http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usfilm273869328jun27,0,5702938.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlinesNewsDay lies-01 vote study w/ USSC statewide over/under w/intent=GORE!
Film offers limited view
BY THOMAS FRANK;WASHINGTON BUREAU
June 27, 2004
WASHINGTON - At the start of "Fahrenheit 9/11," filmmaker Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, "under every scenario Gore won the election."
What Moore doesn't show is that a six-month study in 2001 by news organizations including The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN found just the opposite. Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place, Bush still would have won Florida and the election.
The inclusion of Toobin's minority view and exclusion of mainstream documentation typifies the shaky case Moore builds against President George W. Bush in his two-hour film.
The movie unearths nothing new. It is a cinematic lawsuit, not a verdict, that skews and omits events for its central charge: that Bush was soft on terrorism because his family is financially tied to wealthy Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden.
Moore cites well-documented links centering around The Carlyle Group, a high-powered international investment firm. Bush himself had been an adviser to a Carlyle subsidiary before becoming Texas governor in 1995. His father became a Carlyle adviser after leaving office in 1993. The bin Ladens, a family of wealthy industrialists, were major Carlyle investors, though they and the elder Bush cut ties with Carlyle after Sept. 11.