Was it all just a dream?
God bless you, Florida! Thank you!
Did the last four years not really happen?
Look, there's Ben Affleck. He's often in my dreams.
And the taxi driver guy, he was there too.
And little Stevie Wonder, he seemed so happy, like a miracle had taken place.
Was it a dream or was it real?
It was election night 2000 and everything seemed to be going as planned.
In New York, Al Gore is our projected winner. The Garden State is green for Gore.
that Mr. Gore is the winner in Delaware. This state has voted with the winner in Delaware.
Excuse me one second, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Mike, you know I wouldn't do this if
it weren't big. Florida goes for Al Gore.
CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column.
Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guys
If I interrupt you, Fox News now projects George W. Bush, the winner in Florida and
thus it appears, the winner of the presidency of the United States.
All of a sudden, the other network said,
hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.
All of us at the networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column.
It was our mistake.
Now, what most people don't know is that the man who was in charge of the decision desk
at Fox that night, the man who called it for Bush, was none other than Bush's first cousin,
John Ellis.
How does someone like Bush get away with something like this?
We'll see you next week.
Well, first, it helps if your brother is the governor of the state in question.
You know something? We are going to win Florida. Mark my words, you can write it down.
Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman and that her
state has hired a company that's going to knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely
to vote for you.
You can usually tell them by the color of their skin.
Then make sure your side fights like it's life or death.
I think all this talk about legitimacy is way overblown.
And hope that the other side will just sit by and wait for the phone to ring.
And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes...
if there was a statewide recount under every scenario who won the election.
It won't matter.
Just as long as all your daddy's friends
on the Supreme Court vote the right way.
While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it.
What we need now is acceptance.
We have a new president-elect.
Huh, it turns out none of this was a dream.
It's what really happened.
On the day the joint session of both the House of Representatives and the Senate was to certify the election results,
Al Gore, in his dual role as outgoing Vice President and President of the Senate,
presided over the event that would officially anoint George W. Bush as the new president.
If any congressman wanted to raise an objection,
the rules insisted that he or she had to have the signed support of just one senator.
Mr. President, and I take great pride in calling you there, I must object because of the overwhelming
evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress the program now.
The Chair must remind members that under Section 18 of Title III, United States Code, no debate
is allowed in the joint session.
Thank you, Mr. President. To answer your question, Mr. President, the objection is in writing signed by a number of members of the House of Representatives, but not by a member of the Senate.
Mr. President, it is in writing and signed by several House colleagues on behalf and
myself of the 27,000 voters of Duval County in which 16,000 of them are African-Americans
that was disenfranchised in this last election.
is the objection signed by a member of the Senate.
not signed by a member of the Senate, the Senate is missing.
Mr. President, it is in writing and signed by myself on behalf of many of the diverse
constituents in our country, especially those in the 9th congressional district
and all American voters who recognize that the Supreme Court,
not the people of the United States, decided this election.
Is the objection signed by a senator?
Unfortunately, Mr. President, it is not signed by one single senator.
Unfortunately, I have no authority over the United States Senate, and no senator has signed.
Mr. President, it is in writing and signed by myself and several of my constituents from Florida.
A senator is needed, but missing.
Is the objection in writing and signed by a member of the House and a senator?
The objection is in writing and I don't care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.
The chair will advise that the rules do care, and the signature of the senator will give
Not a single senator came to the aid of the African Americans in Congress.
One after another, they were told to sit down and shut up.
And it's a sad day in America, Mr. President, where we can't find a senator to sign the
objections.
The gentleman will suspend.
He won't sign the objections, Mr. President.
The gentleman will suspend.
Inauguration coverage, 2001, on a nasty but it could be worse kind of day in Washington.
On the day George W. Bush was inaugurated, tens of thousands of Americans poured into
the streets of D.C. in one last attempt to reclaim what had been taken from them.
They pelted Bush's limo with eggs.
and brought the inauguration parade to a halt.
The plan to have Bush get out of the limo for the traditional walk to the White House was scrapped.
Bush's limo hit the gas to prevent an even larger riot.
No president had ever witnessed such a thing on his inauguration day.
And, for the next eight months, it didn't get any better for George W. Bush.
He couldn't get his judges appointed.
He had trouble getting his legislation passed, and he lost Republican control of the Senate.
His approval ratings in the polls began to sink.
He was already beginning to look like a lame duck president.
With everything going wrong, he did what any of us would do.
He went on vacation.
In his first eight months in office before September 11th, George W. Bush was on vacation
according to the Washington Post, 42% of the time.
I hate every shot good, people would say I wasn't working.
It was not surprising that mr. Bush needed some time on being president is a lot of work
these folks that say you're loafing here in Texas that you're taking too long of
a vacation they don't understand the definition of work
I'm getting a lot done.
Secondly, you don't have to be in Washington to work.
It's amazing.
What can happen with telephones and faxes and uh...
Sister Destiny, huh?
Yep.
What are you doing the rest of the day?
Uh, Karen Hughes is coming over.
We're working on some things.
She'll be over here.
We're working on a few things, a few matters.
I'm working on some initiatives where you'll see.
I mean, there'll be some decisions that we've made while I'm here,
and we'll be announcing them.
as time goes on.
The first time I met him, he had some good advice for me.
Come to Bush, it's Michael Moore
Don't find real work
and work with something he knew a lot about.
Anybody want some grits?
Relaxing at Camp David, yachting off Kenny Bunkport.
or being a cowboy on the ranch in Texas.
I love the nature. I love to get in the pickup truck with my dogs.
Oh, hi.
George Bush spent the rest of August at the ranch, where life was less complicated.
Armadale love to dig the soil looking for bugs
So, I went out there the other day and there was Barney.
It was a summer to remember and when it was over he left Texas for his second
favorite place. On September 10th he joined his brother in Florida where they
looked at files and met important Floridians.
He went to sleep at night in a bed made with fine French linens.
I suppose he's pretty confident on those numbers on Iraqi security forces.
sort of air noise. Yeah, just don't turn up too much so I don't want to blow my head off.
I got I got a mic here. Testing one two, this is the old office. Testing one two, this is the old office.
Testing one two three four five.
We have something that has happened here at the World Trade Center.
We noticed flame and an awful lot of smoke.
It's horrible!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is so cold!
On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people, including a colleague of mine, Bill Weems,
were killed in the largest foreign attack ever on American soil.
The targets were the financial and military headquarters of the United States.
If anyone has any idea of if they've seen him or knows where he is to call us,
he's got two little babies.
As the attack took place, Mr. Bush was on his way to an elementary school in Florida.
When informed of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center,
where terrorists had struck just eight years prior,
Mr. Bush decided to go ahead with his photo opportunity.
One voice in the room.
Good morning, Mrs. Warren.
Read this word the best way.
Get ready.
Yes, ma'am.
Get ready.
Okay, get ready to read the words on this page without making a mistake.
When the second plane hit the tower, his chief of staff entered the classroom and told Mr. Bush,
the nation is under attack.
not knowing what to do with no one telling him what to do and no secret
service rushing in to take him to safety. Mr. Bush just sat there and
continued to read my pet goat with the children.
Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything.
As Bush said in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he should have shown up to work more often?
Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counter-terrorism?
Or maybe Mr. Bush was wondering why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI.
Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001,
which said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.
But maybe he wasn't worried about the terrorist threat, because the title of the report was too vague.
I believe the title was Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.
A report like that might make some men jump, but as in days past, George W. just went fishing.
As the minutes went by, George Bush continued to sit in the classroom.
Was he thinking, I've been hanging out with the wrong crowd?
which one of them screwed me was it the guy my daddy's friends delivered a lot
of weapons to was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my
state when I was governor
Damn, it was them. I think I better blame it on this guy.
In the days following September 11th, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded.
The FAA has taken the action to close all of the airports in the United States.
Even grounding the president's father, former President Bush, on a flight forced to land in Milwaukee.
Thousands of travelers were stranded, among them, Ricky Martin, due to appear at tonight's Latin Grammy Awards.
Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one. Except the Binladins.
We had some airplanes authorized at the highest levels of our government to fly to pick up
Osama bin Laden's family members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of
this country.
It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the bin Laden's and numerous
other Saudis.
At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the
bin Laden's out of the U.S. after September 13.
In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the Bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.
Osama's always been portrayed as the bad apple, the black sheep in the family, and
then they cut off all relationship with him around 1994. In fact, things are much
more complicated than that. You mean Osama has had contact with other family members?
That's right. In the summer of 2001, just before 9-11, one of Osama's sons got married in Afghanistan,
and several family members showed up at the wedding.
Belong.
That's right.
So they've not cut off completely.
That's really an exaggeration.
We now welcome to Larry King Live, good to see him again. Prince Bandar, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States.
We had about 24 members of the Belladins family, and in America, students, and His Majesty felt it's not fair for those innocent people to be subjected.
to any harm. In the other hand, we understood the high emotions, so with coordination with
the FBI, we got them all out.
This is retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan.
Before 9-11, he was a senior agent on the joint FBI CIA Al-Qaeda task force.
I, as an investigator, would not want these people to have left.
I think in the case of the Bin Laden family, I think it would have been prudent, hand the
subpoenas out, have them come in, get on the record.
You know get on the record. That's the proper procedure. Yeah
How many people were pulled off of airlines after that coming into the country who or what they were from the Middle East or they fit a
Very general picture we held hundreds of we held hundreds and I weeks and months at a time
Did the authorities do anything when the midlands tried to leave the country?
No, they were identified at the airport, they looked at their passports and they were identified.
Well, that's what would happen to you, or I, if we were.
Exactly, exactly.
So a little bit of huge at this point, what else?
Nothing.
I don't know about you, but usually when the police can't find a murderer, don't they
usually want to talk to the family members to find out where they think he might be?
a day away as it might be.
Why don't you hear anything, let us know, will you?
You willing to come downtown, give us a statement?
This going to take long?
You got the time?
Mine's worth money, yours isn't.
Set in a bill.
I asked you a question.
You're going to answer them, not ask them.
Now, you'll listen to me, cop.
I pay your sir.
All right, sit down, I'm going to earn it.
I think we need to know a lot more about that.
That needs to be the subject of a significant investigation.
What happened, how did it happen, why did it happen,
and who authorized it?
Try to imagine what those poor bastards were feeling.
When they were jumping out of that building to their death,
those young guys and cops and firemen that ran into that building
never asked a question, and they're dead.
and families' lives are ruined, and they'll never have peace.
And if I had to inconvenience...
A member of the Bin Laden family with a subpoena or a grand jury, do you think I'd lose any
sleep over it?
Not for a minute.
No one would question it.
No, it's right, not even the biggest civil libertarian.
No, it's just, you know, you got a lawyer, you're fine, counsel's fine.
Mr. Bin Laden, this is why I'm asking you.
It's not because I think it's your anything.
I just want to ask you the questions that I would anybody.
And that's all.
None of this made any sense.
Can you imagine in the days after the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing, President Clinton helping
to arrange a trip out of the country for the McVeigh family?
What do you think would have happened to Clinton if that had been revealed?
Bend out, do you know the Ben Laden family?
I do very well.
What do they like?
They're really lovely human beings.
He is the only one I never, I don't know him.
Well, I met him only once.
What was the circumstance under which you met him?
This is ironic. In mid-80s, if you remember, we and the United States were supporting the
Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He came to thank me for my efforts
to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheist, he sent the communists.
Because he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him, and now he may be
responsible for bombing America.
What did you make of him when you met him?
I was not impressed, to be honest with you.
No, he was... I thought he was simple and very quiet.
Hmm, a simple and quiet guy, whose family just happened to have a business relationship
with the family of George W. Bush.
Is that what he was thinking about?
Because if the public knew this, it wouldn't look very good.
Was he thinking, you know, I need a big black marker.
In a speech during the New Hampshire primary, I called George W. Bush a
deserter from his time in the Texas Air National Guard.
In response, the White House released his military records in the hopes of disproving
the charge.
What Bush didn't know is that I already had a copy of his military records, uncensored,
obtained in the year 2000, and there is one glaring difference between the records released
in 2000 and those he released in 2004.
A name had been blacked out.
In 1972, two airmen were suspended for failing to take their medical examination.
One was George W. Bush.
And the other was James R. Bath.
In 2000, the documents show both names, but in 2004, Bush and the White House had Bath's name blacked out.
Why didn't Bush want the press and the public to see Bath's name on his military records?
Perhaps he was worried that the American people would find out that at one time James
R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens.
Bush and Bath had become good friends when they both served in the Texas Air National Guard.
After they were discharged, when Bush's dad was head of the CIA, Bath opened up his own aviation business,
after selling a plane to a man by the name of Salim Bin Laden.
Air to the second largest fortune in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Bin Laden Group.
W at that time was just starting off in the world as a business man because he's a guy who's always tried to emulate his father
He decided to go into the oil business. He founded an oil company
a drilling company out in West Texas called our Busto, which was very, very good at drilling
dry holes that nothing came out of, but the question has always been where did this money
come from?
Now his dad was rich, his dad could have done this for him, but his dad didn't do this
for him.
There's no indication that daddy wrote a check to start him off in this company.
So where did George W. Bush get his money?
I'm George Bush.
One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath.
Bush's good friend, James Bath, was hired by the Bin Laden family to manage their money
in Texas and invest in businesses.
And James Bath himself, in turn, invested in George W. Bush.
Bush ran our boost out into the ground, as he did every other company he was involved in,
until finally one of his companies was bought by Harkin Energy,
and they gave him a seat on their board.
A lot of us have suspected through the years that there has been Saudi oil money involved
in all of these companies, Harkon, Spectrum 7, our Busto drilling, all of the Bush companies.
Whenever they got into trouble, there were these angel investors who flowed money into
the companies.
So the question is, why would Saudis who had all the oil in the world go around the globe
to invest in this lousy oil company?
And the thing is, it had one big asset,
Harken had one thing going for it,
which is that George W. Bush was on its border directors
at a time when his father was president of the United States.
when you're the president's son, and you've got unlimited access combined with some credentials
from a prior campaign in Washington, D.C., people tend to respect that. Access is power,
and I can find my dad and talk to him any time of the day.
Yes, it helps to be the president's son, especially when you're being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In 1990, when Mr. Bush was a director of Harkin Energy, he received this memo from company lawyers, warning directors not to sell stock if they had unfavorable information about the company.
One week later, he sold $848,000 worth of Harkin stock.
Two months later, Harkin announced losses of more than $23 million.
The James Baker Law partner who helped Bush beat the rap from the SEC was a man by the
name of Robert Jordan, who, when George W. became president, was appointed ambassador to
Saudi Arabia.
After the Harken debacle, the Friends of Bush's dad got him a seat on another board of a company owned by the Carlisle Group.
We wanted to look at which companies actually gained from September 11th. Turned up this company Carlisle Group.
The Carlisle Group is a multinational conglomerate that invests in heavily government regulated industries like telecommunications, healthcare and particularly defense.
Both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush worked for the Carlyle Group, the same company that
counted the Bin Laden family among its investors.
Carlisle Group was holding its annual investor conference on the morning of
September 11 in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington DC. At that meeting were
all of the Carlisle regulars. James Baker, likely John Major, definitely George
H.W. Bush, though he left the morning of September 11. Shafiq bin Laden
who was Osama bin Laden's half-brother and was in town to look after his family's investments
in the Karla group.
All of them together in one room watching as the planes hit the towers and that in fact
the bin Laden family was invested in one of their defense funds, which ironically meant
that as the United States started increasing its
defense spending, the Bin Laden family
stood to gain from those investments
through the Karla group.
Our Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush.
With all the weapons companies at home, the Carla Group was, in essence, the
eleventh largest defense contractor in the United States. It owned United
Defense. Makers of the Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle. September 11th guaranteed
that United Defense was going to have a very good year.
Just six weeks after 9-11, Carlisle filed to take United Defense public and in December
made a one-day profit of $237 million.
But sadly, with so much attention.
focused on the Bin Laden family being important Carlisle investors. The Bin
Lottens eventually had to withdraw. Bush's dad though stayed on as senior
advisor to Carlisle's Asia board for another two years.
As unseemly as it seemed to know that George H.W. Bush was meeting with the Bin Laden family
while Osama was a wanted terrorist, well before September 11th.
It's very discomforting for Americans to know that.
George H.W. Bush is a man who has obviously incredible reach into the White House.
He receives daily CIA briefings, which is the right of any ex-president, but very few
ex-presidents actually exercise that right.
He does.
And I think in a very real way, they are benefiting.
fitting from the confusion that arises when George H.W. Bush visits Saudi Arabia on behalf
of Carlisle.
and meets with the royal family and meets with the Bin Laden family.
Is he representing the United States of America
or is he representing an investment firm in the United States of America
or is he representing both? This company is about money. It's not about conspiracies
to run the world or engineer political maneuvering
and things like that. It's about making money and it's about making a lot of money
and they've done very well.
I can get you on the record on this question.
In the White House view, there is no ethical conflict in former President Bush and former
Secretary of State, Jim Baker, using their contacts with world leaders to represent one
of the most well-known military arms dealers, the Carlisle Group.
The president has full faith that his family will conform with all proper ethics laws,
all ethics laws, and will act properly in their conduct.
Okay, so let's say one group of people, like the American people, pay you $400,000 a year
to be president of the United States.
But then another group of people invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses
1.4 billion dollars over a number of years.
Who are you gonna like?
Who's your daddy?
Because that's how much the Saudi royals and their associates have given the Bush family.
They're friends and they're related businesses.
It's like a very nice reunion with friends.
Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in the morning, they might
be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you or me?
Yeah, you know, I tell you, I tell you, I tell you.
Because 1.4 billion just doesn't buy a lot of flights out of the country.
It buys a lot of love.
Take care of your love, take care of your love
There's all this love in your heart
Sooner or later, this special relationship with a regime that amnancy international condemns as a widespread human rights violator would come back to haunt the bushes.
Now, after 9-11, it was an embarrassment, and they preferred that no one asked any questions.
The investigation should have begun on September 12th.
There's no reason why it shouldn't have.
3,000 people were dead.
It was a murder, and it should have gotten started immediately.
First, Bush tried to stop Congress from setting up its own 9-11 investigation.
When he couldn't stop Congress, he then tried to stop an independent 9-11 commission from being formed.
The president's position was a break from history.
Independent investigations were launched within days of Pearl Harbor
and President Kennedy's assassination.
But when Congress did complete its own investigation, the Bush White House censored 28 pages of the report.
The president is being pressed by all sides to declassify the report.
U.S. officials tell NBC News most of the secret sources involve Saudi Arabia.
We have given an extraordinary cooperation with Chairman Kane and Hamilton.
We haven't gotten the materials we needed and we certainly haven't gotten them in a timely fashion, the deadlines we set have passed.
Were you testifying before the commission?
This commission? You know, I don't testify. I mean, I'd be glad to visit with them.
What I do is hold this in my heart.
and has been in my heart since September 11th.
I lost my husband 15 years.
I am now by myself.
I need to know what happened to him.
I know what I got back from the autopsy, that man was my life and I have no plan.
I was taking a class and they asked me what was I going to do in the next five years.
And if I'm not doing something with this, I don't know what reason I have to live.
So it's very important.
Ignored by the Bush administration, more than 500 relatives of 9-11 victims filed suit against Saudi royals and others.
The lawyers, the Saudi defense minister hired to fight the 9-11 families?
The law firm of Bush Family Confident, James A. Baker.
So we're right here in the center of three important American landmarks, the
Watergate Hotel and Office Building, the Kennedy Center over there, and the
Embassy of Saudi Arabia.
How much money do the Saudis have invested in America roughly?
I've heard figures as high as $860 billion.
$860 billion.
That's a lot of money.
A lot.
And what percentage of our economy does that represent?
I mean, it seems like a lot.
Well, in terms of investments on Wall Street and American equities, it's roughly six or seven
percent of America. They own a fairly good slice of America.
And most of that money goes into the great blue-chip companies.
You, uh, city groups, city bank is the largest stock holder is the Saudi, uh, AOL Time Warner has big Saudi investors.
So I read where, like, the Saudis have a trillion dollars in our banks, of their money.
What would happen if, like, one day you just pulled that trillion dollars out?
A trillion dollars? That would be an enormous blow to the economy.
Right, right.
Yeah, that's good. How you doing?
We can't really see the service how you use it.
Yes.
We're just entertaining information regarding the documentary regarding the Saudi Arabia
embassy in the sanctuary.
No, I am doing a documentary, and part of it is about Saudi Arabia.
Even though we were nowhere near the White House, for some reason the Secret Service had shown
up to ask us what we were doing standing across the street from the Saudi embassy.
No, that's fine, we just wanted to get some information as far as actually what's going on
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I didn't realize the Secret Service cared for foreign embassies.
Usually, no sir. No, no. They give you any trouble? Sotties? No comment on this.
Oh, okay.
It turns out that Saudi prince band-hours perhaps the best protected ambassador in the U.S.
The U.S. State Department provides him with a six-man security detail.
Considering how he and his family and the Saudi elite own seven percent of America,
it's probably not a bad idea.
Prince Bandar was so close to the bushes they considered him a member of the family and
they even had a nickname for him, Bandar Bush.
Two nights after September 11th, George Bush invited Bandar Bush over to the White House
for a private dinner and a talk.
Even though bin Laden was a Saudi, and Saudi money had funded al-Qaeda,
And 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.
Here was the Saudi ambassador casually dining with the president on September 13th.
What were they talking about?
Were they commiserating or comparing notes?
Block American investigators from talking to the relatives of the 15 hijackers.
Why would Saudi Arabia become reluctant to freeze the hijackers' assets?
The two of them walked out on the Truman balcony so that Bandar could smoke a cigar and have
a drink.
In the distance across the Potomac was the Pentagon, partially in ruins.
I wonder if Mr. Bush told Prince Bandar not to worry, because he already had a plan in
motion.
You come in September 12th, ready to plot what response we take to al-Qaeda.
Let me talk about the response that you got from top administration officials.
On that day, what did the president say to you?
The president in a very intimidating way left us, me and my staff, with the clear indication
that he wanted us to come back with a word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9-11 because
they had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office.
Did he ask about any other nations other than Iran?
No, no, no, no.
Not at all.
Iraq, Saddam, find out, get back to me.
And were his questions more about Iraq than about Al Qaeda?
Absolutely.
He didn't ask me about Al Qaeda.
And the reaction you got that day from the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, from his
assistant, Paul Wolfowitz.
Well, Donald Rumsfeld said, when we talked about bombing the Al Qaeda infrastructure
in Afghanistan, he said, there were no good targets in Afghanistan.
Let's bomb Iraq.
And we said the Iraq had nothing to do with this, and that didn't seem to make much difference.
And the reason they had to do Afghanistan first was it was obvious that Al Qaeda had attacked us,
and it was obvious that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.
The American people wouldn't have stood by if we had done nothing on Afghanistan.
This began bombing Afghanistan just four weeks after 9-11.
Mr. Bush said he was doing so because the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been
harboring bin Laden.
We'll smoke him out of their holes.
We're in smoke him out.
Smoke him out.
Smoke him out of his cave.
That's Rushman.
Smoke him out.
All his tough talk. Bush really didn't do much.
But what they did was slow and small, they put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan.
There are more police here in Manhattan, more police here in Manhattan than there are U.S.
troops in Afghanistan.
Basically, the President botched the response tonight.
11.
It should have gone right after bin Laden.
U.S. Special Forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was for two months.
Two months?
A mass murderer who attacked the United States was given a two-month head start.
Yay. Anybody say nice shot?
Nice shot.
Hell of a shot.
Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else?
Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.
In 1997, while George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders
from Afghanistan, flew to Houston to meet with unical executives to discuss the building
of a pipeline through Afghanistan, bringing natural gas from a Caspian Sea, and who got
a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day unicals signed the pipeline deal, a company
headed by a man named Dick Cheney, Halliburton.
On the point of view of the U.S. government, this was kind of a magic pipeline because it could serve so many purposes.
And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline?
Bush's number one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay, and the good people of Enron.
Only the British press covered this trip.
Then in 2001, just five and a half months before 9-11,
the Bush administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States
to help improve the image of the Taliban government.
You have imprisoned the women.
It's a horror, let me tell you.
and I'm really sorry to your husband,
he may have a very difficult time.
Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department to meet with U.S. officials.
Why on earth would the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader to visit the United States,
knowing that the Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies?
Well, I guess 9-11 put a stop to that.
When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete,
We installed its new president, Hamad Karzai, who was Hamad Karzai.
He was a former advisor to Unikal.
Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmei Kalizat, who was also a former Unikal
advisor.
I guess you can probably see where this is leading.
Faster than you can say black gold, Texas tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with
their neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from
the Caspian Sea.
Oh, and the Taliban?
As did Osama bin Laden in most of al-Qaeda.
Terror is bigger than one person.
And he's just, he's a person who's now been marginalized.
So I don't know where he is.
Nor do I, you know, I just don't spend that much time on him.
He'll be honest with you.
Didn't spend much.
time on him? What kind of...
I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.
With the war in Afghanistan over and bin Laden forgotten, the war president had a new target.
We've got an unusual terror warning from the feds to tell you about Fox News
has obtained an FBI bulletin that warns terrorists could use pen guns just like
in James Bond filled with poison as weapons. Good evening everyone America is
on high alert tonight just four days before Christmas a possible terror threat
as bad as or worse than 9-11.
But where, how?
There's nothing specific to report.
Be on the lookout for model airplanes packed with explosives.
and the FBI's warning fairies may be considered particularly at risk for
hijacking. Could these cattle be a target for terrorists?
Fear does work. Yes. You can make people do anything if they're afraid.
And how do you make them afraid?
Well, you make them afraid by creating an aura of endless threat.
They played us like an organ.
They raised the orange and then up to red and then they dropped it back to orange.
I mean, they gave these mixed message which we're crazy making.
The world has changed after September the 11th.
It's changed because we're no longer safe.
Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots.
We have entered what may very well prove to be the most dangerous security environment
the world has known.
Take your families and enjoy life.
Terrorists are doing everything they can to gain even deadlier means of striking us.
Get down to Disney World in Florida.
It's like a training a dog.
You tell them to sit down and you tell them to roll over at the same time.
Dog doesn't know what to do.
Well, the American people are being treated like that.
It was really very, very skillfully and ugly in what they did.
We must stop the terror.
I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.
They will continue, in my view, as long as this administration is in charge of every once
in a while stimulating everybody to be afraid.
Just in case you forgot, it's not going to go down to green or blue, it's never going
to get there.
There clearly is
no way that anyone can live constantly on edge like that.
The harsh reality facing American families today is that they're not as safe as they used to be.
drug dealers and users looking for their next fix,
gangs who roam the streets in search of their next victim,
and the growing threat of terrorists
means the need for protection is ever greater.
And now that protection is here,
Zitek Engineering LLC has developed and tested a safe road
finally affordable to the average American citizen,
the kind of protection formally obtainable only by the wealthy or powerful.
You can be sitting in here drinking your finest bordeaux and enjoying life while chaos is erupting outside.
Every family in America should prepare itself for a terrorist attack.
Now to escaping from a skyscraper, John Rivers is the CEO of the Executive Shoot Corporation.
Good morning to you, John.
Good morning, Matt.
Tell me about the product you're bringing to the market.
It's an emergency excapeshoot.
It's an option of last resort.
How high do you have to be in the building for that shoot to actually take effect?
You only have to be on the 10th floor or above they can put this on themselves
Right, they can put this on themselves in as easy as about 30 seconds. It's real easy to put on
It's okay. It's really easy to put on, but
When you first get this, you're going to want to put it on and try it on a few times
yourself.
You're having trouble putting that thing on, I want to mention.
Is this something that you honestly think in a moment of panic that someone can operate
properly?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. It's this is actually Jamie's probably never put this thing on before in her life, so
it's okay don't worry about it's it's something that when you get it you're
going to want to put it on several times oh despite the raising of the terror
alert level residents here in Saginaw are continuing with their Christmas errands
Frances Troy can her family do some last-minute holiday shopping knowing
that al-qaeda is planning to attack America she says being in Saginaw doesn't
make her feel any safer than if she was in New York City
Midlet is close by and I said Detroit's that far that far away. I said they can be sudden
and flintlets can be some being concerns for people around here. Well you never know where
they're going to head. You never know where they're going to head.
but one potential target specifically mentioned by the terrorist has security officials baffled
its tiny tapahannic virginia population two thousand sixteen
such an attack could generate widespread fear
that even here in rural small-town america
no one is entirely safe
on the six o'clock news that was something but uh...
terrorist alert tapahannic
Basically, let me know about this word, tapahannock.
That's how it started.
And they're so-called chatter that they pick up.
They wasn't sure tapahannock.
It is a Rappahannock County.
This is the Rappahannock River.
There is a wrap-a-hannock, a place called wrap-a-hannock and they get it mixed up.
Is there any terrorist target around here? Not that we can really think of it can happen anywhere. We have a Walmart here
You feel extra suspicious of outsiders?
Oh well, everybody does it.
It's just something that happens.
when i look at certain people i wonder oh my goodness do you think they could be a terrorist
You never know what's going on, man.
You never know what's going on.
And even if you do know, and you really can't trust them then.
From Tappahannock to Rappahannock to every town and village in America, the
people were afraid, and they turned to their leader to protect them, but protect
them from what?
From glad the eagles
like she's never
before
from rocky coast
to golden shore
Meet John Ashcroft. In 2000, he was running for re-election as Senator from Missouri against a man who died the month before the election.
The voters preferred the dead guy. So George W. Bush made him his Attorney General.
He was sworn in on a stack of Bibles, because when you can't beat a dead guy, you need all the help you can get.
During the summer before 9-11, Ashcroft told acting FBI director Thomas Picard that he didn't want to hear anything more about terrorist threats.
Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would
be an attack.
You said that you told the Attorney General this fact repeatedly in these meetings.
Is that correct?
I've told them at least on two occasions.
And you told the staff, according to this statement, that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore.
Is that correct?
his own FBI knew that summer that there were al-Qaeda members in the U.S., and that bin Laden
was sending his agents to flight schools around the country.
But Ashcroft's Justice Department turned a blind eye in a deaf ear.
But after 9-11, John Ashcroft had some brilliant ideas for how to protect America.
The USA Patriot Act adopted by Congress and signed by Bush six weeks after the attacks
has changed the way the government does business.
The USA Patriot Act allows for searches of medical and financial records,
computer and telephone conversations, and even for the books you take out of the library.
But most of the people we spoke to say they're willing to give up some liberties to fight terrorism.
Maybe that's a good thing.
It's definitely sad, but it has to be done.
Yes, something needed to be done.
These are the good people who make up Peace Fresno,
a community group in Fresno, California.
Unlike the rest of us, they've received an early lesson
in what the Patriot Act is all about.
Each week they meet to discuss matters of peace.
They sit around, they share stories, they eat cookies.
Some have more than one.
This is Aaron Stokes, a member of Peace Fresno.
The other members like them.
He had come to the meetings. He went with us. We'd go out on Friday nights and stand on a very busy corner in Fresno.
And he had gone with us. He had handed out flyers. He went with us in June to a WTO protest.
Then one day, Aaron didn't show up to the meeting.
My friend Dan and I were reading the Sunday newspaper, and when I picked up the paper in the local section, Aaron's picture caught my eye.
The article said that a sheriff's deputy had been killed, and I saw it had a name that wasn't the right name, and it said that he was a member of the sheriff's anti-terrorism unit.
That's right. The photo of the man in the newspaper was not the Aaron Stokes they had come to know.
He was actually Deputy Aaron Kilner, and he had infiltrated their group.
Sheriff Pierce made it very clear that yes, in fact,
Aaron Killer was assigned to Infiltrate Peace Prize now,
that he was able to infiltrate organizations that are open to the public.
You could understand why the police needed to spy on a group like Peace Fresno.
Just look at them.
A gathering of terrorists if I ever saw one.
This is Barry Reingold, a retired phone worker from Oakland, California.
Berry likes to work out in the gym.
somewhere between his cardio and his strength training. Barry got political.
We're up in the gym and it was...
After we were working out and a number of us were talking about 9-11 and Afghanistan and
Min Laden and someone said, Min Laden is a real asshole for murdering those people and
I said, yeah, that's true, but he'll never be as big an asshole as Bush who bombs all
over the world for oil profits.
Barry didn't have to worry about the police spying on him.
His fellow weightlifters were more than willing to turn him in.
I was taking an app, and I guess it was 1.32 o'clock in the afternoon, and they came to my place, and I said, well, who's there?
And I said, the FBI. I said, the FBI. I mean, why are they here?
Yes, the FBI had come to see Barry and they weren't there to jazzercise.
The FBI said, have you been talking to people about 9-11 and about Bin Laden and oil profits
in Afghanistan?
I said a lot of people were talking about these things.
I feel my rights have been, you know, trampled on.
I mean, if you have something to say to me in the gym, well then, fine, don't tell
the FBI and they come to my apartment while I'm taking a nap.
There's nothing to be ashamed of.
ashamed of here. There's full transparency. There's nothing about the Patriot Act that
I'm ashamed of in any way.
shape or form. I have a 1-800 number. Call me. I'm the guy you call if there's a violation
or abuse. If you've got a poster child on this, I want to see it. That's what I do.
I'm hired by the people of the United States to provide oversight. I provide oversight.
Trent Lott said the day the bill was introduced, maybe now we can do things we've wanted to
do for the last 10 years.
No, I've always, you know, a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier.
It's no question about it.
I mean, they had all this on the shelf somewhere.
Ideas of things they would like to do.
And they got 9-11 and they said, it's our chance.
Go for it.
There was an immediate assumption on the part of the administration
that there had to be a surrender of certain of our rights.
There's several definitions in the bill that are quite troubling.
First of all, the definition of terrorists, and it's so expansive that it could include
people who...
Who and me?
No one read it. That's the whole point. They wait till the middle of the night.
They drop it in the middle of the night. It's printed in the middle of the night.
And the next morning when we come in, it passes.
How could Congress pass this Patriot Act without even reading it?
Sit down, my son.
We don't read most of the bills.
Do you really know what that would entail if we were to read every bill that we passed?
Well, the good thing, it was slow down the legislative process.
I couldn't believe that virtually no member of Congress had read the Patriot Act before
voting on it, so I decided the only patriotic thing to do was for me to read it to them.
Members of Congress, this is Michael Moore. I would like to read to you the U.S.
8th degree to section 1, section 210 of this code, raise this column.
That job is to secure the homeland. That's exactly what we're going to do.
But I'm here to take somebody
He's ordered.
That would be you, stress, what would you like?
Right behind you, please.
I'm gonna order some ribs.
We all know you can't secure the homeland on an empty stomach, and in order to remain secure, everyone needs to sacrifice, especially little Patrick Hamilton.
I'm sure each of us has our own personal airport security horror story.
But here's my favorite.
The terrorist threat that was posed by his mommy's breast milk.
I thought, well, if I just put a little bit on my lips then that would be sufficient because
obviously I'm tasting it and she looked at me and I felt like she was telling me you
need to chug that.
She goes, no, you need to drink more.
And of a four ounce bottle I wound up drinking two more ounces of breast milk that then because
it's touched my lips has to be tossed.
While Homeland Security was making sure breast milk was kept off our planes
They were also doing everything possible to ensure no one could light a fire bomb on board
Actually, you can yes, you're fine. Oops one too many books of matches
You can have four books of matches and two lighters
when we already have the experience of richard read the shoe bomber
uh... who would have
blown up an airplane with the shoe bomb he had a butane lighter according to fbi
why would the transportation security agencies say it's okay to take four
books and matches in two butane letters in your pockets as your board
airplane
i'm guessing that's
somebody put pressure on them to say you know when an airplane lands people
want to light up pretty quickly so don't take their lighters away. Okay let me
see if I got this straight. Old guys in the gym, bad, peace groups in Fresno, bad,
breast milk, really bad. But matches and lighters on the plane, hey no problem.
Was this really about our safety or was something else going on?
This is where the Pacific Ocean meets the shores of Oregon, over 100 miles of beautiful, open coastline on our border, and thanks to the budget cutbacks.
The total number of state police protecting it?
I maybe get a chance to hit this stretch a highway once, maybe twice, a week during my shifts.
You know, it's just to even drive up here and look.
You know, I mean, as far as I know, somebody could, there's lots of things they could do.
I don't even want to expect because it just makes me ill inside.
Back at the state trooper patrol office, thanks to the budget cuts, Trooper Kenyon had to come in on his day off to catch up on some paperwork.
For the most part, especially during the summertime, when people show up here, this is exactly what they get to close the door.
They can read the sign about the office closure, and it just basically explains that, you know, due to our cutbacks, our office is not open for administrative business.
And there's a little sign down at the bottom that explains when the office is closed.
that they can use the phone booth to get in touch with our dispatch. Ironically enough that phone is
a piece of junk. It doesn't work very well so half the time they pick up the phone and dispatch
gets a bunch of static and
They don't hear anything.
For Tuesday, there'll be no troop on patrol.
Wednesday, there'll be no troop on patrol.
Thursday, there'll be no troop on patrol.
You get calls all the time.
People will call on a suspicious vehicle
or somebody looking to...
and I don't hardly ever respond to that anymore. I just don't have the time to do it.
When I asked, how many people do we have in the state of Oregon on duty tonight?
And we had eight troopers on for the entire state of Oregon, working.
I think Oregon is a prime example that homeland security is not as secure as what I think people would like to believe.
Nobody sent me any manual that says here's how you catch a terrorist, you know, and if I if I had that manual
I'd read it, but I don't so
Of course, the Bush administration didn't hand out a manual on how to deal with the terrorist threat because the terrorist threat wasn't what this was all about.
They just wanted us to be fearful enough so that we'd get behind what their real plan was.
Four minutes.
10, 5, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Oh, they're going to mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop, mop.
You're not in here.
At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations
to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance
to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war.
On March 19, 2003, George W. Bush and the United States military invaded the sovereign
nation of Iraq, a nation that had never attacked the United States, a nation that had never
threatened to attack the United States, a nation that had never murdered a single American citizen.
What the fuck are you doing?
I'm gonna go home, please.
I'm gonna get the shit out of there!
I'm gonna have to go home!
Thank you very much.
It's going to be a little bit more fun.
I'm going to do it.
It's going to be a little bit more fun.
We are going to find this, I think, piece of my neighbor,
younger age 20, shems, I think the other part of her body.
That's all.
There is a lot of innocence to be used that were killed and I think that it's because the U.S. Army, you know, we came in and we knew it wasn't going to be easy and they pretty much at first shot anything that moved.
The war happens and the fighting starts, you know, it's kind of like we're pumped up, motivated, ready to go.
It's the ultimate rush because you know you're going into the fight to begin with and then you've got a good song playing in the background.
And that gets you real fired up, ready to do the job.
You can hook your CD player up to the tank's internal communications.
So that way when you put your helmet on, you can hear it through the helmet.
This is the one we listen to the most.
This is the one we travel, we kill the enemy,
driving through the bodies of the floors,
just fitting for the job we were doing.
The roof is on fire because basically it's symbolized Baghdad being on fire and at the
time we wanted to burn to get Saddam and his regime out.
The roof is on fire.
We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn, burn motherfucker burn.
My motherfucker
This is a whole totally different picture here being pushed into the city urban warfare in a tank, you know
civilian
Civilians you don't know who's friendly because we're not who's the enemy
This was a lot more real and true than just a video game a lot of people thought it was just me. Oh, yeah
Look through the sight and shoot. No
A lot of this is face to face and especially riding by after some of the bombs have went
off and seeing all the people on the side of the road blow it up and just all the smells
around you.
I mean from the people I'm dead rotted and it's a lot more gruesome than you think.
We called in with some artillery and some napalm and things like that.
Some innocent women and children got hit.
We met them on the road and they had little girls with noses blowing off.
And
The husbands carrying their dead wives and things like that that was extremely difficult to deal with cuz you're like
You know shoot what the hell and we do now?
The targeting capabilities and the care that goes into targeting
is as impressive as anything anyone could see.
They care that goes into it, the humanity that goes into it.
That's all.
Thank you for watching.
I'm running out of the planet.
I'm fighting out with this guy in the world.
Thank you very much.
I think so.
I'm gonna come in them. I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come in them. I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come
Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
Do you trust this president?
Yes, I do.
The majority of the American people trusted the president, and why shouldn't they?
He had spent the better part of the last year giving them every reason why we should invade Iraq.
Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums,
taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.
Nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapon.
active chemical munitions bunkers, mobile production facilities.
We know he's got chemical weapons.
He's got him, he's got him, he's got him.
That's weird, because that's not what Bush's people said when he first took office.
He is not development, any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.
He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.
We are able to keep arms from him.
His military forces have not been rebuilt.
Saddam Hussein aides and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.
There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Sadaam al-Kai-dik-dum al-Kai-dum
Sadaam al-Kai-dum
Sadaam shadaam al-Kai-dum
It is only a matter of time before terrorist states armed with weapons of mass destruction
develop the capability to deliver those weapons to U.S. cities
what we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence
The man who hates America.
This is a man who cannot stand what we stand for.
There's willingness to terrorize himself.
He hates the fact, like Al Qaeda does, that we love freedom.
After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time.
They simply got people to believe that there was a real threat out there when, in fact, there wasn't one.
You get told things every day that don't happen. It doesn't seem to bother people.
Of course, the Democrats were there to put a stock to all these falsehoods.
I will vote to give the President the authority he needs.
The United States is prepared to lead the coalition of the willing that will do it.
When I say we will lead a coalition of the willing to disarm him if he chooses not to disarm,
I mean it.
in that coalition of the willing hour.
You will find out who's in the coalition away.
The cause is coming away, for all.
The Republic of the Loud.
The Republic of the Coast.
The Republic of the Loud.
Of course, none of these countries has an army or, for that matter, weapons.
So it looked like we'd be doing most of the invading stuff ourselves.
But then, there was also...
Romeo, the kingdom of the world.
Morocco wasn't officially a member of the coalition, but according to one report, they did
offer to send 2,000 monkeys to help detonate landlines.
These are men of vision.
And I'm proud to call my allies.
I'm proud to call my allies.
I'm proud to stand.
Afghanistan?
Oh yeah.
They had an army, our army.
I guess that's one way to build a coalition, just keep invading countries.
Yes, with our mighty coalition intact, we were ready.
One could almost say it's the mother of all coalitions.
Fortunately, we have an independent media in this country who would tell us the truth.
The rallying round the president around the flag and around the troops clearly has begun.
really have to be with the troops to understand
that kind of adrenaline rush that they get.
I just want you to know.
I think maybe see.
The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal.
When my country is at war, I want my country to win.
Iraqi opposition has faded in the face of American power.
What you're watching here is truly historic television and journalism.
It was absolutely electrifying.
They actually had to strap me in with my camera at the back of the plane.
An awesome synchronized killing machine.
there is an apparent bias in the coverage of the American press in general.
You damn well bet I am.
But one story the media wasn't covering, was the personal story of each and every soldier
who was killed in the war.
The government would not allow any cameras to show the coffins coming home.
That kind of story is a downer, especially when you're getting ready for a party on a boat.
Major combat operations and Iraq have ended in the Battle of Iraq, the United States
and our allies have prevailed.
We're going to get it.
Get it, get it!
Get it, get it, get it, get it!
Wait, go!
Wait, get it, get it!
Oh, he's a-
It's a-
Oh, he's a-
he can't fight.
He can't fight.
It's his turn.
162, the number of troops killed by hostile fire.
44 US 384 US troops have lost their lives 484 died in the line of duty five hundred
six hundred thirty one American troops and hundred twenty five troops have
been killed on a number of American military deaths since Vietnam there are some
who feel like that if they
They don't understand what we're talking about if that's the case.
Let me finish.
There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there.
bring them on.
The United States is planning on just walking through here like he was going to be easy
at all, but it's not that easy to conquer a country, is it?
They renewed battle for control of Iraq raids for a fourth day today with street
clashes in nearly every corner of the country. Iraq to become, quote,
another Vietnam. They shall say they see evidence that Sunni and Shiite extremists
might be joining forces. They're not happy they're occupied.
There are two Japanese aid brokers and a journalist kidnapped by men calling themselves the
Mujahideen squadrons.
They threaten to burn the hostages alive if Japan does not withdraw its troops from Iraq
within three days.
What's happening?
They attacked our landlord.
Well, that's me.
Come on.
Hamm on.
The Pentagon might keep up to 24,000 troops in combat beyond their tool.
I know our numbers in the military have gone down.
You know, they talk about retention.
You know, never really expected to be deployed this long.
I don't think anybody did.
I don't have any clue as to why we're still in Iraq.
Donald Roosevelt was here.
I'd ask for his first recognition.
With the war not going as planned and the military in need of many more troops, where would they find the new recruits?
Military experts say three times the 120,000 US troops now deployed would be needed to pacify and rebuild the country
they would find them all across America in the places that have been destroyed by the economy.
places where
one of the only jobs available was to join the army places like my hometown of
Flint, Michigan.
And I was watching TV one day, and they show like some of the buildings and areas that have been hit by bombs and things like that.
And while I was watching, I got to thinking like, it's part of something that looks like that.
And we ain't being in the war.
But look at the neighborhood that I live in.
Most of them are abandoned.
I mean, you know, that's not right.
You want to talk about terrorism?
Come right here.
President Bush, right here.
Come right here.
At the end of January of 04, the unemployment rate in Flint was actually 17%, but you have to take into consideration as well that when your unemployment runs out, you're no longer counting.
I would say that we're probably close to at least 50%. Not working or under employee. Because being under employed is just as dangerous.
So my family has gone through the welfare system when it was job central in the mid-80s
I came through the job training partnership program here at job central and I went to a secretary
Years later, I made executive assistant to the president of the agency
interesting
My mother used to tell me all the time that, why do you always go for the underdog?
It was because the underdog is who needed me.
People that don't have anything.
That's who I have to fight for, and that's who I have fought for my entire life.
I started taking my children and telling my children,
the military is a good option.
I can't afford to have you go to college.
I cannot pay your way.
Financial aid will not help you.
So I as a mother started teaching my children about the options
that the military could do.
They would take them around the world.
They would see all the things that I as a mother could not let them see.
It would pay for their education that I as their mother
and their father could not pay for.
The military is an excellent option for the people in the city of Flint.
How many of you have a friend or a family member in the service?
Anybody currently serving overseas?
Brother mine. I'm going to go ahead. Where's your brother? I ran.
German. My cousin, I shipped off to I ran like three days ago.
Yeah.
There's like an army or a navy recruiter or Marines
where they're almost every week.
It's in the left room with crew and students
from about the leisure.
There are people with the calling.
Most soon, one weekend a month, and two weeks a year.
Protecting their community in the Army National Guard, you can.
I'm going into the Air Force myself, I'm going to take a year off probably after a high school
and then just go and make prayer on and be an aircraft maintenance technician.
I ran into a recruiter and there was something I noticed about it and this is kind of on another.
I noticed it was odd, it was more like it was hiring me for a job that recruiting me for the Army.
It was the way you approached me, approached a friend of mine.
I was in boarders books on music.
Each came up, it was like a business card.
It had business cards made for the Army and everything.
Meet Marine Staff Sergeant Dale Kortman and Sergeant Raymond Plauer.
They are two of the many recruiters assigned to Flint, Michigan.
They're very busy these days.
Look at these running away already.
I think they're coming.
Yeah.
What do we got here?
You don't know gangster.
Yeah.
They decided not to go to the wealthier Genesee Valley Mall in the suburbs.
They have a hard time recruiting young people there.
Instead, they went to the other mall.
Let's go in to burr into Murb into Murbans and then we'll walk straight down.
back and then go down the
Gents, you know we're looking at you, right?
You guys everything about joining up?
Thought about going to college.
Okay. You any good?
Yeah.
Especially basketball.
You can play balls for the Marine Corps as well.
You know travel around the world,
getting on the Marine Corps basketball team.
David Robinson was in the military as well.
So yeah, you can definitely hook it on.
Right now there's somebody out there who wants to be in marine but has no idea how to do it.
we work at or get KFC on the door in the
pier. You can hook us up with some
deals. Yes, they're waiting to get
I don't know. I'm probably gonna try to get a little career music or something.
A career music.
Maybe we can get your career in music, you know, and let the Marines go for it.
I'm sure you know who Shaggy is, right?
Yeah. You know anything about them?
Yeah, you gotta make it, huh? Yeah.
How about a former Marine?
Did you know what you definitely need to know this plan if you're going to get into music
Yeah, especially discipline with the money and you make a million you manage that money
So coming in office, we can sit down and talk show you everything we know about the Marines
Sound like a plan. What do you got going on in this afternoon? How about Mars? We're sailing around 10 o'clock Monday morning
That's how I'm pretty good. Okay. You want me to come pick you up?
Better to get them when they're ones of two.
and step out of that way.
How are ya?
Ladies, you ready to join up?
Green hat right behind us.
Looks.
Young easy on yeah, we got two over here right over by the red band you go that way
I go this way with corner
You're in the ninth grade.
And you look older than ninth grade, so.
All right.
Here's my card.
You ever thought about being a Marine?
I thought about it. I got a wife and kid now, so
Okay, even more reason to join a what I want to do man real quick is just get some information from you
So I can scratch you off my list saying I've already talked to you, you know, you're not interested. Is that cool?
What's your name? What's your phone number? I want your address Mario add another one to the list
However, you know one would love to have that chance to experience college life
You know stuff young people can do without having the risk of dying in the process. I guess I can say candid
The holidays do add a little bit more friction as opposed to just another night in the fact
that we want to give our guys a little bit time off, a little bit time to relax.
However, we aren't a combat zone, my soldiers do recognize that fact.
Everybody's a little bit nervous about it, I guess.
We're professionals, we're going to take care of you.
I promise.
Every house here has the right to have weapons, maximum excuse me, 1-8-8-4-7.
We always expect determinants to be armed.
Rock and roll!
I think they're fucking bull cutters, he's got him things,
crack doors open, pop this in there.
You better not find it!
Keep making a list!
Check it in place!
You're gonna find out who's known in nice!
You'll stab at Moses, promise to, promise to, promise to.
He sees you when you sleep and he knows when you're in the way.
I'm going to get that bad and good.
So be good, come on goodness, say.
Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Let's keep it in the air, let's keep it in the air.
That's her.
That's where she going.
She's not the answer.
I got her.
Where's she going?
She's going to call him.
Yeah.
No, no, no, just where is she at?
Where is he at right now?
I know.
No phone.
She's in the house.
We see in the house, that's rally in the house.
That's rally, he is in the house.
This is in the house.
Get up there, second floor.
Second floor.
Go, go, go, watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out.
Hey, watch out, no!
That's what he's going to be.
That's what he's going to do.
What's your name?
Slide, slide, slide.
This is a slide.
It looks so a slide.
So I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so happy to be here.
All right, come down.
We'll be back.
We appreciate your
this is the target
So he fell through bringing him out.
We have to, as you go back to the old deal saying, we win the hearts and minds of the people.
That's our job.
We have to bring the ideal of democracy and freedom to the country and show them that the
American people are not here to rule our act.
Thank you very much.
Let's start doing evidence turning at process takes about three hours so that's going to be it for the night and that includes Christmas Eve.
He's going to find out here.
They're just a big team very quickly.
Santa came to Iraq.
You guys are trying to keep the skies clear for you, Santa.
You can sit yourself out of proud American.
Absolutely.
I'm extremely proud American.
I think I'm probably more proud than the average joke.
When I put my flag out, I can't allow it to touch the door.
because I know the lives that were lost and the blood that was shed so that I
could be here and have a flight. Every single day, every single day, I started
when my daughter was in Desert Storm. I had the same flight flying on my front
porch and the same yellow ribbons, praying and hoping every single day that my
child would come home safe and that everybody's child would come home safe.
And she did. And she did. Yeah, but other family members that have been in the middle of the day.
for uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers,
very strong. My family was, my family is what I consider part of the backbone of
America. It's families like mine and it's not just my family, there's hundreds of
family, millions of families out here that this country was found on their
backs. I have been known to be a conservative Democrat.
Yeah, that's what you consider yourself. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great company
It's a great country.
The cross that I choose to wear, if you notice, it's a multicultural and multicolored cross.
That's because I believe that all God's people come in many colors.
And my family itself is multicultural.
You have a daughter who went into the military, then your first-born son in the military.
That's, you know, that's quite a gift to the country, you know, from your family.
Exactly right.
So having a son in the Army, pretty proud thing.
Oh, you know what?
He made it what was your reaction to protesters during the state of Gulf War or Vietnam or I always hated the protesters
I always hated the protesters. It was just a slap in my face. It was just like
They were dishonoring my son, and I burned in my soul to tell them you don't understand.
They're not there because they want to be there.
But then I came to understand that they weren't protesting the men and the women that were there.
They were protesting the concept of the war.
I know I'm a soldier, I'm here to do a job and I've been a soldier for a while.
Once you have to go and do your job and you see the things that you see.
I was saying there's some disillusionment in that.
Time to manage fully expects us to be attacked in some type of way before we get to Farshell.
I know that so far it's been pretty calm, not much has happened, but be aware that it can and it probably will.
They're beginning to organize themselves, just in neighborhoods, and the kids get together
a lot.
Well, kids, with the guys about 17-18, starting to come together, and they hate us just
why I'm not really sure.
immoral behavior breeds immoral behavior.
When a president commits the immoral act of sending
otherwise good kids to war based on a lie,
this is what you get.
Hey, can you check this?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I still have the heart of it.
It's not the answer there.
It's not the answer.
Right, that's it.
It's not the answer.
Thank you very much.
to have these people shoot at us, kill us, blow us up, whatever it means they can and
I don't understand it, we're trying to help these people and it seems they don't want
to help get out of here but the minute something goes wrong with them oh why weren't
you here why didn't you do this you know it's I hate this country
You know, I feel that a part of your soul is destroyed and taken another life.
And yeah, that statement is very true, you cannot kill someone without killing a part of yourself.
If you get called up, you go back to Iraq.
what repercussions do you face?
It is possible jail time, that's one possible thing.
I will not let my person
I will not let anyone send me back over there to kill other poor people, especially when
they pose no threat to me in my country.
This is an impressive crowd that haves and they have more's
Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.
While Bush was busy taking care of his base and professing his love for our troops, he proposed cutting combat soldiers pay by 33 percent
and assistance to their families by 60 percent.
He opposed giving fire.
veterans a billion dollars more in health care benefits.
And he supported closing veteran hospitals.
He tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans
and opposed full benefits for part-time resurface.
And when staff Sergeant Brett Petricon from Flint was killed in Iraq on May 26, the army sent his last paycheck to his family,
but they docked him for the last five days of the month that he didn't work, because he was dead.
They say they're not going to leave any veteran behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind.
to say that we're forgotten, no, but I know we're not forgotten, but missed, yes, yes.
There's a lot of soldiers that have been missed.
They've been skipped over.
If they didn't get the proper coverage they deserve.
they have a death toll but they're not showing the amount of people that have been
entered to be an amputated because of the injuries you know like i still feel like i have hands
yeah and my pain is like my hands are being crushed and a vice but they do a lot to help it
and may i take a lot of the edge off of it and it makes it a lot more tolerable and
I was injured in late April on patrol and Baghdad.
A couple of guys come out and ambushed us.
I got nerve damage and stuff like that.
I've got a lot of pain and constantly in pain.
to help with that stuff.
doing, you know, just re-adjusting, getting life back on.
Track
know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm not going to do what it is that I did before.
I was a Republican for quite a few years and for some reason they
They conduct business in a very dishonest way, and I'm going to be incredibly active in the
Democratic Party down where I live once I get out.
So I'm going to definitely do my best to ensure that the Democrats would control.
I read bad dead. I didn't know anything of those things
And he, we were in the hallway in the upstairs of our house and he was crying and he said
that he was really scared and he didn't want to have to go time rap.
So we were able to have a whole conversation about sometimes some fear is healthy.
Because it keeps our senses about us and that's when he told me that he had not told anybody else
but he knew he was going to back down.
You're crying.
Say it to no more.
We were as everybody we were going to the TV just glued completely glued to the
television in hopes of seeing a glimpse of it. Can't you please go for
to where the helicopters are? Can't you please let us see them? Then that night
it was about 10 something I went upstairs to bedroom and I was laying in
bed and I was flipping the channels with the remote. I heard it was black
now, essentially back.
What I can tell you at this hour is that last night the Army did indeed lose a Black Hawk helicopter.
We are being told by officers on the ground that there were shift occupants inside the Black Hawk
the next morning. I got up and I said, when you push those soft thoughts out of your mind,
okay Jesus, I need you to come here. I need you Jesus, you're going to help me through this.
They are me calmly and I remember getting on the phone and him saying, asking me what's
and I said yes, any sort of mother of Sergeant Michael Pedersen.
And all I can honestly say that I remember is ma'am, the United States Army, the Secretary
of Defense, regretfully informs you.
The grief grabbed me so hard that I literally fell on the floor and I was alone.
I didn't have anybody to pick me up, so I literally hauled over to my desk and was hanging
on and I remember screaming, why does it have to be Michael?
Why don't you have to take my son, why is it my son you have to take?
He didn't do anything. He wasn't a bad guy. He was a good guy. Why did you have to take my son?
I can't imagine what it was to be like to lose a son or a daughter.
Our husband and our wife, for that matter, and I, it pains me.
You had his last letter.
And it was mailed March 16th.
But I didn't get it until probably a week before he was killed.
Hello.
Hey, Mama.
Well, sorry I haven't been able to call.
They took the phone seven days ago.
I got the letter and box.
That is so cool.
Your first grandson came.
the same day your oldest son did. How is everyone? I'm doing fine. We are just out
here in the sand, in windstorms, waiting. What in the world is wrong with George?
Trying to be like his dad, Bush. He got us out here for nothing. What so ever? I am so
furious right now, mama.
I really hope they do not re-elect that fool honestly.
I am in good spirits and I am doing okay.
I really miss you guys.
Thanks for the Bible.
and books and candy. I really look forward to letters from you guys.
Well, I'll tell all the family hello and that I am doing fine.
We don't expect anything to happen anytime soon.
I cannot wait to get home and get back to my life.
Tell us by making congrats and I'll see my first nephew soon.
As soon as I get back to the States, I hope you guys are doing okay and keep sending
the mail.
It makes kiddings for the day sees here.
Well, I am on my way to bed, so I will write you guys soon
I want it to be alive, and I can't make you alive.
but your flesh just aches. You want your child. It's out of sync. A parent is
not supposed to bury their child.
I feel safe, my family, because we lost our side.
But
I really feel sorry for the other families that is losing their kids as we speak.
That's the, I guess, the signal part both left.
You've heard a lot about Halliburton lately.
Criticism is okay, we can take it.
Criticism is not failure.
Our employees are doing a great job
where feeding the soldiers, where rebuilding the rack.
Well, things go on. Sure, they will.
It's a war zone. We're serving the troops
because of what we know, not who we know.
Well, let me tell you about Halliburton, the company I ran.
I'm very proud of what I did at Halliburton.
The people of Halliburton are very proud of what they've accomplished.
And I frankly don't feel any need to apologize for the way I've spent my time over the
last five years as the CEO and Chairman of the Major American Corporation.
This is also an attempt to divert attention away from the fact they have no energy policy.
And as the Secretary of Energy said, we were caught unawares.
In the middle of the war, Microsoft, DHL and other corporations invited Halliburton to a conference
to figure out how much money could be made in Iraq.
Having worked this effort even since before the invasion, the liberation of Iraq started.
You, industry are definitely a vital part of that effort.
We appreciate your interest in this.
We need you.
Now, lots of you are small businesses and you're struggling.
How do we get peace of this big action?
All of you, the big guys are going to get it
and the rest of us have subcontracting capability
or none at all.
USDA is for you.
Once that oil starts flowing and money coming,
it's going to be lots of money.
It's the second largest reserve of oil in the world.
It's no question about how much money is that.
I've been getting complaints from Iraqi firms and from American firms that the lack of transparency,
the corruption.
I think the profits that American companies are making, the major, the main companies are so overwhelming.
I mean, like when you have a line item for a million dollars and you subcontract it out for 50 or 60 or 70 thousand dollars,
that's a huge profit.
And it's the American taxpayer that's going to pay for that.
And it's going to get better.
start building relationships because it's going to get much better as the oil flows and their budget increase
and the good news is, whatever it costs, the government will pay you.
The war is always good for certain companies. I mean that are in the war, the business of war.
We're very proud of the work we're doing again at supporting the U.S. government and the
U.S. military and the real heroes of the campaign, the real heroes of the reconstruction
are the men and women of the U.S. armed forces and we're very proud to be any part of
that that we can in supporting them.
Halliburton delivers hot meals, supplies, clean clothing, and communications to our soldiers
so they can be a little closer to home.
I just read in the paper Halliburton got another contract Halliburton got another contract
Which is not being
contest it at all because nobody knows well it's in the paper so somebody knows
but that's after it happens is after the fact it's too late
The United States is now a major player in the Iraqi oil business.
American troops guard the oil fields as Texas oil workers assess their potential.
So it's a safe environment to work in.
We don't feel any rest.
We feel like we're being well protected here.
We wouldn't be here.
It's no secret.
I mean, I mean.
Anywhere is, I don't know, between two and three thousand a month.
How Burton employee out here driving a bus can make home between eight ten thousand a month.
Explain that once, it'll be for forty hours a week.
Driving the same two and a half mile round.
Go figure.
Where's the justification in that?
There's no other single area of the world today
with the opportunity for business, new business,
similar to the opportunity that's available today on Iraq.
The President went in and did what he did
and we're all supporting him and our troops
and we want to make sure that, you know,
the efforts and the lost lives
It wasn't for no reason.
If it wasn't for the oil and nobody would be there,
nobody would worry about it.
Unfortunately, at least for the near term,
we think it's going to be a good situation
and a dangerous situation.
Good for business, bad for the people.
today on the news, Rumsfeld, we're saying, and we'll all for
words. We're saying, oh, the Iraqi people are much, much
better off. Isn't it better that we got rid of Saddam? And now
the Iraqi people can do what they want to do and really be free?
Will they ever be free? No, they'll not be free. And where are the weapons of mass destruction?
It was a we were duped. We were really duped in these poor people. The young men and women who are being killed there is unnecessary.
That's it. That's it. No more disgrace.
They died in a just cause for defending freedom and they will not have died in vain.
Lila had called to tell me that she was coming down from Flint to Washington, D.C. to attend a jobs conference.
On her break, she said she was going to go and pay a visit to the White House.
My son killed.
Yes.
Yes, my son.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much
What are you?
Of course she's not.
Dinner is.
Now he isn't.
That's his own stage.
He's so good.
Just like that stage.
He's just like that.
Where was he kill?
He'll tell me myself.
Where was he go?
He was straight.
Where was he go?
He would be high, he would be high.
It's not a stage my son is dead a lot of
that I'm supposed to blame the al Qaeda.
The al Qaeda didn't make a decision to send my son to Iraq.
Ignorance that we deal with with everyday people,
because they don't know.
People think they know, but you don't know.
I thought I knew, but I didn't know.
I need my son.
Gah, gah, gah, gah, gah, gah.
God's tougher than I thought it was gonna be to be here, but it's freeing also, because
I finally have a place to put all my pain on my anger and to release it.
I guess I was tired of seeing people like Lila Lipscomb suffer, especially when, out of
the 535 members of Congress, only one, had an enlisted son in Iraq.
I ask Corporal Henderson of the United States Marine Corps to join me on Capitol Hill.
to see how many members of Congress we could convince
to enlist their children to go to Iraq.
Hey.
How are you doing?
John Tanner.
Nice to meet you.
Well, I'm here with our Corporal Henderson.
I'm going to take some support.
Corporal, I was in it.
The Navy year ago, 1968 to 72, we had a range guard device.
Yeah kids, if any way we can get them to enlist and go over there and help out with the effort at all the brochures and
I went out and got a two-chill.
Well, see, there's not many Congress and they've got kids over there, check only one, you know,
so we just thought maybe, you know, you guys should send your kids there first.
What do you think about that idea?
I don't disagree with it.
Oh, you don't.
Oh, good.
Well, here, take some brochures now.
Let's take a marine brochure.
Pass it around, encourage fellow members of, you know, if they're for the war to get behind
it, you know, send their own.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much.
It's like a morning.
You're doing good.
Trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the Army and go over to Iraq.
Congressman? Congressman Castle?
Congressman Castle?
He's a Congressman.
Congressman?
Congressman Dooley?
Of course, not a single member of Congress wanted to sacrifice their child for the war in Iraq.
And who could blame them?
Who would want to give up their child?
Would you?
I've always been amazed that the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town,
go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest, are always the first to step up
to defend that very system work.
They serve so that we don't have to.
They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free.
It is remarkably their gift to us.
and all they ask for is return.
is that we never send them into harm's way unless it's absolutely necessary.
Will they ever trust us again?
We know where they are. They're in the area around to crack and bagged at and east, west, south and north.
There is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9-11.
The struggle can only end with their complete and permanent destruction.
We wage a war to save a civilization itself.
We did not seek it, but we will fight it, and we will prevail.
George Orwell once wrote that it's not a matter of whether the war is not real or
if it is. Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to
be a matter of a matter of a matter of a matter of a matter of a matter of a matter of
continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
This new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed.
In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation.
The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not the
victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas probably in Tennessee, this is fool me once.