Election Cheats

War games & other election ploys. Mike Mooes' Fahrenheit 9/11 was timed for the US election campaign, but is just as timely for Australian voters

PM John Howard and US President George Bush have a lot in common. They are both cheats, especially around election time.

John Howard threw the children overboard to get re-elected in 2001 and George Bush threw voters overboard. He disenfranchised thousands of African American voters.

Filmmaker Mike Moore tells it like it is in his award winning film now screening in Australia -- FAHRENHEIT 9/11.

It was the key seat of Florida and the governor just happened to be George's brother Jeb.

"Make sure the chairman (sic) of your campaign is also the vote countin' woman and that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell them by the colour of their skin," the script reads.

Once elected, by hook and by crook and hanging chads, it was just a matter of George Bush getting the majority of Americans to like him -- not an easy task until the suicide bombers provided an opportunity on September 9, 2001.

Mike Moore takes great delight in exposing just how unpopular the President was until that day. Down to 45 per cent in the popularity stakes, George Bush spent 42 per cent of his first eight months on vacation, according to the Washington Post ."

It was during one of his many vacations that the President ignored the warning that Osama bin Laden was planning to bomb inside the US and was having his operatives trained at airports.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is as funny as it is tragic. Mike Moore cleverly employs pop culture, music and cowboy film clips alongside newsreel to expose the war on Iraq to be the Hollywood production he says it really is.

The tragedy is the blood is not tomato sauce. The death and despair are for real.

Class War

Watching Fahrenheit you can't fail to ask who George Bush sees as his real enemy. You can't help thinking it's those poor kids in Flint and other impoverished townships in the US. As one young recruit quips, when he saw pictures of the wreckage of Iraq it reminded him of home, where crumbling homes are boarded up and the homeless roam the streets.

By declaring war on Iraq, George Bush was able to reduce unemployment by getting the kids jobs -- as cannon fodder.

They didn't matter. They were not Bush's base, the "haves or the have mores", in his own words. Only one US Congressman sent his child to war.

What's more, while fighting in the name of freedom, George Bush rushed the Patriot Act through Congress robbing American citizens of many of their freedoms and civil rights.

Close Connections

Michael Moore claims that the President could not possibly go after the real perpetrators of the attack on the twin towers. The Saudis. They were too closely associated with his friends and business connections.

The LA Times reports that classified pages of a congressional report about September 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. Of all the hijackers, 15 of the 19 were Saudi.

But then again they also invested heavily in the Bush family. "In all, at least $1.46 billion had made its way from the Saudis to the Bush family and its allied companies and institutions."

So why bomb Iraq?

This is the weakest point of Moore's film. Of course Bush had to blame somebody, but the film fails to make the Israeli connection with the push to make Iraq the scapegoat.

There's no doubt Saddam was a gangster and stand over merchant. He would have had to have been. The CIA helped train and fund him originally. But it was clear to the world that with UN sanctions it was only a matter of time until his regime collapsed.

The post invasion images of cying childen, wailing widows, butcherd civilians and US troops boasting how they shoot with their favourite rap music blasting in their ears is confronting. On Christmas Eve to the soundtrack of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, US troops are shown invading a suburban home and dragging off a young student, before returning to base for Christmas celebrations.

All along the film makes it clear that the Iraqi government and people are innocent of any attack on the US or American citizens. So what is the point of the invasion? We know there were no WMDs.

The Business of War

War is profitable for multinationals making weapons. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 connects capital and carnage.

The Carlyle group, a multinational conglomerate that invests heavily in government-regulated industries like defence is one mover and shaker in Iraq.

It is the 11th largest defence contractor in the United States.

Both the Bin Laden and Bush families were connected to the Carlyle Group, as were many of the Bush family friends and associates.

"It owned United Defence, makers of the Bradley armoured fighting vehicle. September 11 guaranteed that United Defence was going to have a very good year," says Moore. "Just six weeks after 9-11 Carlyle filed to take United Defence public and in December made a one day profit of $237 million."

And that's before we look at the money the US stands to make out of Iraqi oil and gas.

Moore does not examine the Iraqi oil dollars in depth in this film. But the Afghan gas connection does come under the microscope.

"In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan," says Mike Moore.

A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney, Halliburton, got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal.

Enron, Bush's number one campaign contributor, also got a contract to help build the pipeline.

The US appointed Hamid Karzai as head of the interim government of the newly 'liberated' Afghanistan. He was a former employee of US oil company Unocal.

"Bush also appointed as (the US) envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal advisor," says Mike Moore.

"Soon after, Afghanistan signed the agreement to build a pipeline through its country carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea."

Note the hype about security is exactly that. The US is not even investing much in border security.

"Budget cuts that laid off 129 Oregon State Police officers earlier this year have left a single trooper to cover the 1,400-square-mile territory and 100 miles of state roads on Oregon's central coast."