I saw the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 on opening night. Why? Because that’s what tree hugging hippies do on a Friday night in Ann Arbor, MI. How was it? Well, that’s hard to say. First of all, the content is not ground breaking for anyone who has actually been paying attention and connecting the dots for themselves over the last few years.

There are two things that more does a great job of; breaking down the facts into small digestible pieces and showing the real consequences of our actions in Iraq. He makes a few arguments about Bush & Co. and the war in Iraq and mulches them into small bite size chunks. His arguments are as follows.

1. The Bin Laden family and other high level Saudis were allowed to leave the country right after 9/11 without being questioned. Moore’s argument is a valid one here; if you committed a crime the police would surely want to question your entire family as soon as possible.
2. Moore asserts that the close connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family is the reason they were allowed to leave. This is a plausible argument, but is certainly leaning towards conspiracy theory.
3. The reasons given to us for war, which, at the time the President made his case, were weapons of mass destruction, were lies. The fact that Iraq had no WMD is well known and currently there is much debate on links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
4. Bush is evil and stupid. I think you can only be one or the other, but I could be wrong. Moore does use a lot of gratuitous Bush snickering clips, etc., which don’t add to his argument and really are only there for laughs

Nothing really ground breaking here for those of you who actually watch the news and read once in a while, but what makes this movie so powerful is the fact that it breaks down the lies behind us going to war and the consequences of us going into Iraq (if you don’t like seeing the results of our military actions then this movie is not for you).

Now all of the GOP’s out there are condemning this movie, but what makes me so angry is that, in their blind allegiance to the party, they ignore the following facts.

1. Bush said the main reason for invading Iraq was that is posed an immediate threat and possessed WMD’s (he even had sattelite photos!). We now know they did not, in fact, pose a threat or possess WMD’s. Some make the assertion that the WMD’s were smuggled out to another country leading up to the war. If that was, in fact, the case then Bush HAS NOT MADE US SAFER; he’s merely shifted where the WMD’s are located.
2. Once it was clear there were no WMD’s the GOP started to shift the reasons for war. First it was the much contested Iraq-al Qaeda link and then it was “we’ve liberated them!” and now they espouse the virtues of having a Democratic state in the Middle East. First off, your party’s leaders are trying to justify a war while ignoring the fact they either lied about the WMD’s or screwed up the efforts to secure those WMD’s. Second, the terrorist links are vague at best. Finally, did anyone ever think to liberate Iranians or N. Koreans? Do they even want Deomcracy?

NOTE: The following list of scenes I liked a lot contains spoilers.

1. I find it disgusting at how the patrons of the conference for war contractors talk about how much they are helping the country, etc. These vultures profit from the horrors of wars. There is a great clip about a soldier who makes $3k/mo. and is assigned to guard the oil fields where guys driving 2.5 miles and back make three times that a month.
2. The look on the Senator’s face when Moore asks him if he’d like to sign up his son to the armed forces to figh in Iraq is simply classic.
3. I didn’t like looking at the scenes of dead bodies and blown up babies, but I’m glad that millions of people out there are going to finally see what we’ve put the Iraqis through.

So, in short, the movie doesn’t bring any major new information to the forefront, but does break down the misdeads of the Iraq war and Bush & Co. quite well.