while Saddam got rich on the UN Oil for Food Program, the greatest scam in the history of the world.

10. To ensure Saddam does not cause any more wars.

11. To make the region more secure. Saddam was a belligerent fellow.

12. Yes, oil is important. It is either in, was manufactured using, or was transported using every product you own. But we did not go to war to ensure oil profits for Texans and Saudis. Letting Iraq stay isolated does that as less oil is exported from Iraq. Instead, letting the free flow of oil come out of Iraq ensures low prices for customers (in the long run) and ensures the American economy, which requires a lot of oil to function, will continue to grow.

Fahrenheit 9/11

I just saw Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time. I vowed I would not see it until after the election.

Here is the plot in a nutshell. Before 9/11, Bush was a bad president. He won because his Daddy's friends packed the supreme court and not because the people wanted him. Before 9/11, he neglected the country and was on vacation more often than not at his ranch. Moore does not show the towers actually being hit or the towers coming down (I wonder why?). When the planes struck the towers, Bush did nothing for seven whole minutes and just read to the elementary school class where he was doing a photo op. Then, Bush protected the Bin Laden's brothers and sisters, because the Bin Ladens were friends of his. In fact, one of Bush's good friends was the guy who dealt with the Bin Laden's finances. Also, the Saudi govt was a great friend of the US. Therefore, even though most of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, Bush protected them and went after Afghanastan. Also, Bush decided to go into Afghanastan, not because there were terrorists there, but because he wanted to put a pipeline through it for Unocal. Then, he decided to get rid of our freedoms with the patriot act and, because no one in Congress read it, Moore was forced to drive around in an Ice Cream truck reading the act, but he doesn't tell us what is in it or how it affects our lives. Later, Moore decides to sign up the children of members of Congress for the all volunteer military. Later, Bush decided to go into Iraq and told us there were weapons of mass destruction there even though, before 9/11, he had said there were no wmd there. Also, war is hell and lots of people die in war including innocent people. Also, lots of soliers have changed their minds about the war and formerly conservative mothers, too (at least, one). Also, Flint Michigan looks a great deal like a war zone.

Also, the president and administration officials look really funny when they sit there getting make-up put on them.

Moreover, you can find all this information if you just go through hundreds of hours of tape showing the president and various administration officials talking for hundreds of hours and then edit it.

The movie tries to tackle too many issues without really going into anything in detail. It first starts out with the idea that Bush was in cahoots with Bin Laden, because he knew someone who did work with the Bin Laden family. Well, my wife used to work with a guy who helped blow up the two embassies in Africa in the 1990s, was a member of Al Qaida while she knew him, and who knew Osama Bin Laden himself. This guy, Ali Mohammed, was arrested for terrorism while he worked with my wife. So I say, so what? We are all six degrees of separation from everyone in the world.

And, of course, there is also the age old adage that any war in the middle east is a war for oil. This has always been merely innuendo as no one can point to any actual fact that shows that's why we went to war in the middle east. And Moore never goes beyond the innuendo.

In fact, the whole movie is all about innuendo and conspiracy theories. But, again, no facts are shown.

Moore thinks we went into Afghanistan for 2 reasons: To build a pipeline in Afghanistan for Unocal and to protect the Saudi Royal family. First of all, there was no pipeline on the table at Unocal in 2001. It had merely been discussed in the 1990s. Second, Al Qaida was based in Afghanistan. Why wouldn't we invade that country?

Moore tries to make many points about airline security, the actions of others such as Congress, and various White House policies and gives one rather conspiratorial view about all of them, but never takes into consideration other views that might explain why such policies were implemented. He just assumes there are either no other reasons or the other reasons aren't good ones. A case in point is his point that no Congressman actually read the Patriot Act. Of course, he never tells us that there might be good reasons why others read the laws that get passed and Congressmen only read summaries prepared by highly skilled staff members. Another case in point is this idea that the President and his administration purposely scared us into Iraq by giving us constant warnings about terror threats. He fails to tell you that the color coded system was actually suggested by a Democrat. Moreover, the administration felt it was under pressure to let people know about threats in advance and did not want to look like it was caught off guard. Also, 9/11 scared us. We assumed there would be other attacks. I never thought we would be free from attacks within our borders three years after 9/11. Moore never takes these other issues into questions.

He does make the point that the sons and daughters of the elite don't ever serve in the military, but his idea to try to get congressmen to "enlist" their own children is silly. I thought it was up to each individual to determine whether to go into the military or not. Each soldier, sailor, airmen, or marine is an adult who can make his or her own decisions. A parent cannot enlist their own children. Nevertheless, we have an all volunteer army. These guys know what they are in for when they join up. If you take the benefits, you might be sent to Iraq. I feel for the guys who go, but they knew what they were in for when they joined up. I understand Moore's point, but I fail to see what that has to do with whether to go into Iraq or not. Good war or bad, the individual soldier knows what he or she is in for.

When Moore tries to make his point about the Patriot act, I fail to understand it. He does not tells us what is in the Patriot Act or why it is good or bad. It just fails.

Moore does score points with his depictions of the horrors of war. In fact, his depictions are very moving and include civilian casualties, amputees, dead soldiers, and the story of the mother of a soldier who was killed. War is horrible. People die horribly. People are maimed horribly. People's lives are changed forever. A lot of innocent people are killed. But that has always happened in war and should be expected. One could say the same thing about World War II. We understand that war is horrible. The question is: Is this a good war to fight?

That is where Moore fails the most. He glosses over the intelligence failures. He doesn't mention anything about Saddam's crimes (or even that the US supported Saddam in the 1970s and 1980s). The real question is why did we go to war? There are a few scenes where people are wondering why we are in Iraq, but the issue is never truly discussed. Weapons of mass destruction are talked about in some very quick snippets of news footage, but a full discussion is never made.

If the administration went to Iraq with bad intelligence regarding WMD, then let's fix the intelligence. If the administration ignored the intelligence analysis of the CIA and decided to go to Iraq anyway, then we have a major problem. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the administration ignored CIA analysis. If Moore has some evidence, it doesn't make in into his movie. In my opinion, other than WMD, the administration did not give us any reasons why we should go to war. I can come up with several good reasons of my own, but Bush failed to tell the American people about these other reasons. That would produce some good discussions, but, to Moore, there are no other reasons and, even if there were, it would not matter, because Bush went to war to make his war industries and oil pals rich and that was it.

To Moore, Bush and all his cronies are maniacal crazy wannabe Hitlers who want nothing other than to make the rich richer, to make the poor poorer, and to poor people suffer. And to accomplish these goals, Bush has to lie constantly. Maybe I have rose colored glasses on, but I think that is ludicrous.

The best part is not part of the movie but is on the DVD. It is a small documentary about Arab American Comics. It was hilarious.

The movie is light on facts and evidence and heavy on conspiracy and innuendo. If you are predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories, you might find something in this movie. If you hate Bush, this is a movie for you. If you are a Republican, you might like it just to know what crap the left is listening to. If you are an independent who needs evidence before making up your mind, pass on this one. Moore obviously has a bias and doesn't let evidence stand in the way of achieving his aims. In my opinion, Moore does a disservice to the public. He has a chance to really undertake a hard look at these issues, but his tactics are not unlike those of the insurgents. He takes quick jabs at the enemy and never fights the enemy head on. He merely hopes that the enemy will die of 1000 small cuts. As such, Moore never faces any issue head on. The documentary is a total failure and will only hurt America and aid the terrorists.