Comments by Michael Moore

The following passages come from Mike’s Election Guide 2008 (Penguin Books, 183 pages), the latest book by Michael Moore, an Academy Award-winning film-maker who lives in Michigan. Americans finally vote for a new president on November 4.

“Did you say the words, 'weapons of mass destruction'? Take it back. I SAID TAKE IT BACK! I swear to God if I hear those words once more in my lifetime I’m going to punch somebody – and I’m a pacifist!

“No greater lie was ever spoken to the American people than the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That whopper bamboozled the country into war, a war that has brought death and injury of countless Iraqis and Americans. The vast majority of Americans initially supported the war and gave (U.S. president George W.) Bush an approval rating of 70 per cent. That’s how good a lie it was….

“A wise man once said, ‘Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.’ Our lazy, useless, gullible media starts with the assumption the government is telling them the truth, and only when someone from outside the mainstream presents the evidence that a lie has been told do journalists get off their butts and investigate anything. After eight years of a lying administration, you’d think the media would start with the assumption that their chain is getting jerked again….

“Sadly, (Republican candidate John) McCain’s sacrifice (in Vietnam) had nothing to do with protecting the United States. He was sent to Vietnam along with hundreds of thousands of others in an attempt to prop up what was essentially an American colony, South Vietnam, which was being run by a dictator whom we installed.

“Lest we all forget, the Vietnam War represented a mass slaughter by the United States government on a scale that sought to rival our genocide of the Native Americans…. The Vietnamese had done nothing to us. They had not bombed or invaded or even sought to murder a single American….

“During the nine years of the (Vietnam) war, not a single Vietnamese bomb was dropped on U.S. soil, not a single Vietnamese terrorist attack took place in the USA. But we poured 18 million gallons of poisonous chemicals on their villages and rice fields. The number of injured, wounded and severely deformed Vietnamese has never been counted because it’s just too huge for anyone to calculate, let alone comprehend.”

ARCHIVES