December 9, 2003 11:53 PM
The house parties were quite a success. We estimate somewhere from 75,000 to 100,000 people saw the movie Sunday afternoon.
Missing from the evening were opposing voices. "There's an element of preaching to the choir here," Ann Smith, who owns the New School of Cooking in Culver City, said. "But the choir needs to sing a little louder. After seeing the film, a lot of people felt that they had a responsibility to get more involved. I've never had a party where I liked so many people! About 15 people stayed for about an hour and half after the screening, and they were going on and on about how great it was that this community of like-minded people had come together."
Moby called the film "powerful" and said that before seeing it, "I didn't realize the extent of the deceit. Everyone in the administration knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were no weapons of mass destruction."
In many ways, the house party phenom is a progressive flip to the way the Christian right used church socials and coffee klatches during the late 80s to mobilize "true believers" to pack school boards and other local offices with a bottom-up strategy that skewed the Republican party to the right. Now Bush's policies—and the lackluster scrutiny of those policies by major media outlets—are propelling progressives to mobilize with similar fervor. While the notion of having a house party to screen a political documentary might have drawn snores a few years ago, these days it's the basis for a movement.
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dump_bush: NEW
Uncovered is a great achievement in getting the word to people who can vote Bush out. Bush is a disgrace to America.
Wed Dec 10 2003 12:05 AM
Paul in OC: NEW
I just received my DVD yesterday. First thing I did was to watch the extra features. Quite interesting and a compelling reason to buy the DVD, even if you've already seen the movie.
In the extras, Producer Robert Greenwald explains the genesis of the idea for the movie, his intentions in producing it, and in a general way how they went about putting it together. By the way, Jim was mentioned as one of the key people who tracked down a lot of the television news and other footage.
Among the extras are also interviews which didn't make it into the movie. These are not cut up as much as in the movie, so you get a little bit more of a sense of the personalities of these people. Particularly interesting was the interview with the analyst who formed Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity as well as the always lucid Joseph Wilson. Mr. Wilson exhibits the knowledge, insight, patience, and speaking ability which I recall in a favorite college professor. What do I mean by that? He's good at explaining things in very clear and simple terms to non-experts. This is not an easy thing to do, believe me.
The documentary itself compares very favorably with a Frontline production, which is extremely high praise coming from me. It's not an emotional appeal, but an intellectual one, although you will have some very strong emotions after watching it. You'll feel a strong sense of disgust and betrayal. Watch it anyway. :)
Wed Dec 10 2003 2:25 PM
TIME FOR THE REWRITES TO START: NEW
Apparently the Iraq - al-Qaeda - September 11 link is is real after all. Does this mean distribution of the movie will stop while it is corrected?
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 14/12/2003)Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.
Tue Dec 16 2003 10:44 AM
DM Bock: NEW
The memo you refer to was later proven to be a hoax and only received media attention on Fox News.
Sun Jan 18 2004 8:14 PM
Learn more about me or read my blog. For the latest on my lung transplant situation, check on jim.
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