Jinn of Current Events

David Hardy: Bowling fails the first requirement of a documentary: some foundation in the truth. In his earlier works, Moore shifted dates and sequences for the sake of drama, but at least the events depicted did occur. Most of the time. Bowling breaks that last link with factual reality. It makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. The viewer is invited to draw inferences which the producer must have known were wrong. Dates are transposed and video carefully edited to create whatever effect is desired. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which he never uttered. 

Massive bombing against the Saddam regime in Baghdad. Following the initial focused bombing, the whereabouts of the Butcher of Baghdad and his sons remain uncertain. They may be dead, already.
 

OpinionJournal: With Hollywood in a fever pitch against the war in Iraq, Michael Moore is likely to win the Oscar for Best Documentary at Sunday's Academy Awards. Bowling for Columbine, Mr. Moore's work of anti-American propaganda, has grossed over $15 million, an amazing sum for a film billed as a documentary. But the film, a merry dissection of America's "culture of fear" and love of guns, is filled with so many inaccuracies and distortions that it ought to be classed as a work of fiction.

A documentary is, by definition, a non-fiction film, usually photographed on location, using actual people rather than actors and actual events rather than scripted stories. A self-professed documentary filled with intentional falsehoods is a fraud, dishonest and immoral. Calling it a "work of fiction" is an overly polite way of denying the genus of that definition. 

Donald Rumsfeld: The day of your liberation may soon be at hand. The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered.