Fahrenheit 9/11

This documentary really bothers me.  It's not that I don't agree with most of what Moore says because I do.  Or, I think I do.  I'm not sure, I think it touches on too many separate issues without fully developing one, two or even three.  It's almost been ten years since the 9/11 catastrophes and over five years since the movie came out.

Like many I have a strong personal connection to the date.  One of the planes flew into my brother's offices on the 83rd floor of the South Tower.  Luckily, he was in Italy, but it was a small company and he lost 60 people.  People he had worked with daily for close to ten years.  He listened to their last phone messages, he attended countless funerals and tried to comfort their families. 

It's such a nightmarish thing to have happened and so frustrating that perhaps it could have been avoided if the right people paid attention to important documents.  I get that Bush was on vacation and played golf a lot during his first months in office but that's an overly simplistic conclusion on how the events could have been avoided.  There is a connection between Saudi Arabians and the Bush family.  Halliburton and others made a lot of money.  There was no reason for us to invade Iraq.  We let Osama bin Laden get away.

Because Michael Moore goes overboard on trying to sell us his ideas.  For instance having members of the US government shake hands with people dressed in robes who were apparently Saudis his message becomes sensationalistic.  I feel like it would have been stronger if it went a little bit deeper on the relationship between the Bush's and the Saudis for instance. 

The fact that soldiers were killed and expressed that they fought for naught is important in itself, as is the ongoing situation that while politicians seem to have time to write laws with hundreds of pages they don't have time to read them.  I feel that if Moore had focused on fewer key points and presented the information in a believable way that maybe Bush wouldn't have been re-elected.  Just documenting problems is not enough.  I feel like there needs to be a way to help spread the message.  When this documentary first came out social media was pretty much limited to Friendster.  Maybe if there had been more social media at the time then it would have had a different impact on the world.   


There is a general page for the film on Facebook. Facebook makes general pages like this for people and products who have not created their own page.  It's similar to a Wikipedia entry.  Currently over 11,000 people like it.  It's interesting that the film is not offered on iTunes but I found a free copy through Veoh. 

The film is on IMDB of course.  There is most recently a link to a news story that Moore is being sued because of a picture of an injured Iraqui girl on his website MichaelMoore.com .  The photographer alleges that Moore suggested that the girl was injured by U.S. soldiers when it was atually a bomb set off by insurgents.