David Rossie: Hard to argue with the reality in 'Fahrenheit'

(Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin) "Fahrenheit 9/11 is an embarrassing movie. Or it should be. It should be embarrassing to the Cheney/Bush Gang, but those people are beyond embarrassment."
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~Rossie is associate editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin.

"It should be embarrassing to the spineless Democrats in the U.S. Senate, not one of whom had the moral courage to co-sign a bill of particulars prepared by African-American members of Congress and others protesting the disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida, a blatant act that enabled Bush, with the help of his brother, Jeb, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and five members of the U.S. Supreme Court to steal the presidency.
It should be embarrassing to the national media -- print and electronic -- who lacked the intellectual courage to show us what Michael Moore shows us in this movie.
And it should be especially embarrassing to the millions of Americans who fail to or refuse to see Bush for what he is: an inarticulate puppet for a corrupt, cynical band of neo-conservative opportunists led by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Wolfowitz.
The sweet singers of the far right and their followers have tried to make much of perceived errors in Fahrenheit. I say perceived, because in some cases they are the only ones who see them. Example: Moore supposedly claims in the film that members of the bin Laden family in the United States were allowed to fly home to Saudi Arabia after 9/11 before the ban on commercials flights out of the country was lifted. But the film does not make that claim. And the Saudis went out on private planes, not commercial flights.
Moore does question the wisdom of allowing relatives of the man who masterminded the attacks to leave the country so soon after the event. But then when you look at the close ties, especially the money ties, that bind the Bushes and the Saudi establishment, including the bin Ladens, you understand the preferential treatment.
Without this movie we would not have known about Bush's bewildering behavior on the morning of the attack. We had the official and of course bogus White House version put out by Dick (Undisclosed Location) Cheney about Air Force One being targeted by the terrorists and a cool and collected Bush taking command of the situation.
That was not the Bush we saw in the videotape made in the Florida kindergarten classroom that terrible morning. Bush, we now know, was told of the first airliner's crash into the North Tower before he entered the classroom. Still he strolled in, sat down and opened a copy of My Pet Goat as the teacher read aloud. Minutes later, one of his aides came to him and whispered in his ear that a second airliner had struck the South Tower and that America was under attack.
For the next seven minutes Bush sat there, seemingly dumbstruck, wondering what to do next. The self-proclaimed leader of the free world wasn't just drawing a blank, he was a blank.
And who can blame him? This wasn't in his job description. This was not what he'd signed on for. For the first eight months of his nominal presidency life had been good: Early to bed, early to rise, a quick briefing on what Dick and Rummy and Condi figured he needed to know, which wasn't too much, a bit of exercise, a video-game break, then lunch and a nap. His nanny Dick would take care of the heavy lifting.
As The Washington Post reported at the time, 42 percent of Bush's first eight months in office had been spent on vacation. But all that changed on Sept. 11, 2001, or so we've been told by the people who did not tell us what Moore is telling us.
Up until that fateful day, some in the press had been derisive of Bush's disengaged demeanor. But 48 hours later, more than a few of these same people had transformed him into a latter-day Churchill, praising his strong leadership in a time of national crisis, but conveniently not providing a single example of that strong leadership, unless you want to count the tough cowboy talk about tracking bin Laden down, smoking him out and bringing him back dead or alive. Yippee!
You can argue over whether Fahrenheit is a documentary, a polemic or a Democratic campaign ad. But it's hard to argue with the disturbing reality it lays bare."