Cupla responses. I don't feel Moore is partisan because he wants Bush out--far from it. Many people who want to see Bush voted out of his appointed office can have those very legitimate feelings without being a party partisan. My objection is he never addresses the collusion of the Democratic party and the mainstream media in buildup and execution of the war.

I mean, come on people--the US Senate just voted unanimously to approve the defense appropriations bill to quickly get another $25 billion pumped into the Iraq quagmire and hold Donnie and the boys over until election day, when they will approve another estimated $50 billion to hold them over until the first of the year. Mighty bi-partisan of them, I'd say.

That happened last week, people. Last week. After Abu Ghraib, after it was made clear that nothing was forthcoming from the UN, after no WMD, after the scathing testimonies of former Bush administration officials of the bungling of the war on terrorism and Afghanistan and Iraq...

So yeah, to put out the film Moore put out, and barely mention the Democratic party's collusion in all this is partisan in it's silence and ommissio. He did that quite manipulatively, to get people to vote for the Democratic candidate. That is also why he made the choice not to focus at all on the Democrats, and when he fleetingly (and I do mean fleetingly) flashes an image of Democrats, he focuses on Tom Daschle, who does deserve mention.

But if Moore was able to get the footage in of Richard Clarke's testimony to Congress, he also had the ability to put in the Democratic presidential candidates and footage of their debates from the primaries, where all but a couple of them supported the war effort--and the Democratic Leadership Council and the mainstream media destroyed the leading anti-war candidate, and totally marginalized the other anti-war candidate. That is a huge hole in the movie, IMO, as is his failure to examine the collusion with the Bush administration by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

As to Peter's remarks, I did find the Marine recruiting segment to be one of the film's best. But I disagree with his view that the night raid was any less powerful. That is one of the scenes from the film that is still haunting me, along with the scene in the US senate, of all the black House of Representative members protesting the election results for the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida. Those scenes, to me, are the antithesis of what a democracy should stand for.

There will be people all around the world who will view that scene of the night raid, and be haunted by the terror of it, be they Palestinian, Russian, Irish, Filipino, or Salvadoran. I'd love to know how Moore got THAT footage. I also didn't feel that the peaceful scenes of Iraqis that he juxtaposed with the bombing scenes (which are much more intense than what we saw on TV, it seemed to me--power of the big screen, or just better footage?) was propagandist. I thought gave some much needed balance to what we are normally shown about Iraq. I didn't need to see anything that said Saddam was a bad guy, and he terrorized Iraq. American audiences have received so much of that from the mainstream media, it needed to be countered by some realistic images of life in Iraq. Because he shows some kids flying kites under Saddam doesn't make me forget about life under Saddam in the least. How dumb would we be to think that? No. It gave Iraqi people a human dimension they rarely receive in the American press, some I glad he had that in there.

My only real objection, again, is the inordinate amount of time he spends attacking Bush. Not that attacks are over the top--they aren't. There is some very funny satire, but nothing you wouldn't see on Letterman or The Daily Show. No, my opinion about the partisan aspect of the film was his decision to make a film about post 9/11, and not include the Democrats part in the war mongering and the trashing of American citizens' civil rights, and our nation's immigrants civil and human rights. He focuses on the Republican members of Congress who don't have kids in Iraq. So the film comes off, to me at least, that he is totally letting the Democrats off the hook. And considering that he was one of the staunchest independent voices condemning both Republicans and Democrats in the last election, I find this ommission absolutely inexplicable.