Okay, I confess that I enjoy the humor at Imao. Someday I will repent.

Though some think the Iraq War wrong, I think Iraq war right just like Bush. I even came up with a bunch of reasons:

* Lots of Iraqis are dead – bad ones!

* It made for good T.V.

* Saddam was an evil man and now he's dead – or at least he will be after due process of law.

* Since the war on Iraq, there have been no Iraqi attacks on American soil.

* Instead of having to travel all over the world to track down and shoot terrorists, they flocked to Iraq for us to shoot them in one place.

* "Iraq" and "attack" rhyme, so war just makes sense.

* Now the most potent Weapon of Mass Destruction currently in Iraq is the U.S. military.

* Since Iraq will now have its own democracy, maybe they will import some of our slimy weasels.

* By having so much anger in the Middle East directed at us, we've given the Jews a break.

* If it weren't for the war, the election would be all about dumb crap like Medicare and gay marriage.

* Setting Iraq free from tyranny sets the course for the rest of the Middle East to evolve into modern democracies by 4012.

* The war made Michael Moore angry… hopefully bringing him closer to his inevitable heart attack (I just hope he doesn't fall on any children).

* We pissed most of the world off, and, frankly, we hate most of the world and like pissing them off.

* If we waited to attack until we had France's permission, we would have to hold off until most of Europe was invaded by Iraq… which could have taken months longer.

* With all the practice liberating Iraq, Iran, which is an only one letter difference, should be easy.

* Dude, we like so killed Uday and Qusay.

* Oil! Sweet, sweet oil! Muh ha ha ha!

* Lot's of bad people are dead; what's not to be happy about?

[Via IMAO]

I was talking to a friend yesterday about this movie. I am not planning on seeing the movie since I think Spiderman 2 is a much better choice for my $9. I guess he hadn’t read some of the reviews that I had read so I did a little research and here is my best choice. I decided to post it so it would be easier to find again. Enjoy!

Fahrenhype Update – Categories: News, The Culture, Movies – Tim Curlee – [email protected] @ 11:36:14 am

For those of you who still intrigued by the lies of Michael Moore, here are a few articles and blogs worth a gander:

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, hardly conservatives, speak out about Moore’s distortions (excerpts):

n his new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” film-maker Michael Moore makes the eye-popping claim that Saudi Arabian interests “have given” $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush. This, Moore suggests, helps explain one of the principal themes of the film: that the Bush White House has shown remarkable solicitude to the Saudi royals, even to the point of compromising the war on terror. When you and your associates get money like that, Moore says at one point in the movie, “who you gonna like? Who’s your Daddy?”But a cursory examination of the claim reveals some flaws in Moore’s arithmetic””not to mention his logic. Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998””five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm. True enough, the former president was paid for one speech to Carlyle and then made an overseas trip on the firm’s behalf the previous fall, right around the time BDM was sold. But Ullman insists any link between the former president’s relations with Carlyle and the Saudi contracts to BDM that were awarded years earlier is entirely bogus. “The figure is inaccurate and misleading,” said Ullman. “The movie clearly implies that the Saudis gave $1.4 billion to the Bushes and their friends. But most of it went to a Carlyle Group company before Bush even joined the firm. Bush had nothing to do with BDM.”

Richard Cohen, a liberal, doesn’t like the movie and doens’t believe it help those who are opposed to the war. Excerpts:

I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. One of my notes says “John Ellis,” who is a cousin of George W. Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark and infamous night when the presidency — or so the myth goes — was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better synopsis of the movie you’re not likely to read.

Moore’s depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival — lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.The case against Bush need not and should not rest on guilt by association or half-baked conspiracy theories, which collapse at the first double take but reinforce the fervor of those already convinced. The success of Moore’s movie, though, suggests this is happening — a dialogue in which anti-Bush forces talk to themselves and do so in a way that puts off others. I found that happening to me in the run-up to the war, when I spent more time and energy arguing with those who said the war was about oil (no!) or Israel (no!) or something just as silly than I did questioning the stated reasons for invading Iraq — weapons of mass destruction and Hussein’s links to Osama bin Laden. This was stupid of me, but human nature nonetheless.

Some of that old feeling returned while watching Moore’s assault on the documentary form. It is so juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism, such an inside joke for people who already hate Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided.

Dave Kopel has a great link debunking Moore’s myths. Also check out Moore Watch and Fahrenheit Facts.

Finally, Bill Hobbs thinks Fahrenhype is good for Bush.

I pointed out yesterday how the world tends toward chaos, disorder and lawlessness, not peace and harmony.Comes now a lead editorial of the Wall Street Journal that observes Sudan’s murderous history and makes the same point. Cataloguing the failures of Europe and of other Muslim states to halt the genocide there, the WSJ points out that only the United States has taken any sort of steps that hold promise of peace. The lesson?

The lesson of Sudan is that the world is a Hobbesian place outside the U.S. sphere of influence. Sudan’s social contract is straight out of “Leviathan”; citizens are guaranteed security only if they abide by the absolute authority of a monarch.The real problem, as everyone knows but no one will admit, is Sudan’s murderous regime. But Mr. Annan and company can’t abide regime change, and in any case the U.S. military is too preoccupied to make that happen. That means we’re left with diplomatic pressure and visits like Mr. Powell’s, which are better than nothing but don’t solve the long-term problem.

It is fashionable these days to express distaste for American “unilateralism” and “hegemony.” The unfolding catastrophe in Darfur offers a chilling view of what the alternative really looks like.

Thomas Hobbes was the philosopher who said that the natural state of human life is “nasty, brutish and short.”

The US has not stopped the murders there, but we may be kicking the regional powers into action, something they have avoided for two decades, while innocents died.

[Via One Hand Clapping]

Last Sunday I got into a discussion with some people about Iraq, terrorism, genocide, and the lack of will to stop it. I was somewhat surprised by their knowledge about the various genocides of the last two decades. You really have to work to find information about genocides and the national media continues to be negligent in this area. They knew that opportunities to stop genocides were missed but the responsibilities of the major players were ambiguous to them. I guess they were surprised when I tied together the problems with averting genocides to the problems with controlling terrorism. The UN and Western Europe have been particularly adverse to meddling in “civil” wars even when the situation is rapidly getting out of control and the only opportunity exists to avoid massive loss of life. It is my belief that preventing genocides should be one the UN’s primary missions. The UN sees itself as a father figure. The nice gentle father who loves and encourages everyone. The reality is that they are a poor father figure. When their children desparately need some discipline to grow up healthy, they are absent. Instead of helping promote healing before the conflict gets out of control the UN and the rest of the world is relegated to burying the bodies and tending to the wounded. The damage from the inaction of the few who can make a difference will take a generation or more to fade away.

The root cause of terrorism in the Middle East is the ineffectiveness of governments to be provide jobs and hope. I am sorry to say this but the people in the Middle East are jealous of the large middle classes in the Western world. High unemployment, diminished hope for the future, and jealousy is the breeding ground for terrorists. When more people are employed and poverty is diminished, terrorists will have a harder to time recruiting new members.

It is my belief that most of the people in the Middle East believe that a middle class lifestyle is a reasonable objective in their lifetime. A participatory government is the most effective way to achieve a large middle class. The problem is that an effective model government that incorporates participatory government does not exist at this timefor Middle East countries. There are some potential role models in the Middle East and the US is going to force its version in Iraq. A side benefit of the war in Iraq is the increased willingness of Middle East governments to review and revise their governing style. They have been forced to make a choice and they have chosen to expand the freedoms and opportunities of their people while surpressing terrorists. They paying the price in blood as the terrorists try to topple the weaker governments. Spain has undoubtably given the terrorists greater hopes for success.

So what does this have to do with Iraq. I believe that Iraq under Saddam was a powder keg looking for a spark. Saddam had actively surpressed his people and his grasp on the disadvantaged in his country was precarious. Poverty and hunger was rampamt. Iraq was and still is a potentially great breeding ground for terrorists. Iraq had all of the tools of war the terrorists desired. Although Saddam may not have liked the idea of working with the terrorists, I think a deal was inevitable. Saddam could not keep control of his country without the terrorists leaving him alone. From the perspective of the US a regime change was necessary for its safety and the safety of the world. From the perspective of the people in the Middle East, regime change is a risk but a risk made more palatable by the hope of a middle class lifestyle in their lifetime.