Michael Moore's lies

And more on Moore, this time from Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (neither is a right-winger in any way, shape, or form) of Newsweek. What did they learn?

Michael Moore claims Saudis "have given" $1.4B to business interests of George W. Bush's family and friends. Here's Isikoff/Hosenball's factual rejoinder:

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.

And the PAYMENT for services is not exactly a gift, either.

But wait, there's more.

Like many similar entities, Carlyle boasts a roster of bipartisan Washington power figures. Its founding and still managing partner is David Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas “Mack” McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Kennard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Spokesman Ullman was the Clinton-era spokesman for the SEC.

So Carlyle has Clintonites and Carterites thwarting the war on terror, according to Moore's "logic."

But there's more deception. Chris Lehane (former Gore campaign handler) wrote Newsweek that George W. Bush had been on the board of a Carlyle-owned company. That's true. But:

As for the president’s own Carlyle link, his service on the Caterair board ended when he quit to run for Texas governor -- a few months before the first of the Saudi contracts to the unrelated BDM firm was awarded.

In addition, the only action Bush has taken during his presidency that directly affects the Carlyle Group was to CANCEL a weapons system that a Carlyle subsidiary had contracted with the Clinton Administration to build.

But wait, in addition to the lies detailed above, you also get lies about Pres. Bush's dealings with the Taliban (that's Taleban to the Brits). Moore claims that Unocal, an oil company, wanted to run a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan in 1997 and the Taliban sent a delegation of negotiators to Houston to meet with Unocal execs that year. Bush's connection? He was governor of Texas -- completely irrelevant fact.

Moveover, the deal FELL THROUGH IN 1998 -- a fact never mentioned in Moore's film. And

Whatever the motive, the Unocal pipeline project was entirely a Clinton-era proposal: By 1998, as the Taliban hardened its positions, the U.S. oil company pulled out of the deal. By the time George W. Bush took office, it was a dead issue—and no longer the subject of any lobbying in Washington.

Added to this deception, Moore piles on by suggesting Bush went soft on the Taliban because a Taliban rep met with the State Department in March 2001. But the substance of the meeting (and the fact that the Unocal deal was dead for three years by this point) belies Moore's insinuations:

Nor is there any evidence anybody in the Bush administration raised it with him. The envoy brought a letter to Bush offering negotiations to resolve the issue of what should be done with bin Laden . . . The Taliban offer was promptly shot down. “We have not seen from the Taliban a proposal that would meet the requirements of the U.N. resolution to hand over Osama bin Laden to a country where he can be brought to justice,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at the time.

And these aren't all of the deceptions that Isikoff/Hosenball point out. Just read their whole piece.