Following the credits is certainly the most inadvertently telling directorial move in the film. The only way that Moore’s absurd conspiracy theories could make sense is if we simply ignore the realities of the world that American leaders have to confront. We would have to close our eyes, for instance, to the attacks of September 11, 2001. And that is exactly what Moore does. Although he shows much explicit and painful footage of human suffering from Iraq later in the film, he chooses to portray the terrorist attacks of September 11th with a black screen, and only sound. He literally closes his eyes, and ours, to those events, and expects us to understand what follows without having seen them. The horror and suffering of the attacks are not shown, lest they lead us to understand, even a little, why a response was required.
Moore then tells us that Bush was told of the attacks as he was starting an event with schoolchildren in Florida, and that he stayed in the classroom after being told of the second plane striking the World Trade Center. He does not explicitly criticize Bush for doing this, but he certainly wants to leave us with the impression that a more serious person would have gotten up and run out of the room. Moore says, “Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no Secret Service rushing in to take him to safety, Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat with the children.” He does not tell us what Bush should have done, and he does not tell us, for instance, that “Gwendolyn Tose’-Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School [where Bush was], praised Bush’s action: ‘I don’t think anyone could have handled it better.… What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?’… She said the video doesn’t convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush’s presence had a calming effect and ‘helped us get through a very difficult day’” ( http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/florida/article/0,2071,NPDN_14910_2985640,00.html). The Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission—Lee Hamilton, a Democrat—also praised Bush for what he did that morning, saying, “Bush made the right decision in remaining calm, in not rushing out of the classroom” ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124079,00.html).


Moore then speculates on what Bush must have been thinking at the school, suggesting maybe Bush wished he had “shown up to work more often” (a rehashing of the misrepresentation of Bush’s “vacations”) and implying that the administration had paid no attention to terrorism in the preceding months—a charge shown to be thoroughly false by the 9/11 Commission Report (see  http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, pp. 203-209, a section which ends by suggesting that Bush was prepared to invade Afghanistan to get Bin Laden even had there not been an attack on September 11th).


“Or maybe Bush was wondering why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI,” Moore says. But as the 9/11 Commission Report also shows, the Bush Administration actually increased funding for counterterrorism in the FBI in its first year in office (before September 11th). Indeed they asked Congress for, and received, “the largest proposed percentage increase in the FBI’s counterterrorism program since fiscal year 1997” ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 209). These amounts, of course, only increased further after the September 11th attacks.


But Moore is undaunted by these facts, and continues reading the President’s mind. “Or perhaps,” Moore says, “he should’ve just read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001, which said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.” Moore offers no evidence to suggest that Bush did not read this briefing, and in fact it is clear from the 9/11 Commission Report ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, page 260) that the president did read it. The briefing was not nearly as clear or unequivocal as Moore suggests, however. It was a historical survey of Bin Laden’s activities and of various past threats which had not materialized, and it said:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of ‘Blind Shaykh’ ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists. Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, pp. 261-2)

The briefing also assured the president that “approximately 70 full field investigations” from the FBI were looking into these matters. The commission found that the briefing was too generous in describing these investigations ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 535), but not that the president’s reaction to the briefing was insufficient.

Moore then says “A report like that might make some men jump. But, as in days past, George W just went fishing.” Actually, as the 9/11 Commission Report makes clear, the Bush Administration had already been at work on plans to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda, including a plan first circulated on June 7, 2001, whose goal, says the report,

was to “eliminate the al Qida network of terrorist groups as a threat to the United States and to friendly governments.” It called for a multiyear effort involving diplomacy, covert action, economic measures, law enforcement, public diplomacy, and if necessary military efforts. The State Department was to work with other governments to end all al Qaeda sanctuaries, and also to work with the Treasury Department to disrupt terrorist financing. The CIA was to develop an expanded covert action program including significant additional funding and aid to anti-Taliban groups. The draft also tasked OMB with ensuring that sufficient funds to support this program were found in U.S. budgets from fiscal years 2002 to 2006. ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf , pp. 204-5)

Still reading Bush’s mind at the Florida school, Moore says, “As the minutes went by, George Bush continued to sit in the classroom, was he thinking, ‘I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Which one of them screwed me? Was it the guy my Daddy’s friends delivered a lot of weapons to? [Footage of Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein in 1984, as part of the Reagan Administration’s effort to weaken the Iranian mullahs.] Was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my state when I was governor? [Footage of a Taliban delegation visiting Texas in 1998.] Or was it the Saudis? [Footage of Saudis.] Damn! It was them! I think I better blame it on this guy’ [Footage of Saddam Hussein].” This approach epitomizes Moore’s technique throughout. He shows random unconnected images and suggests that some dark but undescribed conspiracy connects them. He also suggests here that Bush “blamed” Iraq for September 11th, which is not true.

Moore then tells us that, “In the days following September 11th, all commercial and private air line traffic was grounded” but that a group of Saudis, including Bin Laden family members staying in America, was permitted to fly out of the country. He then implies that something was wrong with these flights, that the people who departed were not properly interviewed by the FBI, and that this happened because the Saudis used their influence with the White House. He even has a former FBI agent (whom he admits was no longer in the FBI by the time of the attacks and so would have no direct knowledge of what happened) say that these people should have been interviewed.

But Moore’s assertions are all wrong. First of all, the flights carrying Bin Laden family members did not take place while other civilian flights were grounded, as Moore suggests. The one flight that actually carried Bin Laden family members took place on September 20, a week after flight restrictions had been lifted. Flights carrying other Saudis also occurred on or after September 13, when flying was no longer restricted. Also, all the Saudis who left the country on the flights Moore mentions were in fact thoroughly interviewed by the FBI before leaving. And finally, the flights were approved personally (and exclusively) by White House counterterrorism head Richard Clarke, whom Moore later cites with approval as an authority.

The 9/11 Commission Report makes short shrift of all of Moore’s accusations, stating that the commission “found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.” It states further that there was “no evidence of political intervention” to permit the flights, and finally observes that, “the FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures. They concluded that none of the passengers was connected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion. Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights” ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, pp. 329-30; also see pp. 556-558). In response to this, a spokeswoman for Moore told the Washington Post that “Moore did not intend to suggest that the Bin Ladens flew away while civilian flights were grounded”—which is preposterous given what is plainly said in the film, and also fails to address all of the film’s other false claims on this issue ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10070-2004Jul23.html).

The film next makes clear why Moore goes to these lengths to try to imply some wrongdoing with the flights of Saudis: he wants to suggest an improper relationship between the family of George W. Bush and the Saudis (or even specifically the Bin Laden family). Moore then proceeds to unroll a convoluted scheme by which he seeks to connect Bush and the Bin Ladens. He begins by telling us that in early 2004 he (Moore himself) had called Bush a deserter in a speech and that “in response” the White House released copies of Bush’s military service records. (The arrogant notion that these records were released in response to Moore’s particular charge is ludicrous; they were actually released in response to an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that had nothing to do with Moore’s remarks.) In any case, Moore argues that the records had a name blacked out which had not been blacked out in a copy of the same records he had obtained back in 2000. The name was that of James R. Bath. Moore asks: “Why didn’t Bush want the press and public to see Bath’s name on his military records? Perhaps he was worried that the American people would find out that at one time James R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens.” Well, actually the reason Bath’s named was blacked out is that privacy laws prohibit the government from releasing the records—especially medical records, like the documents in question—of persons without their permission ( http://www.usdoj.gov/foia/privstat.htm). Bush gave permission to have his records released, but Bath had not done so (and had not been asked to do so, since the Freedom of Information Act request had nothing to do with him), and so his name had to be removed from common records.

Moore then says, “Bush and Bath had become good friends when they both served in the Texas Air National Guard. After they were discharged, when Bush’s dad was head of the CIA, Bath opened up his own aviation business, after selling a plane to a man by the name of Salem Bin Laden, heir to the second-largest fortune in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladin Group.” He next tells us that James Bath was hired to manage money for the Bin Laden family in Texas, and then that when Bush tried his hand at the oil business, he got an early investment from his friend James Bath. We are supposed to conclude, of course, that Bath invested the Bin Ladens’ money in Bush’s company. Moore never actually says so, but he implies so. He fails to mention that Bath himself has plainly said the money was his own and not the Bin Ladens’. In fact, Craig Unger, who is interviewed in the movie, and whose book House of Bush, House of Saud is the source for most of Moore’s absurd assertions in this part of the movie, himself doubts any connection here. Here is how Newsweek put it:

Leaving aside the fact that the bin Laden family, which runs one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction firms, has never been linked to terrorism, the movie—which relied heavily on Unger’s book—fails to note the author’s conclusion about what to make of the supposed Bin Laden-Bath-Bush nexus: that it may not mean anything. The “Bush-Bin Laden ‘relationships’ were indirect—two degrees of separation, perhaps—and at times have been overstated,” Unger writes in his book. While critics have charged that bin Laden money found its way into Arbusto [Bush’s company] through Bath, Unger notes that “no hard evidence has ever been found to back up that charge” and Bath himself has adamantly denied it. “One hundred percent of those funds (in Arbusto) were mine,” says Bath in a footnote on page 101 of Unger’s book. “It was a purely personal investment.” ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/)

But Moore just moves right along, leaving behind the Bin Ladens and pointing out that years later Bush was given a seat on the board of a company called Harken Energy, which had bought one of Bush’s oil companies. Harken also received some Saudi investments, and the film shows Unger saying: “Harken had one thing going for it, which is that George W. Bush was on its board of directors at a time when his father was President of the United States.” No further proof is offered to suggest that this is why the company received Saudi money, or that any of this has anything to do with the Bin Laden family issues discussed just moments before.

Moore then shows a snippet from an interview with George W. Bush in 1992 in which he says, “When you’re the President’s son and you’ve got unlimited access combined with some credentials from a prior campaign, in Washington, D.C., people tend to respect that.” The interview is from the CBS Morning News on August 21, 1992, from a story about George W. Bush’s work assisting his father’s 1992 reelection campaign. The interview is about Bush’s work on the campaign, and has to do with campaign advice—it is completely unrelated to peddling influence or access for profit.

Then—without offering any evidence that Harken received investments because of Bush’s connections, or that Bush ever used his influence in any untoward way—Moore moves on and says, “Yes, it helps to be the President’s son. Especially when you’re being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Moore then shows a television report from CBS reporter Bill Plante which says, “In 1990, when [George W.] Bush was a director of Harken Energy he received this memo from company lawyers warning directors not to sell stock if they had unfavorable information about the company. One week later he sold $848,000 worth of Harken stock. Two months later, Harken announced losses of more than $23 million.” Moore fails to mention that Bush cleared his sale with those same “company lawyers” and that Bush was cleared of any wrongdoing in the matter ( http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york071002.asp). Instead Moore tells us that Bush “beat the rap” with the help of a lawyer who was later named ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Again, no actual accusations are made, only unsupported insinuations (in this case, some kind of quid pro quo) with absolutely no foundation, and no attempt to provide one. Moore just throws out a few unconnected and misleading charges and hopes they add up in viewers’ minds to some sort of impression.

Once again, without a logical transition, Moore moves on—this time, to talk about the Carlyle Group, on whose advisory board both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush sat at different times. Moore tells us that members of the Bin Laden family were at one point among the investors in the Carlyle Group. We are told that the Carlyle Group was holding an investor conference in Washington, D.C. on September 11, in which the elder Bush participated, as did one of Osama bin Laden’s many half-brothers. (To give a sense of the size of the Bin Laden family, the 9/11 Commission Report points out that Osama was “the seventeenth of 57 children” of the Bin Laden patriarch,  http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 55.) Apparently the fact that Bush’s father and a member of the Bin Laden family were together that day is expected to have a major effect on us, though no reasons are given for why it should. We are only told that the elder Bush has a lot of influence with his son … so again, as we were told earlier in reverse, the influence of one George Bush upon the other is somehow sinister, and connected to evil Saudis. But how?

In this segment Moore also says that the Carlyle Group and their Bin Laden investors profited from September 11, by taking a subsidiary named United Defense public in October of 2001. It is not made clear why the stock offering is related to the 9/11 attacks. Moore also fails to mention that United Defense actually lost about $11 billion as the result of a decision by George W. Bush’s administration to cancel the company’s Crusader artillery system, one of the only defense programs the Bush Administration cut ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5251769/). In addition, Moore fails to inform us that George Soros, the left-wing icon, is also a major investor in the Carlyle Group, and former Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty is also a senior advisor—so the company is hardly a global conspiracy of right-wingers. Moore also suggests that “sadly, with so much attention focused on the Bin Laden family being important Carlyle investors, the Bin Ladens eventually had to withdraw,” implying that they withdrew after the IPO he has just described. In fact, they withdrew before it ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/278rxzvb.asp?pg=2).

Where is all this going? Moore soon tells us, by unfurling one of his most absurd and insulting slurs. He asks:

Okay, so let’s say one group of people, like the American people, pay you $400,000 a year to be President of the United States. But then another group of people invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses $1.4 billion dollars over a number of years. [Footage of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, and Vice President Dick Cheney.] Who you gonna like? Who’s your daddy? Because that’s how much the Saudi royals and their associates have given the Bush family, their friends, and their related businesses in the past three decades. [Footage of President Bush and Saudi Prince.] Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in the morning they might be thinking about what’s best for the Saudis instead of what’s best for you? Or me? ’Cuz $1.4 billion just doesn’t buy a lot of flights out of the country, it buys a lot of love.

This is accompanied by pictures of both Bushes—as well as James Baker, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld—shaking hands with various individuals in Arab dress. Here again Moore makes no specific allegation, but he suggests that both the current and former presidents and their Secretaries of State and Defense are simply for sale to the highest bidder. He conveniently ignores all the ways in which the Bush foreign policy is opposed by the Saudis (they objected, for instance, to the American invasion of Afghanistan, and to the newly assertive American role in the region more generally). And as ever, Moore’s facts, let alone his implications, are completely wrong. As Newsweek put it:

Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud. Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush. Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm. True enough, the former president was paid for one speech to Carlyle and then made an overseas trip on the firm’s behalf the previous fall, right around the time BDM was sold. But Ullman insists any link between the former president’s relations with Carlyle and the Saudi contracts to BDM that were awarded years earlier is entirely bogus. “The figure is inaccurate and misleading,” said Ullman. “The movie clearly implies that the Saudis gave $1.4 billion to the Bushes and their friends. But most of it went to a Carlyle Group company before Bush even joined the firm. Bush had nothing to do with BDM.” ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/)

Undaunted, Moore moves on to tell us that “sooner or later this special relationship with a regime that Amnesty International condemns as a widespread human rights violator would come back to haunt the Bushes. [Footage of a public beheading.] Now, after 9/11, it was an embarrassment and they preferred that no one ask any questions.” Moore then asserts that Bush tried to stop or impede investigations of September 11th, implying perhaps that this had something to do with his connection to the Saudis. Moore says, “First, Bush tried to stop Congress from setting up its own 9/11 investigation,” and he shows a television clip of Bush saying, “It’s important for us to not reveal how we collect information; that’s what the enemy wants. And we’re fighting an enemy.” This clip is from a statement Bush made to a pool of reporters when touring the headquarters of the National Security Agency in June 2002, and is taken from these remarks the president made, which have nothing to do with impeding a congressional investigation:

And one of my jobs is to remind those who sacrifice on behalf of our nation that we appreciate it a lot. And I’d rather have them sacrificing on behalf of our nation than, you know, endless hours of testimony on congressional hill. The appropriate place to do that, of course, is the intelligence committees. And, again, I repeat, the reason why that’s important is because we have got to guard the methodology—methodologies of our country, of how—it’s important for us to not reveal how we collect information. That’s what the enemy wants, and we’re fighting an enemy. ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020604-16.html)

Moore then tells us that Bush tried to stop the independent 9/11 Commission from being formed and would not cooperate with it. We see a clip of commission chairman Thomas Kean saying “We haven’t gotten the materials we needed, and we certainly haven’t gotten them in a timely fashion. The deadlines we set have passed,” and a clip of Bush on NBC’s Meet the Press which makes it seem like he would not meet with the commission, as had been requested. In truth, though, Bush did meet with the 9/11 Commission (on April 29, 2004:  http://www.9-11commission.gov/press/pr_2004-04-29.pdf) as did every other administration official the commission requested to see, and the clip of Kean is deeply misleading. It attempts to suggest that Chairman Kean was saying the White House was not cooperating, but here is what he (and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton) actually said in the statement from which this clip is cut, from a press conference in July of 2003:

QUESTION: —I’m with CBS News. Could you talk about what kind of cooperation you’re getting from the various executive branch agencies in terms of the report; getting the access to the witnesses you want and getting the documents you’ve requested in a timely manner?

MR. KEAN: Yeah, we’ve—if you look at the report that we issued yesterday, we go down agency by agency by agency, all through the administration. And in some of those agencies, the cooperation is quite good, and we got a number of things that we needed. In other agencies, where in some cases we’ve made massive requests, we’ve haven’t gotten the materials we needed, and we certainly haven’t gotten them in a timely fashion; the deadlines we’ve set have passed. We’ve got our own deadline; by statue, we’ve got to report by next May. So we can’t brook that kind of thing. We’ve got to get the information we need to do our work. So while I think the White House is cooperating, I think they’re trying to do their best to help us in a number of ways, some agencies, led at the moment by the Department of Defense, is not cooperating to the extent we need that cooperation. Now, it’s better than it was, and it’s moving in the right direction. But the next two or three weeks are going to be vital. Talk to me in another two or three weeks.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me just observe that we are, number one, asking for an enormous amount of material. We measure material not by pages, but by boxes. And we are getting and asking for not a few pages, but hundreds of thousands of pages. So the request to the executive branch departments and agencies is very, very large. It is understandable to me that they can’t handle it quickly or overnight. I’m not apologizing for them, I’m just saying that we’re making a very large request. Now, secondly, the requests that we are making are, in some cases, not in all, relate to very sensitive material. And it is understandable by both the chairman and myself that it takes a little while for those kinds of requests to work their way through the bureaucracy. This is a difficult task for us, and as the chairman has said, we must have that information. We must have it if we’re going to do our job. We’re going to get it. We’re impatient. We think a lot of it has been slow in coming, but we understand the reasons. There is a bureaucratic inertia. These people have things to do other than to answer our requests. There are national security concerns. There are conditions that attach to our requests that we have to work out that are complicated to work it out so that it’s mutually agreed upon. Under what kind of circumstances can we see the material, particularly when it’s the most sensitive material that the government possesses? I think we’re making good progress. We’ve got a long way to go. We certainly need the very strong support from the White House to help us, and I was most pleased with the statement I read in the paper this morning from the White House that the president remains very committed to cooperating with the commission and helping us get the material we need.

Moore has chopped the clip to make it appear as though Kean was complaining about a lack of cooperation from the White House, but when seen in context it is clear that Kean and Hamilton said exactly the opposite. And Kean said at the conclusion of the commission’s work that “we were able to see every single document we requested and every single document in the files” ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5488345/).

Moore then shows a woman who lost her husband on 9/11 saying she wants some resolution, and he tells us that families of the victims sued the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis hired the mammoth law firm that also employs former Secretary of State James Baker. Again, no accusation of any kind is made about any of this, but we are left to draw our own conclusion.

Speaking of the Saudis, Moore now launches on yet another disconnected line of argument. Standing with Craig Unger in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, Moore asks Unger how much money the Saudis have invested in the United States. Unger replies: “Uh, I’ve heard figures inside of $860 billion dollars.” Moore certainly could have looked up the real figure, rather than rely on what someone else has “heard.” Unger offers no source, and his figure is not correct. Saudi investment in the U.S. is generally estimated at around $450 billion ( http://www.saudi-american-forum.org/Newsletters/SAF_Essay_22.htm). Moore then asks him what portion of the U.S. economy the $860 billion would be, and Unger replies: “Well, in terms of investments on Wall Street, American equities, it’s roughly 6 or 7 percent of America.” This appears to be simple confusion. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total foreign investment in the United States in 2003 was about $9.7 trillion. Unger’s (inflated) figure for Saudi investment would therefore be about 5 percent of that, i.e. 5 percent of foreign investment, not by any means 6 or 7 percent of the American economy—far from it ( http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040709-033853-6363r.htm).

Moore and Unger are then approached by Secret Service officers, and Moore suggests that it is strange (indeed sinister) that the Secret Service should be guarding a foreign embassy even though they are “nowhere near the White House.” This is likely simple ignorance, or a misunderstanding of what the Secret Service officer in question told him. (The officer seems to say, mistakenly, that the Secret Service does “not usually” protect foreign embassies.) As Washingtonians know, and as the Secret Service website and the relevant laws state very clearly, the secret service is in fact in charge of protecting foreign embassies in Washington ( http://www.secretservice.gov/opportunities_ud.shtml). Moore then says: “It turns out that Saudi Prince Bandar is perhaps the best-protected ambassador in the U.S. The U.S. State Department provides him with a six-man security detail. Considering how he and his family, and the Saudi elite own 7 percent of America, it’s probably not a bad idea.” Again, the 7 percent figure is not correct, and as for being the “perhaps the best protected ambassador,” anyone who has ever been near the Israeli embassy in Washington will know that this assertion is way off the mark.

Moore then informs us that the Bush Administration and Prince Bandar are in fact on very good terms, and the Bushes even call the ambassador “Bandar Bush,” and then that the Saudi ambassador met with the president a few days after 9/11. Moore does not mention how close Bandar also was with the Clinton Administration ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030324fa_fact2) and indeed with all others in his multi-decade tenure in Washington, and Moore also does not lay out any specific allegation here—only that the president dared to meet with the Saudi ambassador a few days after an attack on the United States in which Saudi citizens participated.

Moore then raises two questions: “Why would Bandar’s government block American investigators from talking to the relatives of the fifteen hijackers? Why would Saudi Arabia become reluctant to freeze the hijackers’ assets?” But in fact American investigators did interview the families of all the hijackers, including the Saudi ones ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, see notes to Chapter 7, beginning with note 57 on page 521), and the Saudis have in fact frozen the hijackers’ assets, and those of others the United States has designated as involved in terrorism ( http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/newsletter2004/saudi-relations-interest-03-29c.html). In any case, what is Moore’s larger point? Should Bush have refused to ever speak to Saudis again? Might he not have used the opportunity to push the Saudis for cooperation? Moore speculates that Bush might have told Bandar not to worry since “he already had a plan in motion.” And with no substantive claim even made, let alone supported, this serves as Moore’s transition to his first mention of Iraq.

With this illogical transition, the movie next shows a clip of Richard Clarke being interviewed by ABC’s Charles Gibson, saying that Bush pressured him “in a very intimidating way” to find some 9/11 link to Iraq very soon after the attacks. The movie does not mention that for years before the attacks, the United States had documented links between Iraq and Al Qaeda—with overtures from each side toward the other, including an Iraqi offer to allow Osama bin Laden to resettle in Iraq and establish his organization there ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 66). In fact, in 1999 when the Clinton Administration considered attacking Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Richard Clarke was the person who argued against it, suggesting that Bin Laden might get warning and that, “Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad” ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 134). So the connection between Iraq and Bin Laden was no fiction of Bush’s imagination, as Clarke himself knew.

Moreover, once it became apparent that Iraq was not directly involved in the attacks, Bush no longer focused on an Iraq-based response. When the Bush national security team met on September 15, 2001 to discuss response plans, the discussion about Iraq was confined to the morning session, after which “the president sent a message to the group [his advisors with him at Camp David] that he had heard enough debate over Iraq” (Bob Woodward, Bush at War, p. 85,  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743204735). After that, the focus was simply on Afghanistan. As the 9/11 Commission Report put it:

Iraq was not even on the table during the September 15 afternoon session, which dealt solely with Afghanistan. Rice said that when President Bush called her on Sunday, September 16, he said the focus would be on Afghanistan, although he still wanted plans for Iraq should the country take some action or the administration eventually determine that it had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 335)

The report also states:

On September 20, President Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the two leaders discussed the global conflict ahead. When Blair asked about Iraq, the President replied that Iraq was not the immediate problem. Some members of his administration, he commented, had expressed a different view, but he was the one responsible for making the decisions. ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 336)

And further:

The CENTCOM commander [General Tommy Franks] told us he renewed his appeal for further military planning to respond to Iraqi moves shortly after 9/11, both because he personally felt that Iraq and al Qaeda might be engaged in some form of collusion and because he worried that Saddam might take advantage of the attacks to move against his internal enemies in the northern or southern parts of Iraq, where the United States was flying regular missions to enforce Iraqi no-fly zones. Franks said that President Bush again turned down the request. ( http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf, p. 336)

The record makes clear that the Bush Administration did not respond to 9/11 by simply turning to Iraq, but rather by turning first to those responsible for the attacks and invading Afghanistan (despite strong opposition from the Saudis, which Moore of course ignores since it would ruin his plot) and then seeking ways to counteract the larger causes of the Islamist terror threat, including action in Iraq. Moore’s use of the Clarke video is not itself dishonest, but it is certainly so incomplete as to give a thoroughly distorted picture.