Former President Clinton has repeatedly defended President Bush's actions in the war, and his administration told the Bush Administration that their number one issue would be terrorism.
He was right on the money, he's been supportive of the current administration, and I believe him when he said that he instantly knew that it was Al Qaeda.
If you have proof that he initially thought that another group was responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then by all means post it.
after he passed off Bowling for Columbine as a documentary
Well, the majority of the voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences seemed to think that it was a documentary - they both nominated his film for, and awarded Michael Moore with the Oscar for Best Documentary. I personally think that they're a slightly better judge of film genres than, what was it, ah yes, "The AtomicPunk" on SlashDot.org.
As to falsifying "a significant portion of the content," I'm going to have to disagree with you here again. None of the footage was doctored. As to whether he was intellectually dishonest in his presentation of footage, we can debate. But I think you're putting entirely too much faith into people who claim to have identified falsehood in the movie. For one, Michael Moore has himself kept correcting the information in the various editions of the movie as more information became available, even backing down from the assertion (from five people) that the Columbine killers had gone to bowling class that morning. Come on? "Falsified"?
I've read the attacks on Bowling for Columbine, and the rebuttals, and I'm not impressed with the assertion that Michael Moore falsified anything.
I agree with you that Bowling for Columbine was a better movie, in that he directly achieved a result: K-Mart pulling bullets from their shelves.
If you were "nearly bored... to sleep" by the footage of war in Iraq and the personal story of a mother who lost her son, then you're probably a little too desensitized to violence. I thought the second half was a brilliant emotional appeal that this war is not worth our soldiers' lives.
I think it does deserve the country's attention, and I'm glad that it's getting it.
Former President Bill Clinton said that he knew immediately that the events of September 11th were the result of an Al Qaeda attack, and he didn't have access to the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States" report.
So, maybe Former President Bill Clinton is a little bit more out of the pages of a Hollywood screenplay than current President George W. Bush, but the simple fact is: people did immediately associate the two - our President should have either made the immediate association, or started asking questions. Instead, he sat frozen in a classroom for seven minutes.
The events of that day were shocking, unprecedented and went against all experience
The events were not unprecedented: the World Trade Center had in fact been bombed before, and President Bush had been informed of the possibility of Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil. The primary military lesson from Pearl Harbor was that a quick response to information could have prevented most of the casualties.
NOBODY knew if it was accidental or intentional.
Chief of Staff Andrew Card came over and whispered in Bush's ear, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
At that point, President Bush knew that it was intentional.
But Don't forget somewhere in there a plane crashed in a field as well and nobody was real sure what had happend there
Flight 93 did not crash in a field until some time later, so that wasn't on President Bush's mind.
Given the complete unreal nature of the whole event...
The whole event was as real as they come. We elect Presidents to lead us in good times and in bad, and quickly coping with reality is one of the best attributes of a leader. Look at Mayor Giuliani for an example of leadership under pressure.
It was not a claimed terrorist action.
President Bush knew full well that it was a terrorist action.
What would those 10 minutes have bought?
It is not a question of what could those 10 minutes (actually, it was about 27 minutes from the time that he was informed of the first impact, until the time he left the building) could have bought. It's a question of what those 27 minutes could have cost. He should have gone into immediate damage control and information gathering, not a photo-op and an uninformed press conference.
What would his leaving have done besides save his skin anyway ?
Preserved the continuation of the American system of government? That's not nothing. Heck, the financial impact on the world economy of even an attempt on the life of the President of the United States is staggering.
...considering it from the level of utter confusion of those 10 minutes
If President Bush was confused after hearing the message "America is under attack," then we definitely need a new President.
But, as soon as you're talking about a public figure, it all gets a little bit muddled. And then you bring in satire and, as Al Franken puts it, "satire is protected by the First Ammendment, even if the target of the satire doesn't get it."
I agree with you, Moore should be able to defend himself from outright lies, but it won't be easy.
His assertion is that they should have been questioned, especially since Osama is not the "black sheep" who has been completely ostracized: members of his family were with him together at a wedding in Afghanistan.
For one, the movie is 112 minutes long, and for another the bin Laden exodus from the U.S. on 9/13 is only one tiny part of the movie.
Again, it is significant, because relatives of a terrorist were not questioned while they were granted special rights that normal citizens of this country did not have. And for what - their protection? Maybe we should have started by protecting U.S. citizens first. Say, maybe, by questioning relatives of known terrorists?
I should learn more, and you're correct: I've relied on the media far too much. I don't deny that from a liberal democratic standpoint, Kerry is a better choice than President Bush (duh), but I think Dean lost the candidacy for all of the wrong reasons. *shrug*
Nope, I didn't have to go to a movie for that. I did have to go to the movie to see it pulled together with other things like President Bush opposing benefits for soldiers.
You're right that it is the fault of U.S. citizens to not force the media to inform us of things worth knowing. "Benifer" was more widely discussed in our media than the Carlyle group, or the fact that James Baker's law firm defended Saudis against litigation over deaths on September 11th.
Well, it's kind of emberrasing to have to tell you that Christopher Hitchens is the source that you quoted to accuse Michael Moore of telling lies.
If you're going to accuse someone of telling lies, and indicating that your citations are "useful," it might be a good idea to actually know what you're talking about, who you're citing, and why.
Apparently, what Hithcens has done for you is to help you disarm Moore, without the benefit of inspection.
"Doing something" without gaining knowledge first is foolishness. Reading a book might be a good way to inform yourself.
When did I accuse you of being "anti-/pro- anything"? That's not what I heard. That's not what I responded to. You're being paranoid if that's what you read from my response.
I'm just going to have a little fun at your expense with your last sentance.
"hard-core vegan" - what's wrong with being a vegan? If you know anything about resource consumption, you know that if more people chose to consume foods from lower on the foodchain, there would be a much greater supply of food in the world. Or are you a fan of starvation and hunger?
"decision-wavering" - what's wrong with re-examining decions and sometimes admitting that you were wrong? It's people who are convinved that they were right, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, who are the scary ones.
"Vietnam-bashing" - actually, this is the most fun one. What you meant to say was "Vietnam-WAR-bashing." Yes, I will bash the U.S.'s motivations for fighting in the Vietnam war. They were not noble. The soldiers who fought and died were doing their country a service, and we did not repay the service by doing everything that we could to protect them.
"unpatriotic" - I'm going to quote Teddy Roosevelt here, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Thanks for playing.
"Kerry supporter" - the guy is a candidate for President of the United States. Just take that at face value. More than 40% of American voters are likely to vote for the guy, and you're using that as evidence that I'm nuts? Look, say what you will about individuals, attack them for saying or doing things that you disagree with, but you're not really trying to engage me in a discussion if you lambast me for supporting one of the people who is in strong contention for the office of the President of the United States. Win or lose, he's a serious candidate, and to suggest otherwise can only be ignorance. To suggest that there's something wrong with supporting him is, well, insulting.
By the way, your whole argument of "can't take a stand against a person without backing all of their detractors" is exactly the argument being used against Moore. By criticizing the decision to invade Iraq, people are saying that Moore is unpatriotic, that he is supporting terrorism.
Just stand back, breathe, and think a little bit before you make decisions about who you hate and why.
P.S. I don't hate you, I just think you're a little intellectually dishonest. You didn't even remember who you were citing, and you were holding up their opinions as fact.
The cost of the movie ticket was worth it to see the juxtaposition of the senseless loss of lives of U.S. soldiers, and President Bush saying about attacks in Iraq:
There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they're talking about, if that's the case.
Let me finish. There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.
"Bring them on," he said. Attack U.S. troops. And liberals are accused of being traitors for questioning the motives for the war in the first place?
Here's the President of the United States of America telling angry Iraqi armed forces to do their worst, and take as many American lives as possible.
I only wish that the Democratic candidate was worth voting for.
maybe you'd prefer that Moore did all that thinking for you
Are you Christopher Hitchens?
Because if not, it sounds like you're letting Hitchens do your watching and your thinking for you.
You should just recognize that you're in a He Said/She Said about the facts here. Someone quotes a website with factual links, you quote a site with "useful" links? Get a grip.
Maybe you should actually see the movie? Either of them - Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11.
Personally, I'd recommend Columbine for you. There's no doubting that U.S. gun owners kill each other more than other gun owners in the world, to the tune of 15,000 a year. That's worth examining, regardless of whether you agree with Moore's presentation. What have you done to examine the problem of violence in the U.S.? Have you read Culture of Fear? Or any other book on the topic?
Let me ask an honest question, here (well, maybe not completely honest):
If the multi-billion dollar media with tens of thousands of hours of programming is supposedly freakishly liberal...
...then how is it that the conservatives among us can spend so much time railing against a six million dollar movie that's only 112 minutes long?
In my opinion, the media has been negligent (almost extreme in it's support of the conservative administration) in under-reporting news like the commentary in Fahrenheit 9/11 about Bush trying to cut combat wages for soldiers, benefits for soldiers, funding for V.A. hospitals.
And here's my gripe - where the hell is the Democratic party? Is it consider "uncool" to point out that Bush is a hypocrite if he blames people for not supporting the troops, and then turns around and stabs the troops in the back?
It was an interesting movie. I wouldn't recommend it for any conservatives (duh) specifically because of the first 20-40 minutes. I think the last hour of the movie is pretty amazing, and right-on-target, and would be appreciated by most viewers who are sympathetic to the pain caused by war. But those first 20 minutes are just re-capping Florida, and I can honestly acknowledge that the topic is too partisan and charged to be at all fair to Republicans. I personally agree with Moore's interpretation, and was awed and saddened watching the footage of Gore presiding over the session where no senator (not even Democrats!) would back members of Congress who wished to contest the election results, and speak about disenfranchisement.
Anyway - yeah - simple question: if the multi-billion dollar media is so biased, why can the rightists spend all of this time railing against a low-budget movie? Don't they have bigger fish to fry? *
(*Answer: because they don't. There is no liberal media bias.)
People who use leaches to treat maladies like an imbalance of the humours are having a tough go of it, too.
Not every economy and market will live. I'm actually someone who writes code professionally, but I can acknowledge that it's more like mathematics - very few "mathematicians" are hired to do things that they used to, because now computers and calculators can do those simple tasks. It may well be that in the future, people are unwilling to pay for applications software without source code and the right to modify it and sell it themselves, and that the price they're willing to pay is $0. It could be.
Saying something is "not possible" just because you don't like the outcome, is kinda silly.
Sure. But re-read the grandfather post - it was completely inaccurate. Somehow using Direct3D would mean that they wouldn't have to write their own shaders? What?
If it was written in Direct3D, they would not have used built-in shaders. They would have been written in assembly code, too (PixelShaders 2.0 versus ARB_fragment_program is not that different). It's not like DirectX has something here that OpenGL does not.
Everyone has to write all of their own shaders, at this point.
Unfortunately that system is composed of multiple PCI slots - we really need a way to cram as many PCI-Express cards into a room as possible. All while not pissing off our customer with perceived high maintenance. So, Blades with PCI-Express would fit the bill - but they don't exist.
I'm on a high-value app (giant scientific visualization).
I've been pitching the low-cost cluster idea, but the IS guys at our customer sites don't want to hear about it. *sigh* So, it looks like way-expensive Blades...
Yeah, but there are so many VGA-ready monitors already on the market that it would be suicide for video card manufacturers to make their output incompatible with those existing monitors.
That doesn't mean they won't invent DVI, which is way, way better - and then have a DVI-to-VGA connector which is comparatively lousy.
Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if the HD-DVD players spawned a new video cable.
I specifically waited to buy an HD TV, because I knew that eventually there would be an HD DVD player, and I bet there was a good chance that it'd be incompatible.
Slashdot Mirror
Former President Clinton has repeatedly defended President Bush's actions in the war, and his administration told the Bush Administration that their number one issue would be terrorism.
He was right on the money, he's been supportive of the current administration, and I believe him when he said that he instantly knew that it was Al Qaeda.
If you have proof that he initially thought that another group was responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then by all means post it.
after he passed off Bowling for Columbine as a documentary
Well, the majority of the voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences seemed to think that it was a documentary - they both nominated his film for, and awarded Michael Moore with the Oscar for Best Documentary. I personally think that they're a slightly better judge of film genres than, what was it, ah yes, "The AtomicPunk" on SlashDot.org.
As to falsifying "a significant portion of the content," I'm going to have to disagree with you here again. None of the footage was doctored. As to whether he was intellectually dishonest in his presentation of footage, we can debate. But I think you're putting entirely too much faith into people who claim to have identified falsehood in the movie. For one, Michael Moore has himself kept correcting the information in the various editions of the movie as more information became available, even backing down from the assertion (from five people) that the Columbine killers had gone to bowling class that morning. Come on? "Falsified"?
I've read the attacks on Bowling for Columbine, and the rebuttals, and I'm not impressed with the assertion that Michael Moore falsified anything.
I agree with you that Bowling for Columbine was a better movie, in that he directly achieved a result: K-Mart pulling bullets from their shelves.
If you were "nearly bored... to sleep" by the footage of war in Iraq and the personal story of a mother who lost her son, then you're probably a little too desensitized to violence. I thought the second half was a brilliant emotional appeal that this war is not worth our soldiers' lives.
I think it does deserve the country's attention, and I'm glad that it's getting it.
Former President Bill Clinton said that he knew immediately that the events of September 11th were the result of an Al Qaeda attack, and he didn't have access to the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States" report.
So, maybe Former President Bill Clinton is a little bit more out of the pages of a Hollywood screenplay than current President George W. Bush, but the simple fact is: people did immediately associate the two - our President should have either made the immediate association, or started asking questions. Instead, he sat frozen in a classroom for seven minutes.
The events were not unprecedented: the World Trade Center had in fact been bombed before, and President Bush had been informed of the possibility of Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. soil. The primary military lesson from Pearl Harbor was that a quick response to information could have prevented most of the casualties.
NOBODY knew if it was accidental or intentional.
Chief of Staff Andrew Card came over and whispered in Bush's ear, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
At that point, President Bush knew that it was intentional.
But Don't forget somewhere in there a plane crashed in a field as well and nobody was real sure what had happend there
Flight 93 did not crash in a field until some time later, so that wasn't on President Bush's mind.
Given the complete unreal nature of the whole event...
The whole event was as real as they come. We elect Presidents to lead us in good times and in bad, and quickly coping with reality is one of the best attributes of a leader. Look at Mayor Giuliani for an example of leadership under pressure.
It was not a claimed terrorist action.
President Bush knew full well that it was a terrorist action.
What would those 10 minutes have bought?
It is not a question of what could those 10 minutes (actually, it was about 27 minutes from the time that he was informed of the first impact, until the time he left the building) could have bought. It's a question of what those 27 minutes could have cost. He should have gone into immediate damage control and information gathering, not a photo-op and an uninformed press conference.
What would his leaving have done besides save his skin anyway ?
Preserved the continuation of the American system of government? That's not nothing. Heck, the financial impact on the world economy of even an attempt on the life of the President of the United States is staggering.
If President Bush was confused after hearing the message "America is under attack," then we definitely need a new President.
But, as soon as you're talking about a public figure, it all gets a little bit muddled. And then you bring in satire and, as Al Franken puts it, "satire is protected by the First Ammendment, even if the target of the satire doesn't get it."
I agree with you, Moore should be able to defend himself from outright lies, but it won't be easy.
You obviously haven't seen the movie.
His assertion is that they should have been questioned, especially since Osama is not the "black sheep" who has been completely ostracized: members of his family were with him together at a wedding in Afghanistan.
For one, the movie is 112 minutes long, and for another the bin Laden exodus from the U.S. on 9/13 is only one tiny part of the movie.
Again, it is significant, because relatives of a terrorist were not questioned while they were granted special rights that normal citizens of this country did not have. And for what - their protection? Maybe we should have started by protecting U.S. citizens first. Say, maybe, by questioning relatives of known terrorists?
Pssst: don't forget that Rush Limbaugh also was on welfare, and isn't too kind of that topic, either.
I did. You're wrong. The grandparent poster was right.
I should learn more, and you're correct: I've relied on the media far too much. I don't deny that from a liberal democratic standpoint, Kerry is a better choice than President Bush (duh), but I think Dean lost the candidacy for all of the wrong reasons. *shrug*
Nope, I didn't have to go to a movie for that. I did have to go to the movie to see it pulled together with other things like President Bush opposing benefits for soldiers.
You're right that it is the fault of U.S. citizens to not force the media to inform us of things worth knowing. "Benifer" was more widely discussed in our media than the Carlyle group, or the fact that James Baker's law firm defended Saudis against litigation over deaths on September 11th.
Well, it's kind of emberrasing to have to tell you that Christopher Hitchens is the source that you quoted to accuse Michael Moore of telling lies.
If you're going to accuse someone of telling lies, and indicating that your citations are "useful," it might be a good idea to actually know what you're talking about, who you're citing, and why.
Apparently, what Hithcens has done for you is to help you disarm Moore, without the benefit of inspection.
"Doing something" without gaining knowledge first is foolishness. Reading a book might be a good way to inform yourself.
When did I accuse you of being "anti-/pro- anything"? That's not what I heard. That's not what I responded to. You're being paranoid if that's what you read from my response.
I'm just going to have a little fun at your expense with your last sentance.
"hard-core vegan" - what's wrong with being a vegan? If you know anything about resource consumption, you know that if more people chose to consume foods from lower on the foodchain, there would be a much greater supply of food in the world. Or are you a fan of starvation and hunger?
"decision-wavering" - what's wrong with re-examining decions and sometimes admitting that you were wrong? It's people who are convinved that they were right, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, who are the scary ones.
"Vietnam-bashing" - actually, this is the most fun one. What you meant to say was "Vietnam-WAR-bashing." Yes, I will bash the U.S.'s motivations for fighting in the Vietnam war. They were not noble. The soldiers who fought and died were doing their country a service, and we did not repay the service by doing everything that we could to protect them.
"unpatriotic" - I'm going to quote Teddy Roosevelt here, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Thanks for playing.
"Kerry supporter" - the guy is a candidate for President of the United States. Just take that at face value. More than 40% of American voters are likely to vote for the guy, and you're using that as evidence that I'm nuts? Look, say what you will about individuals, attack them for saying or doing things that you disagree with, but you're not really trying to engage me in a discussion if you lambast me for supporting one of the people who is in strong contention for the office of the President of the United States. Win or lose, he's a serious candidate, and to suggest otherwise can only be ignorance. To suggest that there's something wrong with supporting him is, well, insulting.
By the way, your whole argument of "can't take a stand against a person without backing all of their detractors" is exactly the argument being used against Moore. By criticizing the decision to invade Iraq, people are saying that Moore is unpatriotic, that he is supporting terrorism.
Just stand back, breathe, and think a little bit before you make decisions about who you hate and why.
P.S. I don't hate you, I just think you're a little intellectually dishonest. You didn't even remember who you were citing, and you were holding up their opinions as fact.
The cost of the movie ticket was worth it to see the juxtaposition of the senseless loss of lives of U.S. soldiers, and President Bush saying about attacks in Iraq:
There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they're talking about, if that's the case.
Let me finish. There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.
"Bring them on," he said. Attack U.S. troops. And liberals are accused of being traitors for questioning the motives for the war in the first place?
Here's the President of the United States of America telling angry Iraqi armed forces to do their worst, and take as many American lives as possible.
I only wish that the Democratic candidate was worth voting for.
Can you tell by looking at CT-scans whether bullet damage was caused by an assault weapon or a semi-automatic rifle?
No?
Then it's probably not that important of a distinction.
maybe you'd prefer that Moore did all that thinking for you
Are you Christopher Hitchens?
Because if not, it sounds like you're letting Hitchens do your watching and your thinking for you.
You should just recognize that you're in a He Said/She Said about the facts here. Someone quotes a website with factual links, you quote a site with "useful" links? Get a grip.
Maybe you should actually see the movie? Either of them - Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11.
Personally, I'd recommend Columbine for you. There's no doubting that U.S. gun owners kill each other more than other gun owners in the world, to the tune of 15,000 a year. That's worth examining, regardless of whether you agree with Moore's presentation. What have you done to examine the problem of violence in the U.S.? Have you read Culture of Fear? Or any other book on the topic?
He was born in and lives in the United States of America.
Hell, if I want to get technical with you, Canada is as much a part of America (i.e. North America) as the United States.
So, seriously, as Moore is an American, this is a pretty honest investigation into the causes for the war on Iraq.
If the multi-billion dollar media with tens of thousands of hours of programming is supposedly freakishly liberal...
In my opinion, the media has been negligent (almost extreme in it's support of the conservative administration) in under-reporting news like the commentary in Fahrenheit 9/11 about Bush trying to cut combat wages for soldiers, benefits for soldiers, funding for V.A. hospitals.
And here's my gripe - where the hell is the Democratic party? Is it consider "uncool" to point out that Bush is a hypocrite if he blames people for not supporting the troops, and then turns around and stabs the troops in the back?
It was an interesting movie. I wouldn't recommend it for any conservatives (duh) specifically because of the first 20-40 minutes. I think the last hour of the movie is pretty amazing, and right-on-target, and would be appreciated by most viewers who are sympathetic to the pain caused by war. But those first 20 minutes are just re-capping Florida, and I can honestly acknowledge that the topic is too partisan and charged to be at all fair to Republicans. I personally agree with Moore's interpretation, and was awed and saddened watching the footage of Gore presiding over the session where no senator (not even Democrats!) would back members of Congress who wished to contest the election results, and speak about disenfranchisement.
Anyway - yeah - simple question: if the multi-billion dollar media is so biased, why can the rightists spend all of this time railing against a low-budget movie? Don't they have bigger fish to fry? *
(*Answer: because they don't. There is no liberal media bias.)
People who use leaches to treat maladies like an imbalance of the humours are having a tough go of it, too.
Not every economy and market will live. I'm actually someone who writes code professionally, but I can acknowledge that it's more like mathematics - very few "mathematicians" are hired to do things that they used to, because now computers and calculators can do those simple tasks. It may well be that in the future, people are unwilling to pay for applications software without source code and the right to modify it and sell it themselves, and that the price they're willing to pay is $0. It could be.
Saying something is "not possible" just because you don't like the outcome, is kinda silly.
Sure. But re-read the grandfather post - it was completely inaccurate. Somehow using Direct3D would mean that they wouldn't have to write their own shaders? What?
If it was written in Direct3D, they would not have used built-in shaders. They would have been written in assembly code, too (PixelShaders 2.0 versus ARB_fragment_program is not that different). It's not like DirectX has something here that OpenGL does not.
Everyone has to write all of their own shaders, at this point.
Move along, folks - nothing to see here.
Unfortunately that system is composed of multiple PCI slots - we really need a way to cram as many PCI-Express cards into a room as possible. All while not pissing off our customer with perceived high maintenance. So, Blades with PCI-Express would fit the bill - but they don't exist.
I'm on a high-value app (giant scientific visualization).
I've been pitching the low-cost cluster idea, but the IS guys at our customer sites don't want to hear about it. *sigh* So, it looks like way-expensive Blades...
Yeah, but there are so many VGA-ready monitors already on the market that it would be suicide for video card manufacturers to make their output incompatible with those existing monitors.
That doesn't mean they won't invent DVI, which is way, way better - and then have a DVI-to-VGA connector which is comparatively lousy.
Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if the HD-DVD players spawned a new video cable.
My question is - when is someone going to make a blade with PCI-Express and enough room for the latest batch of cards from NVidia and ATI?
Seriously - this is going to become a huge issue, as more rendering is pushed out to the stream processor that is the GPU.
I specifically waited to buy an HD TV, because I knew that eventually there would be an HD DVD player, and I bet there was a good chance that it'd be incompatible.