Fahrenheit 9/11

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and was very impressed. Moore wasn't just out to make Bush look bad (though he did), but he constantly emphasized the media's collusion with Dubya's presidency. Bush and his cronies are always shown waiting for cameras to roll, getting make-up, hooking up wires, mugging nervously. Behind the bright lights, flag waving, and rehearsed speeches of the administration, there is the wheeling and dealing that the media and the American people either take for granted or hope isn't there. Maybe he lingers a bit too long on the grief-stricken mother of a fallen soldier, but Moore is showing us the sights the media didn't let us see. Bush is not only sending young people to Iraq, he's also cutting their pay and their support for when they get back, the craven hypocrite. Christopher Hitchens makes me sick. He has a nerve to be accusing anyone else of either cowardice or deception. Case in point, Hitchens writes:

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In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.)

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I only saw the movie last night, why can't I recall Moore saying this at all, let alone loudly and repeatedly? Hitchens pulled this one completely out of his arse. Moore showed Richard Clark being interviewed on GMA, talking about the Bush Administration giving bin Laden and the Taliban a two-month head start before sending eleven thousand troops to Afghanistan. Moore's point was that Americans wouldn't have let Dubya invade Iraq (his immediate objective after being inaugurated, according to Clark) if he hadn't made some sort of token effort in Afghanistan first. Bush eventually obliged, but bin Laden got away. Later, Bush's Afghan crony Karzoi gave the OK for the Caspian Sea oil pipeline that the Taliban had been dragging their feet on.Hitchens closes the linked article with a paraphrase of an argument I heard him use in a televised debate before the Iraq war. Then he was railing against the 'anti-war people,' but here he uses the same words to describe Moore:

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If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.

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When he used to write for the Nation, I gave Hitchens credit for his intelligence. However, this quote is the most boneheaded argument I've ever heard him peddle. I'm astonished he recycled it to throw at Moore. First off, the war effort in Bosnia was such a roaring success that, after he signed the Dayton accords, Slobo was a legitimate head of state again. After the Kosovo annexation, he suddenly turned back into Hitler and folks like Hitchens were telling us we couldn't conceivably oppose a new war against him. This is what war is nowadays: practice for the next war. This has never been so obvious (except maybe to the shameless Hitchens) than in Saddam's case: if Hussein was such a maniac for invading Kuwait, and people like Moore were wrong to protest the first Gulf War, why the fuck did he stay in power? So we could have a second one? Bingo. Hitchens picks up the hat trick for mentioning the Taliban, and feigning shock that anyone could think of opposing their removal from power in Afghanistan. I'm certainly not sad that they're gone, but I at least admit that Bush's boy President Karzoi is known as "The Mayor of Kabul." The rest of the country is ruled by psycho warlords who were only too happy to send the Taliban packing, but who shouldn't be mistaken for pro-USA or democratically-minded allies. How long until one of them is the new Hitler, and Hitchens is calling anyone opposing war a coward and a liar?regards,
Esteban HambreThis message has been edited by MrHambre, 06-30-2004 04:40 PM

Another thing that annoyed me with Hitchens, even when he was still at The Nation boosting clinton's war in Yugoslavia, is that if you aren't in favor of the use of everwhelming military power to remove one of these thugs from power, then you must actually be supporting the thug. He not only refused himself to consider that there may be alternate means to contain and eventually eliminate thugs in power, but he refuses to even acknowledge that the "other side" is even making any kind of alternative proposal. That makes him a liar in my opinion.

You're welcome. Say, would the "other author(s)" you're interested in be Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose? If so, their latest book, "Bushwacked" is a pretty good read.--Macavity

I agree that Christopher Hitchens uses some spurious arguments in his rant on F. 9/11. For instance, I think he set up a complete straw man with Micheal Moore's argument about the connection between the House of Bush and the House of Saud. Not that I think Moore substantiated his claim about the connection, but I think he was arguing that Saudi Arabia has an unhealthy amount of influence on the the Bush family's actions and US policy through personal monetary connections and the large proportion they have invested in the US economy. Hitchens then takes this to mean that Saudi Arabia runs the White House and that any action the White House does that Saudi Arabia opposes rebuts the argument.He says Bush's remarks on the golf course would be portrayed as an act of good statesmanship if it had been said by another President, and that any action the President would have taken when his advisor whispered, "America's under attack" in his ear would of been criticized. To the first claim, I don't think it would be portrayed in good light if said by anybody. It just seemed like he had no emotional investment in his statement and was just spouting off a rehearsed cliche, because he immediately becomes enthusiastic about his golf game the minute after he says it. I don't know how you are supposed to react when someone asks you a question like that in the middle of your golf game, but his reaction seemed too contrived to me. I don't really think this point is a big deal either way.The fact that he waited seven minutes after hearing of the attacks is, to me, a little troubling. I don't think he would of been criticised for calling the photo op short and looking concerned about what is going on.Of the top of my head, I remember agreeing with the point that Moore seems to have lied about Saddam never threatening or killing an American civilian. Also, even though Hitchen's doesn't dismantle a lot of arguments, he does give some facts that seem to atleats mitigate Moore's stance. For instance, Hitchen's points out that Tony Blair was in one of the pictures of Bush vacationing.This message has been edited by JustinCy, 06-30-2004 09:59 PM

Ha ha, I love the whole 'Bush takes too many vacations' angle. In this age of cell phones, secure LAN and WAN access, laptops, and everyone in the civilian world clamoring to telecommute, I think it is interesting that:1- People actually think the Pres is on what a normal person would consider a vacation - ever.2- People think the Pres actually has to be sitting on his butt in the White House to get anything done.Double standard.

I don't have a lot of sympathy, I guess. He did, after all, volunteer for the most important job in the world. I would presume that at least some of the information the Pres is privy to isn't something we want to trust to the phone lines.The folks who administer our country work in washington DC. I don't really find it unreasonable to expect the leader to be there with them more than 60 percent of the time.Compare Bush's vacation time with Clinton's and get back to us.

Dude, they have all sorts of encrypted communication. They use this stuff all the time for every level of classified information. The days of the briefcase on a handcuff are long gone. Actually I think you'd be surprised how much time people spend outside of the capitol. How do you think the Pres gets intelligence from all over the world? Encrypted communication. It's just as easy to send it to the com centers at Camp David as it is to DC.If anything, I would think the Pres could get more high-level strategy done outside of DC since he doesn't have to screw around with meet & greets at Camp D. Clinton didn't need to take vacation - he had his blowjobs delivered to the oval office.This message has been edited by custard, 07-01-2004 04:29 AM

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Dude, they have all sorts of encrypted communication. They use this stuff all the time for every level of classified information. The days of the briefcase on a handcuff are long gone.

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Thats nuts; nothing broadcast is safe. There is no limit to the cryptography that can be cracked but the time dedicated to cracking it. Lets just say that if its true that Bush is telecommuting in this manner, than the US is necessarily immeasurably less secure than it would be if he were not.

So how do YOU think information gets from overseas and from satellites to the CIA and NSA, and then from NSA and CIA to the Pentagon, and then from the NSA, CIA, and Pentagon to the President? Couriers?

You mean the diplomatic ones, who get to take guns on airplanes and whose courier bags it's an act of war to search?I'm sure the Govn't has some pretty strong crypto. Whether or not they have the technology to run such a computationally intensive task in the field or at Crawford, TX, is not something I can really speculate.I'd say its pretty safe to say, though, that when Bush is out on the greens, or clearing brush, or mountain biking, he's not reviewing staff memos.

ha ha ha ha.

So how do YOU think information gets from overseasSub-oceanic cable; it's much, much more secure.

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and from satellites

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Combination of narrowband burst transmission and conventional espionage methods; that is, you need to know the information is valuable before you invest the resources cracking the crypto, its an opportunity cost problem.But you can be pretty certain that operational traffic too and from the presidents location is signifcant, and therefore it would always be worth cracking.This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-01-2004 07:57 AM

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I'm sure the Govn't has some pretty strong crypto.

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Everybody has some pretty strong crypto. There is that one (is the NSA standard or something? It's been a while, and I can't quite recall) that is, for all practical purposes, unbreakable with current technology. Remember the row a couple of years ago when the technology finally became good enough that personal telephones could have good encryption devices (although for a price, I'm sure)? And how that good "liberal", Bill Clinton, was insisting that the private keys be available to government agencies so they can listen in when "necessary"?

From where to where? Certainly not from military bases, ships, and various other mobile intelligence platforms. They use satellites. Secure sat xmissions. If the sat xmissions are secure enough to send data straight back to the NSA, then I'm sure they're, generally, good enough for the President.

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From where to where?

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Umm, do you recall the whole internet is built to allow any device to contact any other? In a sense, you just have to put the packet on the network and let it find its own way. At a slightly higher level, there are routing devices to direct traffic. This is exactly what the Internet Protocol/Transport Control Protocol is for.

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Certainly not from military bases, ships, and various other mobile intelligence platforms. They use satellites. Secure sat xmissions. If the sat xmissions are secure enough to send data straight back to the NSA, then I'm sure they're, generally, good enough for the President.

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No, you are completely and severely mistaken I'm afraid. If I intercepted a transmission to a patrol destroyer, and it takes 3 months to decrypt the message, then in all likelihood I will not be able to get to that data in time for it to be useful. So as I pointed out earlier, this is an opportunity cost problem. But EVEN IF it takes me three months to crack the signals going to the president, that would be worth it, many many times over.That is why the operational level mobile assets can rely on transmission cryptography; not becuase it is 'safe', but because it is safe enough considering their strategic role. The president has a different strategic role, and if critical signals ARE being sent to the president, America should start operating on the assumption that, given a certain amount of lag time, all those transmission have been decoded by GCHQ and its Russian and Chinese equivalents.