Fahrenheit 9/11

The biggest impression I got was how refreshing it was to hear real people talk about these issues. And I'm not talking about Michael Moore, and in a real sense, neither is he.

I'm talking about Lilly Libscomb, the woman who lost a son in Iraq.

It's an effect Moore means to acheive, and it's done easily. Moore simply rolls tape. Yes, the first half is a slick presentation of facts that you will never hear any interviewer of Michael Moore try to dispute. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know, and that's what a dedicated examination of the news online will do for you.

But then he gets to the heart of the matter. Our children and the innocent civilians of Iraq are dying in this war. They have stepped up to defend America, and the least they deserve is that we only send them into harm's way when it's absolutely necessary.

It will take a most dedicated Fox News viewer to maintain the Iraq war to be absolutely necessary after viewing Fahrenheit 9/11.

One of the things Moore relies on most is what the viewer brings to his film. There are no shots of the Twin Towers being struck or falling. Only the sounds of the day play while the screen remains black. The viewer can bring his own pictures of those events, because we all have them already. Finally he fades in shots of people watching the towers burn and the victims fall.

He doesn't painstakingly lay out the case against al-Qaeda. He understands that to be settled and moves on to his point - how is it that the bin Laden got a quick ride out of this country on 9/13 and then in Afghanistan, how did Osama get a two month headstart when we invaded?

People can rail about Moore's technique all they want. Facts are facts.

Bush is on tape talking to who he calls the "haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base." The knowing headshake of the woman behind him shows just how true this is.

While young men and women are being gladhanded by Marine recruiters at a destitute mall, cooperations hold conferences on how they can carve out a nice thick slice of that Iraqi money that the government will be spending.

Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia puffs a cigar in the Rose Garden while he watches the smoke rising from the Pentagon.

The White House censors the name of the pilot suspended on the same page as 1 Lt. George W. Bush. It's James Bath, a Bush family friend, who was later hired to invest bin Laden family money in America. Bath funded Bush's Arbusto oil company, and bailed him out of failed business a couple of times.

James Baker is Bush's spokesman in Florida, during the failed attempt to recount the votes. Later, when the family members of 9/11 victims sue the Saudi royal family, Mr. Baker steps in as the Saudi's chief counsel.

The hits just keep on coming - though I knew all of this, I kept hearing startled gasps around the theater as each new revelation came to light. People knew it was bad, but they didn't know it was this bad.

And then Lilly started talking about the sacrifice of her son. Moore's narration fades completely away.

She reads the last letter he sent, a week before his Black Hawk went down. He shares his love, pleads as all soldiers do for the letters that break the monotony and the loneliness, and in one tragic paragraph, rails at the idiot Bush for the mess he has sent so many of our children into.

There's so much more to Lilly's story. But Michael Moore's argument in Fahrenheit 9/11 is simple.

We should only send our children to fight and kill and die when it's absolutely necessary.

The war in Iraq wasn't absolutely necessary.

So why the hell are we there?