Michael Moore's "Sicko" is hot internet news

[kandrathe]

... I can distinguish clearly between facts and populist cutting and pasting. Remember that even at the time of Colin Powells speech about the "proofs" of the WMD in Iraq (remember the satalite pictures) I was still sure of the non existence of these things...

So how do you explain the difference between the actual documentation, destruction and evidence presented by the UN from the initial inspectors who were then kicked out, and then the lack of progress after the Hans Blix crew (security like a sieve) were somewhat allowed to come back with severe escort restrictions and having to give days of advanced notice of everywhere they went. Colin Powell's presentation was a sad case, but the UN inspectors research of Iraqi documentation was much more compelling in my opinion.

Is it plausible that the Saddam regime decided that they were suddenly going to play a great trick on the west and destroy all their proscribed materials and then harrass and taunt the UN into a war? Is it possible that WMD's were moved or buried somewhere that we are unable to find? I still think it is a plausible answer. Maybe not likely, but still plausible. It becomes meaningless with Bathists and Saddam out of power, but not so good if the Iraqi state fails and something ugly replaces whatever limp democracy they have now. There was obviously no freely available WMD's laying around weaponized or we'd have seen it used by now, but the UN inspectors wanted to know where all the precursor materials went, and so do I.

Mr. Moore's so called documentary of the prelude to the Iraq War was to stretch out a bunch of (imho, intentionally) unproven hypotheticals about the close relationship between the Bush's and the House of Saud. Um, duh. The House of Saud over its multi generational rule has had close relationships with every powerful family in the world of all political bents. They are fairly prolific and ubiquitious in the Saudi aristocracy, so its not hard to find that someone knows someone who is related somehow. So it would be easy to make similiar "documentaries" casting doubt on the motives of the Ford's, the Rockefellers, the DuPont's, etc. if they were in the White House. Just not those hicks from Arkansas. So what I see are people willing to watch the movie, but then would never look at its criticism and read something like The lies of Fahrenheit 9/11 or FarenHype 911with an open mind.

But, then again while we are distacted on arguing the past, it will be mere months before Iran replaces Iraq as the WMD terror of the middle east. Iraq and 9/11 are old news. At this point, we are merely a foreign hated police force in Iraq and need to help Iraq become a self sufficient stable nation of self determination if we can. I mean agree with the war or not, but I would think the world would demand that the USA stay the course just to spare the rest of the world from the results of what would happen if Iraq became a Somalia. But hey, we are still in the Balkans from the Clinton administration and no one seems to mind that illegal war and waste of money. As far as 9/11 lessons learned, we need wake up and be more aware of terrorists within the US (like by not having an open sieve of a border).