Author: Eric Garris

A guest blog entry responding to my brief review of Fahrenheit 9/11:

Eric, I understand your reaction. I think If I had gone alone, I would be of the same mind.

I, however, accompanied two people with whom I had tried to interest in the questions surrounding 9-11 and the subsequent geopolitical mess for over two years, but to no avail.

This movie woke them up. They turned repeatedly to me during the movie and asked if the news accounts Moore featured were true.

The military record issue was surprising to them because it meant the mainstream news orgs didn’t do their job. They were surprised that news anchors dont tell the truth.

They hated Wolfowitz and reacted viscerally to the moniker Prince Bandar Bush.

They cried buckets at Lila’s story.

They loved the music…after all, they were raised to expect their news to be entertaining.

They were furious that an Israeli national working for the Harris Corporation could guarantee oil to American businessmen with government support even before the Iraqi War began; in fact, because of it.

I walked behind them out of the theatre muttering over their heads, "Well, this saves me ten hours describing the cast of characters."

You’re surprised at the acclaim because you are steeped in facts all day, and want to see more of them. You need to understand how – truly, really, unbelievably – ill-informed most people are to begin with.

When you go to school at the Sorbonne in Paris, every freshman is taught the story of how the intellectuals acted with lightning speed after the French Revolution to prevent the French priestcraft from capturing the minds and imagination of the great unwashed, the enormous uneducated French populace. They threw a theatre up on almost every corner in record time, and employed the likes of Moliere and La Comedie Francaise, etc, to get their emerging and developing points-of-view into the common man’s head before the priests or Jesuits. The intellectuals prevented a religious lock-down on the country as a result.

The French bishops who came over to French Canada and the Northeastern section of the US remembered the intellectuals’ subterfuge and warned their compatriots here of the danger; hence, the ubiquitous steeple in every neighborhood of the original 13 colonies, not to mention the total religious lock-down in French Canada that continued through the 1960s as a result.

I suspect Moore might be more aware of this than you think. Read David Brooks’s June 26, 2004 Op-Ed.

Hmmph. As I finished writing this, one of the two who attended Fahrenheit 9-11 with me just called to ask if I wanted to see it again today…Sunday, June 27. Because she doesn’t get her news from the web, she is genuinely concerned that MSNBC and FOX and the alphabet-majors are interfering with the range of information she needs to make an informed vote.

~ Janie Angus

Please note that this is a blog entry. It is the opinion of the author and doesn’t represent the views of everyone at Antiwar.com. So all you angry letter-writers can address me personally, not all of Antiwar.com.

I really wanted to like Fahrenheit 9/11.

I was excited about seeing it and happy to see that it was beating expectations to top this weekend’s movies, even White Chicks.

I got to the theater early to beat the crowds (not so much for the matinee), full of anticipation. A little over two hours later, I was very disappointed.

The movie opens with Moore’s version of the "stealing" of the 2000 election by the Bush family. Regardless of one’s opinion of this event, it should be clear that this was the weakest opening he could have gone for in terms of actually convincing those not predisposed to hate GW Bush.

He then spends about 20 minutes on the "Saudi connection," which actually struck me as quite racist. I won’t critique this section in detail – I am sure Justin Raimondo will cover this in his Monday column.

The rest of the movie was quite tedious. A combination of boring and overkill, combined with the fact that Moore himself narrates the entire 116 minutes. Literally everything is telegraphed, with no surprises. Moore repeatedly hits you over the head. His focus on victims is limited to only a few individuals, and he makes you sick of them by the time he is done.

Moore blames so much on GW Bush that I actually found myself silently defending him, a feeling that did not sit well with me at all.

I am quite surprised at the near-universal acclaim (see these typical reviews by Roger Ebert and Rex Reed). It reminds me of the reviews for the simply-dreadful movie Bullworth, which was hyped by liberals for its socialist message.

I can only recall a half-dozen brief scenes that made me laugh, in spite of many obvious attempts at humor. And good antiwar movies make me cry. This one didn’t.

I cannot imagine any person changing his or her mind about Bush or the War in Iraq based upon seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. It is a shame.

Dahr Jamail’s excellent reports from Iraq have graced Antiwar.com over the past few months. They come to us courtesy of The New Standard.

Dahr’s editor, Brian Dominick, is announcing a new feature: “Ask Dahr.” He is asking readers to send email to Dahr, who will do his best to answer your feedback. Additionally, some of the letters and his replies will be published on his Weblog, and may also appear on his Antiwar.com page.

Here is the message from New Standard editor Brian Dominick:

Dahr Jamail has expressed an interest in fielding brief queries from our readers about his work in Iraq, so we’re going to give you an email address below to which you can send all those questions you’ve had rolling around your head about the situation in Iraq.

As his primary editor, I would like to add a request that people who appreciate Dahr’s work send letters expressing that sentiment. Dahr has not made his email public previously in large part because he gets a significant amount of hate mail and death threats for telling the Iraqi people’s side of the occupation story.

But Dahr does appreciate feedback from his readers — including critical feedback — so long as it does not include abusive language, personal attacks or threats. PLEASE feel free to direct any questions (or praise) you have for Dahr to this address:

ask_dahr041@newstandardnews.net

Dahr will do his best to respond to all of the mail over the next few weeks, and some of the responses to questions posed to him will be published on his weblog and/or, in some form, on The NewStandard website. Dahr will also consider questions or suggestions that may lead to a story he can investigate during his remaining days in Iraq, though of course his ability to pursue answers to questions he doesn’t already know will understandably be quite limited.

We do not know how much mail this call will generate, so please be patient if it takes Dahr a while to respond or if you do not get a direct, personal response but one appears in public. The situation is extremely tense in Baghdad, as you all know from having read Dahr’s weblogs and articles — right now, that means sending a letter of praise or affirmation might go a long way toward keeping Dahr’s spirits up.

We will honor any requests to publish questions anonymously.

I have been writing to the Website La Voz de Aztlan for several weeks now.

They have been the main site promoting the bogus “Iraqi Rape” photos that have been circulating around the web. These photos are actually from a bad porno produced before the invasion of Iraq, called “Baghdad Babes,” which is available on the Web.

I got no response to my many emails, but today I got a fund pitch for them, and responded to their “donation” address.

Here is their response, which speaks for itself:

We do not watch pornographic movies (ie. Baghdad Babes) like apparently you do. As far as we are concerned, the photographs are genuine. Just because Jewish pornographers are using them on their porn websites to make money does not automatically make them a fraud.

We suggest that you stop harrasing us and go about your business. People like you are probably sodomites like those who now control the LA antiwar (AnswerLA.org) movement in Los Angeles.

They are now promoting the decadent “faggot” parade in LA. You people are disgusting!

If you would like to send your comments to La Voz de Aztlan, I urge you to write them.

I find it interesting that the “newspaper of record,” the New York Times has the story of the “likely” new Iraqi Prime Minister in the Washington section of the paper rather than in the International section.

The folks down in Lynndie England’s hometown are doing their best to defend her actions at the Abu Ghraib Prison. England is the woman shown in the CBS and Washington Post photos with the cigarette, giving the “thumbs-up” as she points to the genitals of a hooded prisoner. Another photo shows her dragging a naked prisoner on a leash.

Fort Ashby, West Virginia’s Colleen Kesner, said that “A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq.”

“To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised.

“Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.”

Like many, England signed up to make money and see the world. After her tour of duty, she planned to settle down and marry her first love, Charles Graner.

Graner is also seen in the photos. He is the one behind the pyramid of bodies.

He has a history.

… this is not the first time Mr Graner was involved in abuse. His former wife, Staci, obtained three separate “temporary protection of abuse” orders against him. In a document passed to the court, she told of one occasion when he went to her house after their divorce.

“[He] yanked me out of … bed by my hair, dragging me and all of the covers into the hall and tried to throw me down the steps,” she wrote. “Both of the children witnessed this and were screaming at this point. He let go of me, turned around to the children and said, ‘See what your Mommy is doing to us’.”

Graner, a former US Marine, was working at Greene Correctional Facility when the prison was at the centre of an abuse scandal. Officials there have declined to say whether Mr Graner was involved or disciplined.