Fahrenheit 9/11 is Having "Devastating" Impact on Military Morale

PittsburghAfterDark

PittsburghAfterDark

CAGiversary!
Soldier Says "Young and Impressionable" Soldiers Just Returned from Iraq Deployments Are "Being Made to Feel Ashamed" of Their Service

The National Center for Public Policy Research has posted online an e-mail received from a soldier, Spc. Joe Roche of the 1st Armored Division, who says Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 is "making the rounds" among soldiers at U.S. military bases overseas and is "shocking and crushing soldiers, making them feel ashamed" of their service in Iraq. The letter has been published online by The National Center without abridgment. The full text can be found here. Some excerpts:

"Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, is making the rounds here at U.S. bases in Kuwait. Some soldiers have received it already and are passing is around. The impact is devastating. Here we are, soldiers of the 1st Armored Division, just days from finally returning home after over a year serving in Iraq, and Moore's film is shocking and crushing soldiers, making them feel ashamed. Moore has abused the First Amendment and is hurting us worse than the enemy has. There are the young and impressionable soldiers, like those who joined the Army right out of high school. They aren't familiar w/ the college-type political debate environment, and they haven't been schooled in the full range of issues involved. They are vulnerable to being hurt by a vicious film like Moore's."

"Specialist Janecek, who is feeling depressed because a close family member is nearing the end of her life, just saw the film today. I saw him in the DFAC. He is devastated. 'I feel shitty, ashamed, like this was all a lie.' Not only is he looking at going straight to a funeral when he returns home, but now whatever pride he felt for serving here has been crushed by Moore's film. Specialist Everett earlier after seeing the film: 'You'll be mad at shit for ever having come here.' And there are others. Mostly the comments are absolute shock at the close connections Moore makes between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. 'Bush looks really really REALLY corrupt in this film. I just don't know what to think anymore,' is a common comment to hear. Some of these soldiers are darn right ashamed tonight to be American soldiers, to have been apart of this whole mission in Iraq, and are angry over all that Moore has presented in his film."

"Right now, just days away from what should be a proud and happy return from 15 months of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom, your U.S. soldiers are coming back ashamed and hurt because of Moore's work."

"I sometimes want to be mad at my fellow soldiers for being susceptible to Moore's distortions, but I can't really blame them. These are good Americans, who have volunteered to serve our country. Nothing says they all have to be experts in Middle Eastern issues and history and politics to serve. That would be silly. ...But this is, of course, the vulnerability that Moore has exploited."

"I wonder how damaging and shocking a Moore project would have been in the 1940s making such a video of Franklin Roosevelt."
Click to expand...

Spc. Joe Roche serves with the 16th Engineering Battalion of the 1st Armored Division. He and his unit were deployed in Iraq for 15 months. An archive of his e-mails can be accessed at [url]www.nationalcenter.org/RochePage.html [/url] online.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, conservative/free-market think-tank established in 1982 and located on Capitol Hill. It can be visited at [url]http://www.nationalcenter.org [/url] online.
 
if i had just gotten back from Iraq i'd just go kick that fat basterd in the nutts (guy who made the movie... cant remember his name at this moment)
 
I'll tell them what to think, they can think that Moore lies or highly exaggrates about 80% of the so-called facts in his films. I don't get why they'd show this film on military bases anyways.
 
Chances are it's circulating on DVD. The propensity of DVD players on bases over there is very high, either the handheld kind, laptop enabled DVD's or in lounges. English language TV isn't the easiest thing to come by nor is stringing up cable or satellite dishes for most soldiers.

If I had ever come across a movie like this making the rounds through my unit I would have confiscated it and destroyed it. If the "owner" wanted restitution I would have paid him $20 and been done with it. Sorry to say free speech proponents but that "right" doesn't exist in the military and my saftey and the saftey of soldiers is as dependent on morale as it is on the armor on tanks or sabot rounds they fire.
 
[quote name='Duo_Maxwell']I don't get why they'd show this film on military bases anyways.[/quote]

You and me both.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']Chances are it's circulating on DVD. The propensity of DVD players on bases over there is very high, either the handheld kind, laptop enabled DVD's or in lounges. English language TV isn't the easiest thing to come by nor is stringing up cable or satellite dishes for most soldiers.

If I had ever come across a movie like this making the rounds through my unit I would have confiscated it and destroyed it. If the "owner" wanted restitution I would have paid him $20 and been done with it. Sorry to say free speech proponents but that "right" doesn't exist in the military and my saftey and the saftey of soldiers is as dependent on morale as it is on the armor on tanks or sabot rounds they fire.[/quote]

Well seeing how it's not out on DVD it would be an illegal copy of some kind meaning you probably sieze it easily with no problems.
 
You're still campaigning here?

Why would someone rich enough to want to vote for Bush be posting on a site for cheapasses?
 
Somehow, I'd think that the possibility of being killed might have a more significant impact.

In the meantime, I'll simply point out that the National Center for Public Policy Research is a conservative think-tank. Anything they publish is as suspect of political bias as Michael Moore is.

myke.
...my first post here. Hi. :x
 
It's not necessarily illegal. There are movies that are sent to U.S. troops long before they're on pay TV or on DVD as the easiest way to get movies to the military.

The U.S. Navy, submarine crews in particular, go to sea with the absolute latest in films.
 
Boo Hoo.

They should be ashamed of what they are doing in Iraq. Even if it isn't their fault and they are just obeying orders.
 
Allow me to also point out another grievance of mine.

The publishing group is the National Center for Public Policy Research.

There is a keyword in there: Research.

Let me say it again: Research.

This article is an e-mail from one soldier.

A sample size of one does not translate into good (or even laudable) research. Case in point, randomly ask one person if they prefer to vote for Bush, Kerry, or Nader at this point. With one answer, you aren't likely to get a response that represents the current American mindset, are you?

This is poor, irresponsible journalism (regardless of any political affiliation). It is the treatment of one person's experience as representative of all others.

myke.
...enjoying NFL 2K5, but realized far too late that I know very little about football.
 
well considering parts of the movie were about soldiers having low morale and not knowing why they were there, and being angry, the atmosphere already existed. The soldiers are split just like us civilians are.
F911 isn't hurting the military. It might possibly be enhancing feelings that both sides have about what it going on. And it might be healthy for them to get it out and get fired up about SOMETHING.
Implying that this movie is endangering lives is just ludicrous. I'm not buying it.
And yes they illegally download stuff over there all of the time. Some of them are getting busted for it too. Now they are supposedly keeping a tighter watch on what they are accessing. I say let them download whatever they want. If they can sacrifice their lives, I'm sure Movie/CD industries can sacrifice a few bucks.
And despite what anyone says, the soldiers that disagree with the war don't feel like we aren't supporting them. We are all supporting them no matter what we believe. They just feel like their lives are being wasted for no reason. Don't blame a film maker for that.

That is all I have to say on this subject.
 
Im with Zforce...they should be ashamed as to what they are doing...We have no right to be there and anyone willing to go deserves to die...just like they are killing thousands of innocent people...There is no excuse for what we are doing...And I really dont want to hear your political shit Pitsburg...
 
I was just saying...I have my opinion...and im really tired of this "Evil Doers" attitude...Iraq did nothing to us...Afgahnistan (sp) is where Alquida (sp) is located...not Iraq...we have no right to kill all those people
 
Okay, so we're supposed to feel bad because people in the Military are hearing about the information in this movie? Perhaps we *should* be feeling bad, for suggesting that these people should be kept from receiving this side of the story. Regardless of if you believe it to be true or not, restricting the viewpoint from them doesn't coincide with the concepts of "freedom", "liberty", or "free will."

So soldiers are losing morale because of it? Perhaps they have a reason to do so. Someone further up in the post said that if they were returning from Iraq they'd kick Michael Moore in the nuts. Why? Give me a good reason why a soldier should be *angry* about what was said. Should they be angry because someone is stating an opinion perhaps? Or would you suggest that they should be angry because what he said goes against what they've been told, and they shouldn't want to hear things contrary to what they've been told? Why? I can't even begin to see why you would be *angry* about it. You could disagree with it, but the emotion of anger doesn't even make sense in this equation.

Or perhaps you're suggesting that people should threaten him physically to stop him from voicing his opinions: if so, then the deceased brothers-in-arms of the very soldier who does that would be dishonored by his action. Don't our soldiers fight to preserve the rights of free speech and the freedom of information? Don't they? I sense a lingering, underlying contradiction in what has been said above. If someone actually believes what has been said above, then I feel very sorry for them.
 
I never said I felt sorry for anyone, but I do feel sorry for all those people who saw Moore's movies and believed everything they saw there without bothering to to look at the actual facts or what actually happened. (Note: This ins't directed toward anyone here imparticular, but I know for a fact many people in general that did this same thing.)
 
[quote name='Pitt']If I had ever come across a movie like this making the rounds through my unit I would have confiscated it and destroyed it. If the "owner" wanted restitution I would have paid him $20 and been done with it. Sorry to say free speech proponents but that "right" doesn't exist in the military and my saftey and the saftey of soldiers is as dependent on morale as it is on the armor on tanks or sabot rounds they fire.[/quote]

First, I'd like to give a quick hello. We haven't met on the boards as of yet, so I figured I'd give a little shout out before beginning.

Okay, let's begin, shall we? You are correct: free speech doesn't exist as a right in the military. And you are also correct that morale is important when one considers military strategy and effectiveness. However, I believe that the confiscation and burning of material that goes against the viewpoint held by the army destroys something that is far more fundamental than mere military strategy.

The fundamental issue at stake is more of a question. "Is the action that we are taking the correct one?" Soldiers are trained to not ask that question, but perhaps it is immoral of us to do so. Soldiers are conscripts, assigned to perform the task of military victory regardless of the reasons why. And yet they are also independant agents of morality and moral will. These two roles - the former, assigned by the government, and the latter, assigned by man's God-given role as the dominant species of mortal creation - are contradicting one another. Denying a moral agent the potential for discovering the truth may be an intelligent move from a strategic standpoint, but it is morally bankrupt. To supress information from a moral agent is equivocable to lying, which is a blatent violation of man's duty both to himself and to other men.

So while I cannot dispute the strategic advantage that your viewpoint has, I must object with it morally. Perhaps it might be said that armies would not be able to exist if people had to follow such strict moral rules. To that, I would say that is precisely what we should be thinking of. Morality is the very core of what makes us human, what makes our ability to reason worth having and what makes us worthy of the dominion we hold over the mortal realm. Without morality, we are merely using our intelligence for deviance, and that is an undertaking without merit. Would obeying morality bring more hardship than there is now? Potentially. For example, if a standing army were only made of people who knew the issues of both sides and chose to be in the army regardless, the army might be a very small faction indeed. Perhaps it would be too small, and we would not be considered a superpower anymore. Is that important? What reason have we to be a superpower? So that we can enjoy luxury, or impose our preferential trade demands on others? You see, the immorality of one thing feeds into the immorality of actions that follow it. Perhaps we don't deserve to be a superpower - perhaps countries with such power should not exist.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say with all of this is that Morality should be the goal of humanity, and using immoral means to produce some kind of selfish end objective is shortsighted and often leads to future disturbances.
 
Aye, hello Duo, good to meet you.

Indeed, people should never accept anything given to them as facts without checking up on them. That includes the facts given by people in power, but that is for another issue.

I have done a great deal of research on this topic, and have found a great deal of what was said in the movie to be factual. The connections made between points (which form the main thesi of the movie) are disputable (and at times, highly disputable), but many of the facts taken on their own are, indeed, facts.

The trick is to read into the connections made because of those facts. That is where the opinion, and the potential for bias, comes in. Some of them I believe, as I had come to those conclusions earlier. Some of them I am not so sure about, and some of them I dismiss as not seeming terribly likely. My advice to anyone would be to try and do this with any information that they recieve, regardless of the source. It is an important part of having reliable information.
 
Thanks for the greetings vthornheart (and btw nice avatar), I appreciate it. As for what you said, I'm certainly happy you decided to put real thought into what you saw, too many don't. As for what I said, I'm not saying everything is a lie, but Moore has the grand tendency to use bits of facts or overexaggeration of facts to decieve his audiences. And yeah some things in this film and his others are flat out true, but if they are not he'll omit them or twist them to fit his own personal agenda.

You mentioned the connections made from said facts, and it's often those connections where Moore blurs the lines of true fact and what he wants you to know. This is why I generally don't pay too much attention to waht he says in interviews or anything else nowadays, it's not any patr of political stance I just don't trust him that much. I can say the same thing for multiple people in the entertainment industry.
 
[quote name='BigNick']moore is laughing all the way to the bank with this movie.[/quote]

Actually due to the odd rights deal where Disney sold F911 to the Miramax owners, 60% of net proceeds will go to charities of Disney's (and I typed that correctly) choice. The other 40% will go to the Weinsteins (Miramax owners).

Moore's share will come before the 60/40 split and has indicated he will take less than the charities. However, he certainly will have enough to open his own McDonalds.

To draw a simple and pointless comparison, it is possible that Mel Gibson pocketed 50% of the profit for The Passion, which conservatively puts his take at 325million.
 
I never reply on political boards, but I get angry when I see people write posts about how soldiers should feel guilty for what they are doing. These men and women are doing their job. I do have to say that it should in theory take more than liberal drivel to make our soldiers question their duty. I think this is few and far between, but again. The population smaple is small just as in Farenheit.

If you want to place blame go ahead. I don't see you out there taking a roadside bomb.

It may not necessarily be about whether Irag had WMDs. Ever think that halting a genocide would be morally correct?
 
Soldiers are conscripts, assigned to perform the task of military victory regardless of the reasons why. And yet they are also independant agents of morality and moral will.
Click to expand...

You are 100% absolutely wrong. There are no conscripts in the United States armed forces in any branch of the services. This country hasn't had a draft in 30+ years.

Soldiers of all branches are told and educated on what is a legal and illegal order, despite your opinion to the contrary.
 
My mistake, I used an incorrect term. What I meant was more along the lines of employment, but I chose an improper descriptive term for it; conscription does indeed imply being forced into service. However the state of conscription or voluntary service does not make the actual statement that I made incorrect at all. They are still assigned the task of achieving military victory regardless of the motives for military action in the first place. While they are educated on the legality and illegality of an individual order (I never stated an opposing opinion to that), they are not trained to question whether or not the reasons that the orders are given are moral. That is the ponit I am trying to make, not the point of an individual order.

For example, if an officer tells a soldier to execute an innocent civillian, that is an illegal order and the soldier has a right to not follow it (though he may get pressure to do it anyways, that is another issue entirely). But if a soldier is ordered to kill soldiers on the opposing side of a battle it is a legal action. Though it is legal, and thus the soldier will not question it, it may be for immoral reasons that the action is taking place to begin with. Continuing with the example, let us say that we are in Afghanistan in the early 80's, as a Russian soldier. Your officer tells you that your orders are to take the nearby city by force. While you are restricted to attacking enemy soldiers, those enemy soldiers were Afghans who were protecting their homeland from Communist invasion. Was it right for the Russians to attack them? Should the soldiers have questioned their orders, not on an individual level, but on an ideological level? That is the question that I pose.
 
Leviathan, I understand your anger on the issue. It is one that draws upon a great deal of ideologies that make a great many people upset on every side of the conflict. That being said, I must disagree with your opinion on this issue.

You stated "I do have to say that it should in theory take more than liberal drivel to make our soldiers question their duty." On the contrary, I believe that anyone who is performing any job or duty should feel compelled to not only easily question it but constantly question it, no matter what the duty is. To not question, or to not seek information about what you are doing, is appealing to ignorance as an excuse for potentially immoral behaviour. Does that mean that we should consider any schmuck's opinion that comes along to be the truth? Of course not, as that too is an appeal to ignorance. What we should do is not be afraid of alternative opinions to our own, and try to follow up the presentation of them with a search for facts and intelligent thought, so as to try and determine the truth of what was spoken.

When you stated "I don't see you out there taking a roadside bomb," you must understand that it has little to do with the situation at hand. Should soldiers be blamed for what is happening? No one thinks so, although it would be wise of soldiers to consider the ramifications of their actions. It is the ones who distribute the orders, who create the situations for the soldiers to go into, that should be thinking about it. In fact, that was one of the things in the movie that I had analyzed before seeing it and had already come to the conclusion that it was true: if the War was done for immoral reasons, then those who chose to send our soldiers to war for it should be held even more liable, as it is our soldiers who have "taken the roadside bomb," and have died to defend what may have turned out to be (at the best) an unfortunate error or (at the worst) an ill-intentioned plot.

Now who turns your stomach more? Those who try to find out what was really going on, and potentially expose those who subjected our sons and daughters to danger, or those who may have sent those same sons and daughters to their deaths on incorrect assumptions or possibly even outright lies? The latter of the two is what angers me personally.
 
PittsburghAfterDark

Just wondering what the point of this post is? Do you think Michael Moore should be censored, not allowed to make more movies, etc. Should his film be banned from theatres?
 
No, I posted this merely as something I came across. I don't think he should be censored at all. In fact the more publicity he receives the more he marginalizes his own cause. I am completely against censorship in any form. I'm in as much agreement with Jello Biafra on this issue (I loved the DK's in the 80's believe it or not.) as anyone else.

I was merely posting some observations made by someone that was serving overseas and the impact he observed 9/11 having on the troops. The one thing that bothered me most about Farenheit 9/11 was the same thing that bothered Ray Bradbury, it was a blantant ripoff of a title.

I want to know why people like Al Franken and Michael Moore can't title their works without stealing the catchphrases of anyone else more than anything. Michael Moore is not a patriot, he's an opportunist. He is the living breathing definition of a parasite. He profits from misery. When he did "Roger & Me" he completely played off the suffering of the people in his movie. Whether it was the Amway woman or the rabbit lady, he didn't do a thing to help these people. Instead he decried GM and its business decisions in the face of increased foreign competition. Yet the "real people" the "little people" were as much props as they were inanimate special effects in a Will Smith movie.

In "Bowling for Columbine" he tackled gun violence and the gun debate. Did he do it impartially? Did he do it from a logical and thoughtful point of view? No. Again he plays on the human tragedy of the Columbine shootings and other school shootings of the 90's. Again, profiting from human misery.

Without commenting on F 9/11 (Other than the title.) I haven't seen it but will when I don't have to rent it or pay for a ticket. However the trend continues. He profits on world wide misery this time. U.S., Iraqi, Afghani etc. The bigger he becomes the bigger the amount of human suffering has to comment on and profit from. He can't make a living without misfortune, death and human misery. He is the walking embodiment of pure evil in that regards.

However make no mistake. Despite my sharp disagreement with how he makes a living I would defend to the death his right to say it.
 
Thanks for clarifying. But can you really say that you know he isn't a patriot? That he loves America less than you or I?
 
You tell me if you really thinks he loves America.

1. Roger & Me, he goes to examine his hometown; Flint, Michigan. When GM is closing plants. He paints the subjects of his movie as abject fools whether the people trying to improve their lives because GM is closing plants or Roger Smith, the chariman of GM at the time.

2. Bowling for Columbine. He completely trashes anyone or any organization that seeks to uphold the second ammendment which is a much a right as the 1st ammendment.. He would never have made the movie unless there were something to dramitically frame a movie title in. He didn't tackle Whitewater, Vince Foster's death, the S&L scandal or anything that would make for a horrible film. He tackled death and misery caused by misguided individuals. Noticing a trend yet?

3. F 9/11. He takes a day that is the deadliest in U.S. history. More civillians die that day than any day in our history. More U.S. citizens die than in any day of warfare since the Civil war including D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima or Okinawa. He paints the entire movie in consiritorial terms (Without seeing it, I'm making gneralizations here from reviews, news articles and gathered information.) and doesn't care how many countires or lives tragedy engulfs. It makes money for him.

The bigger the suffering of the American people the more he profits from them. It is our blood, our misfortune and at the smaller end of suffering our loss of jobs that enrich Michael Moore. Do I think he's a patriot? No. I think he's embarassed of us a culture. He told NHK that the American peopler were "the dumbest people on the face of the Earth".

He merely looks down on us. You wait, when there's a terroristic attack in October or November in an attempt to influence the U.S. elections Michael Moore will have a film about it in 18 months and it won't be a documentary it will be an attack piece of someone in power or coming to power. His next movie will have one theme with the rest of his work.... someone will have lost a job, family member/friend, shed blood or suffered immeasurably. When that happens in a significant number.... Michael Moore will be there to smile for the Cannes Film crowd and collect another $100 million.
 
If Moore had tried this crap during WW2, he would have "disappeared". Times sure have changed. . .
Click to expand...

If Moore had... "tried this crap"... "disappeared"...? I'm sorry to sound so forward, but... you do realize that we live in *America*, right? If he were to *disappear* for speaking his opinion, that would be just about the most un-American thing that could happen. You may have been joking, and in that case I apologize for taking you so seriously... but if you were serious, you might want to ponder this point for a while, as well as the moral standards that our country is supposed to uphold.
 
Unfortunately Pitt, I don't see the trend you're speaking of in those films. "Roger and Me" wasn't attempting to depict the people as fools, it was attempting to show the misery that they live in as a result of the closings. The expose is as old as printed news is itself, and that was nothing new.

While Bowling for Columbine can hardly be called a documentary, as it indeed has an anti-gun slant, it would have held no relevance to suddenly bring up unrelated topics such as the Whitewater scandal. They just weren't relevant to his subject, which was all things related to the control of guns. Seeing the movie, I honestly don't know where you would've been able to fit those in a way that made any sense. Would you ask a person doing a film about World War I to fit in information about the Kuomintang revolution? You wouldn't, because although they occurred at around the same time, they held little relevance to each other.

You know, Michael Moore uses distortion... but there's some definite distortion going on here as well regarding facts:

Iwo Jima: 6,821 U.S.
D-Day: 8,443 U.S. (according to conservative estimates)
Battle of the Bulge: 19,000 U.S.
Okinawa: 12,000 U.S.

9/11: 3,030 U.S.

That was a list of raw deaths.

Now, beside the point that the information was inaccurate, it was also misleading. Was it a horrible event? Of course it was. You cannot call it a "day of warfare" however, nor imply that the disaster was worse than that of any of the battles that you mentioned.

And, to top the whole thing off is the fact that the reasons you state as to why the movie is bad completely sidetrack the issues being spoken of in the movie. The movie is attempting to raise questions as to what happened after 9/11 and why the responses that occurred came to place. Never during the course of the movie was there a demeaning of the event itself: in fact, the event itself is barely covered. It was an expose on the events that occurred afterwords and his opinions on why they came to pass.

Anyways, that's how I feel on the topic of Michael Moore's movies. Though I don't agree with some of the connections he makes between theories, and I wouldn't be like some and call it a documentary, the movies to date cannot be disreputed for the reasons mentioned previously.
 
More U.S. citizens die than in any day of warfare since the Civil war including D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima or Okinawa.
Click to expand...

Check your numbers again. The causalty figures you're using are for the campaigns of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Battle of the Bulge. The D-Day figures you use are causlaties, not fatalities. In military measures casualties are KIA and wouded in action not just KIA. They're seperate numbers.

I was correct. More U.S. citizens die in any single day from the attacks on 9/11 than from any day of combat in our nations history since the Civil War.

And, to top the whole thing off is the fact that the reasons you state as to why the movie is bad completely sidetrack the issues being spoken of in the movie.
Click to expand...

I never got into why the movie was bad. I haven't seen it. I merely said that without the backdrop of human misery and a pallet of death and suffering Michael Moore doesn't have a career. He couldn't make a movie about Whitewater that made money. He couldn't tackle the obscurities of the S&L scandal and make a profitable film. Ditto the "conspiracy" that surrounded Vince Fosters death. I never suggested he include these topics in "Bowling for Columbine" I said he couldn't have made movie from these topics because they wouldn't have created enough press to become the press sensations of his last two films.

Michael Moore needs an ever expanding human misery toll to make a living. Period. The bigger human misery toll, the bigger his films and career become. I stand by everything I wrote.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Allow me to also point out another grievance of mine.

The publishing group is the National Center for Public Policy Research.

There is a keyword in there: Research.

Let me say it again: Research.

This article is an e-mail from one soldier.

A sample size of one does not translate into good (or even laudable) research. Case in point, randomly ask one person if they prefer to vote for Bush, Kerry, or Nader at this point. With one answer, you aren't likely to get a response that represents the current American mindset, are you?

This is poor, irresponsible journalism (regardless of any political affiliation). It is the treatment of one person's experience as representative of all others.

myke.
...enjoying NFL 2K5, but realized far too late that I know very little about football.[/quote]

Bravo newbie!

I think many people are overlooking this. This is one letter, and in no way represents the feelings of the military.
 
Yeah, well, when I find out I've been lied to and deceived, I get pretty demoralized, too. Wait 'till they find out the $20K per year for college they've been promised is only $20K if they've saved every penny they've earned while enlisted. GI Bill doesn't even come close to that amount.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']Michael Moore needs an ever expanding human misery toll to make a living. Period. The bigger human misery toll, the bigger his films and career become. I stand by everything I wrote.[/quote]

Maybe you've never seen his TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth, but Michael Moore does a lot to help people too but exposing fraud and hypocrisy in our elected officials. To say he is merely preying on other people's miseery to make a career is ludicrous. If that is your standard, should CNN and Fox News be denied their coverage of 9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraqi wars? MM showcased stories in F-9/11 that were woefully underreported in the major "liberal" media. And he has never been successfully sued for libel.
 
I also believe he is an NRA member, and he has been one for awhile, so I wouldnt say he is against guns, but wants them more regulated. I believe there is nothing wrong with that.
 
PittsburghAfterDark-
I couldn't disagree more with you "breakdown" of Moore's movies. Have you seen any of these films? Or did you form your views based on another source?
 
And to think all that from a worthless piece of entertainment (worthless in the political and information sense, entertainment-wise it was pretty damn good).
 
This is such horse shit. People protesting wars does not lower moral... especially when people are taking such care to "support the troop but not the war" as they do these days.

Back in the first gulf war, I was writing the same letter home to my folks as the kid in the movie, asking my parents and friends to protest the war and the dogmatic imperialism that led us to destablilize the region so we would have to go in there in the first place. I mailed Bush Sr continually pleading (ranting, I guess) against his warmongering ways.

And that Gulf War was peaches compared to this one.

What is lowering morale is the war... the reasons (or lack thereof) for it, the extended nature of it, the fact that these reservist and gaurd punks are being sent back again for another stay in what was already an unexpectedly long-visited hostile location.

If you want high morale, get your president to not get involved
a) in a war he doesn't have the proper active military to wage
b) in a war he has to justify with heaps of deception.
 
That's depressing. What is more (no pun intended) depressing is the fact that most of the liberals still take what Moore says as some sort insight.
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']If I had ever come across a movie like this making the rounds through my unit I would have confiscated it and destroyed it. If the "owner" wanted restitution I would have paid him $20 and been done with it. Sorry to say free speech proponents but that "right" doesn't exist in the military and my saftey and the saftey of soldiers is as dependent on morale as it is on the armor on tanks or sabot rounds they fire.[/quote]

You can't do that to people, especially soldiers who are fighting for freedom, they would frag you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top