Frank Rich had a largely lauditory review of Moore's film today. But even Rich- no Bush fan- said that the weakest part of the movie were the cheap shots at Bush and going over worn out old scandal stories. Rich said the more powerful parts of the film were the ones that didn't have Moore in them at all but was footage given to him from Iraq showing an actual American combat death, the killing of Iraqi civilians by American troops, Angry wounded troops in hospitals, and a formerly conservative pro war mother reading her son's last letter home before he died in which he slams Bush for sending him there.
The anti Bush rhetoric in the movie is just standard and nothing that the media is going to get interested in. But some of those segments I mentioned could be damaging.
Absolutely. When you send hundreds of thousand of soldiers overseas into a combat zone, there are bound to be a few who don't want to be there. There are bound to be some that disagree with Bush politically. There are bound to be some that make mistakes and kill Iraqi civilians. There are bound to be some that commit crimes when interrogating prisoners.
It is sad that these segments will be damaging. I'm sure crime rates in urban communities back in the U.S. where hundreds of thousands of low-income citizens live aren't anything to write home about either.
These are the facts of life. We have good citizens and we have bad citizens. We have good soliders and we have bad soldiers. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of soldiers in Iraq today fall into the former category.
I think the better plot is the effects of liberalism, manifested by the Democrat party. First act: Open up with appeasment and attrocities sanctioned by the DemocRAT party. Show how various hard-line leftist Americans have supported totalitarian dictatorships (pictures of Kerry with different dictators, as well as Ted Kennedy, etc). Pictures and voting patterns can be very easily attained to really hit the audience hard. Show Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Noriega, Chavez, Mao and Saddam. Develop how Democrats coddled and covered for these murderous dictators, manufacturing American and foreign deaths.
Act 2: Show the bitter fighting between DemocRATs and Republicans. Show how evil the libeRATs are and the levels they sank to to undermine freedom and America. Show how conservativism won WWI, WWII. Show how liberalism lost at the "Bay of Pigs" and Vietnam. Show how Reagan won the cold war, was lied about in "Iran Contra". Show DemocRAT hypocrisy in defending Clinton committing war attrocities in Serbia.
Act 3: Bush Administration -- Bush cleans up after Clinton's failures. From Osama being offered 3 times by the Sudan. To an economy based on smoke and mirrors. To its culmination on 9/11 (POWERFUL imagery)...BOOM!!!...Show the making of a great man, the slander, the lies, the treason. Show how liberals defended Islam, taught in our schools, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, demoralized the troops, attacked a sitting President..
Just off the top of my head.