Yes and it's hilarity on ice, too, since this line (pasted below) is used by the Moore-hating rightwing.
First of all, he didn't pay enough attention to catch that it was a GAS pipeline. Why anyone should take someone seriously if they didn't pay attention or if they didn't care enough to investigate further....beatsdachitouttame.
Second, he kind of misses the point about the scenes of Iraq prior to the bombing: The point was to show HUMAN BEINGS who are just like us. They get married. They eat lunch on their lunch hour. Children fly kites. Teens shyly giggle when they spy a camera pointed at them.
I would still like someone to explain to me how the US relationship with Israel would have encouraged the US to wage war on Iraq post-911 had it been a Gore administration. (Not that I'm a fan of Bore, mind you, or of the sanctions and I'm fucking sick to death of having to say that on this damn list, just because some people feel the need to score points. As if.) If it's a film about why we waged war on Iraq and did a poor job smoking out Al Qaeda before that, exactly how was it Israel had such a heavy hand in the policies that were pursued.
And, this wanker mentions something about u.s.ers not being ready to hear certain thing. Well, bummer. I don't get these people who've completely forgotten that they were not sprung from the Head of Zeus, complete with a radical left consciousness. They, like everyone else, figured it out over years OR (to draw on Marx) learned it through social praxis (no, not political practice, Carrol). That they insist that the general public ought to be beaten over the head with The Truth so they must bow down before it, in awe of the mighty intellect of the ONES WHO GET IT... how annoying. People wonder why no one listens to them?
I'm sure every single man on this list has struggled trying to understand feminist thought when you're confronted with it by someone you care about. Put yourself in those shoes, and think how much you resisted listening and learning. Think how often you resorted to invidualistic analyses and resisted structural analysis. Think how you wanted it to be a problem of individuals and not a SOCIAL problem.
Oh, whatever... I'm cranky tooooooooooday! :)
Left Hook writes: Moore hints at a similar motivation for the Afghan conflict: the famed Unocal oil pipeline from the Caspian through Afghanistan. He makes an issue out of the fact that a Taliban delegation visited Texas for negotiations with Unocal in 1997 when Bush was governor. Rather disingenuously, he goes on to insinuate that the Taliban were harboring Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the African embassies and USS Cole bombings, even though neither event had occurred at that point. Conveniently neglected is the small detail that Clinton, arguably Moore's favorite President, was in office at the time.
Clinton is conspicuous by his absence in other places. Iraq, according to Moore, was a joyous place before the war, with chirping birds and smiling children flying kites. The horrendous sanctions of the 90's, which killed far more people than the war, have no place in his narrative. Clinton's 1998 Wag-the-Dog style bombing of Iraq receives a similar bye.
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'