Text 546, 280 rader
Skriven 2004-08-03 10:54:22 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
Ärende: 59 Deceits - Pt 9
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Rep. Porter Goss
Deceit 38
 
Defending the USA PATRIOT Act, Representative Porter Goss says that he has an
"800 number" for people to call to report problems with the Act. Fahrenheit
shoots back with a caption "Not actually true." The ordinary telephone number
(area code 202) for Goss’s office is then flashed on the screen. 
 
You’d never know by watching Fahrenheit, but Rep. Goss does have a toll-free
number to which USA PATRIOT Act complaints can be reported. The number belongs
to the Committee which Goss chairs, the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence. The number is (877) 858-9040. Although the Committee’s number is
toll-free, the prefix is not "800," and Moore exploits this trivial fact to
create the false impression that Goss lied about having a toll-free number. 
 
As far as I can tell, the slam on Rep. Goss is the only factual error in the
segment on the misnamed USA PATRIOT Act. While there are a few good things in
the Act, Moore's general critique of the Act is valid. The Act does contain
many items which had long been on the FBI wish-list, which do not have real
relation to the War on Terror, and which were pushed through under the pretext
of 9/11. Similar critiques are also valid for the Clinton "terrorism" bill
which was pushed through Congress in 1996. 
 
[Moore response: None.]
 
Oregon Troopers
There are several scenes involving Oregon state troopers who patrol coastal
areas in the state. The Troopers are presented as underfunded and spread far
too thinly. But this has nothing to do with Fahrenheit's claim that the Bush
administration is not sincerely interested in homeland security. The Oregon
State Police are paid by the Oregon state government (which has been suffering
from a budget crisis). Whatever the problems with Trooper funding, the problems
are the responsibility of the Oregon state government, not the federal
government. Moore's point makes no more sense than blaming the Oregon state
government for shortages of FBI
personnel in Eugene.
 
[Moore response: Cites an article about Oregon state budget cuts. Continues to
ignore the fact that the Oregon State Police budget is not the responsibility
of the federal government.]
 
Saddam Hussein Never Murdered Americans
Deceits 39-40
 
Fahrenheit asserts that Saddam’s Iraq was a nation that "had never attacked the
United States. A nation that had never threatened to attack the United States.
A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen." Each of these
assertions is false.

     Jake Tapper (ABC News): You declare in the film that Hussein’s regime had
never killed an American … 
     Moore: That isn’t what I said. Quote the movie directly. 
     Tapper: What is the quote exactly? 
     Moore: "Murdered." The government of Iraq did not commit a premeditated
murder on an American citizen. I’d like you to point out one. 
     Tapper: If the government of Iraq permitted a terrorist named Abu Nidal
who is certainly responsible for killing Americans to have Iraq as a safe
haven; if Saddam Hussein funded suicide bombers in Israel who did kill
Americans; if the Iraqi police—now this is not a murder but it’s a plan to
murder—to assassinate President Bush which at the time merited airstrikes from
President Clinton once that plot was discovered; does that not belie your claim
that the Iraqi government never murdered an American or never had a hand in
murdering an American? 
     Moore: No, because nothing you just said is proof that the Iraqi
government ever murdered an American citizen. And I am still waiting for you to
present that proof. You’re talking about, they provide safe haven for Abu Nidal
after the committed these murders, uh, Iraq helps or supports suicide bombers
in Israel. I mean the support, you remember the telethon that the Saudis were
having? It’s our allies, the Saudis, that have been providing help and aid to
the suicide bombers in Israel. That’s the story you should be covering. Why
don’t you cover that story? Why don’t you cover it? 

Note Moore’s extremely careful phrasing of the lines which appear to exonerate
Saddam, and Moore’s hyper-legal response to Tapper. In fact, Saddam provided
refuge to notorious terrorists who had murdered Americans. Saddam provided a
safe haven for Abu Abbas (leader of the hijacking of the ship Achille Lauro and
the murder of the elderly American passenger Leon Klinghoffer), for Abu Nidal,
and for the 1993 World Trade Center bombmaker, Abdul Rahman Yasin. By law,
Saddam therefore was an accessory to the murders. Saddam order his police to
murder former American President George Bush when he visited Kuwait City in
1993; they attempted to do so, but failed. In 1991, he ordered his agents to
murder the American Ambassador to the Philippines and, separately, to murder
the employees of the U.S. Information Service in Manila; they tried, but
failed. Yet none of these aggressions against the United States "count" for
Moore, because he has carefully framed his verbs and verb tenses to exclude
them.
 
According to Laurie Mylroie, a former Harvard professor who served as Bill
Clinton's Iraq advisor during the 1992 campaign (during which Vice-Presidential
candidate Gore repeatedly castigated incumbent President George H.W. Bush for
inaction against Saddam), the ringleader of the World Trade Center bombings,
Ramzi Yousef, was working for the Iraqi intelligence service. Laurie Mylroie,
The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A
Study of Revenge (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2d rev. ed. 2001).
 
Also, Saddam's military constantly shot at (and therefore attempted to kill)
American and British pilots enforcing the "no-fly zone" over portions of Iraq.
The no-fly zone was created to prevent Saddam's air force from being able to
mass murder Iraqis; Saddam agreed to the no-fly zone as a condition of the
ceasefire in the 1991 Gulf War, but then refused to abide by the ceasefire
conditions. (As he likewise refused to abide by the conditions requiring him to
prove that he had destroyed all
his weapons of mass destruction.) One could argue about whether it is attempted
"murder" to break the terms of a ceasefire and to attempt to kill foreign
soldiers who are attempting to prevent you from perpetrating mass murder.
 
But even with Moore’s clever phrasing designed to elide Saddam’s culpability in
the murders and attempted murders of Americans, Tapper still catches him with
an irrefutable point: Saddam did perpetrate the premeditated murder of
Americans. Every victim of every Palestinian terrorist bomber who was funded by
Saddam Hussein was the victim of premeditated murder—including the American
victims. Because Saddam's reward system for the families of deceased terrorists
was
known and publicized, the reward system amounted to a before-the-fact
inducement for additional terrorist bombings.
 
So what does Moore do? He tries to change the subject. Moore makes the good
point that the U.S. media should focus more attention on Saudi financial aid to
Palestinian terrorists who murder Americans in Israel. On NRO, I’ve pointed to
Saudi terror funding, as have other NRO writers. But pointing out Saudi
Arabia’s guilt does not excuse Moore’s blatant lie about Saddam Hussein’s
innocence.
 
[Moore response: Quotes a think tank writer: "Iraq has never threatened nor
been implicated in any attack against U.S. territory and the CIA has reported
no Iraqi-sponsored attacks against American interests since 1991." The
statement does not address Iraqi payments to the families of terrorists who
murdered Americans in Israel. Nor does it address the undeniable fact that Iraq
was providing a hide-out for terrorists who had murdered Americans.]

Saddam’s Threats
Deceit 41
 
Moore’s pro-Saddam allegation that Saddam "never threatened to attack the
United States" is true in the narrow sense that Saddam never gave a speech in
which he threatened to, for example, send the Iraqi navy and army to conduct an
amphibious invasion of Florida. But although Saddam never threatened the
territorial integrity of America, he repeatedly threatened Americans. For
example, on November 15, 1997, the main propaganda organ for the Saddam regime,
the newspaper Babel (which was run by Saddam Hussein's son Uday) ordered:
"American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region
should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab
political forces." (Stephen Hayes, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration
with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 94.)
On November 25, 2000, Saddam declared in a televised speech, "The Arab people
have not so far fulfilled their duties. They are called upon to target U.S. and
Zionist interests everywhere and target those who protect these interests." 
 
On the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a weekly newspaper owned
by Uday Hussein said that Arabs should "use all means-and they are
numerous-against the aggressors...and considering everything American as a
military target, including embassies, installations, and American companies,
and to create suicide/martyr [fidaiyoon] squads to attack American military and
naval bases inside and outside the region, and mine the waterways to prevent
the movement of war ships..." 
 
Moreover, the Saddam regime did not need to make verbal threats in order to
"threaten" the United States. The regime threatened the United States by giving
refuge to terrorists who had murdered Americans, and by funding terrorists who
were killing Americans in Israel. Saddam gave refuge to terrorists who had
attacked the United States by bombing the World Trade Center. In addition: 

     In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After
that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and
Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill
many more…   ….Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft
that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north
and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals
for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he
remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam….On Dec. 1, 2003,
the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that
Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a
series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a
North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the
shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the
coalition’s presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Hitchens, Slate. The cited article is David E. Sanger & Thom Shanker, "A Region
Inflamed: Weapons. For the Iraqis, a Missile Deal That Went Sour; Files Tell of
Talks With North Korea, New York Times, Dec. 1, 2003.
 
As French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin stated on November 12, 2002,
"The security of the United States is under threat from people like Saddam
Hussein who are capable of using chemical and biological weapons." (Hayes, p.
21.) De Villepin's point is indisputable: Saddam was the kind of person who was
capable of using chemical weapons, since he had actually used them against
Iraqis who resisted his tyrannical regime. As de Villepin spoke, Saddam was
sheltering terrorists who had murdered Americans, and was subsidizing the
murder of Americans (and many other nationalities) in Israel. 
 
[Moore response: Cites a column by Maureen Dowd and an article for a former
Australian Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs And Trade asserting
that Iraq never threatened the United States. Does not address the extensive
threats detailed in this section.] 
 
Iraq and al Qaeda
Deceit 42-43 
 
Moore declares that George Bush fabricated an Iraq/al Qaeda connection in order
to deflect attention from his Saudi masters. But consider the facts presented
in Stephen F. Hayes's book, The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with
Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2004). The first
paragraph of the last chapter (pp. 177-78) sums up some of the evidence:

     Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi
intelligence asset. Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact
between Iraq and al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now
in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and
training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al
Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security
Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese
military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. Al
Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass
destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department
cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda "weapons development" in 1998. A senior
Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that
the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons
programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala
Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route
to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11
attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001
traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the
Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly
in Baghdad and      received medical attention at a regime-supported hospital
in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam's
regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the
chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack...

Hayes is a writer for The Weekly Standard and much of his writing on the
Saddam/Osama connection is available there for free; simply use the search
engine and look for articles by Hayes.
 
The preliminary staff report of the September 11 Commission states, "We have no
credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the
United States." Some critics, including the chief prosecutor of the World Trade
Center bombers, have argued that the staff report inexplicably ignores
substantial evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks. The
final Commission Report finds that there were "friendly contacts" between Al
Qaeda and the Saddam regime. The Commission does not find that there was a
"collaborative operational relationship" for "carrying out attacks against the
United States." Whether you agree with the preliminary staff report, the
staff's critics, or the final commission report, there is no dispute that
Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al Qaeda, an organization whose only
activity was terrorism. Fahrenheit dishonestly pretends that there was no
relationship at all.
 
Fahrenheit shows Condoleezza Rice saying, "Oh, indeed there is a tie between
Iraq and what happened on 9/11." The audience laughs derisively. Here is what
Rice really said on the CBS Early Show, Nov. 28, 2003:

     Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not
that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but,
if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred
that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York. This is a great
terrorist, international terrorist network that is determined to defeat
freedom. It has perverted Islam from a peaceful religion into one in which they
call on it for violence. And they're all linked. And Iraq is a central front
because, if and when, and we will, we change the nature of Iraq to a place that
is peaceful and democratic and prosperous in the heart of the Middle East, you
will begin to change the Middle East...

Moore deceptively cut the Rice quote to fool the audience into thinking she was
making a particular claim, even though she was pointedly not making such a
claim. And since Rice spoke in November 2003, her quote had nothing to do with
building up American fears before the March 2003 invasion, although Moore
implies otherwise.
 
[Moore response: None.]
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John 

America:  First, Last, and Always!
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