FOCUS: Michael Moore | Dear Bill Kristol

Portrait, Michael Moore, 04/03/09. (photo: Ann-Christine Poujoulat/Getty)

Dear Bill Kristol

By Michael Moore, Reader Supported News

07 January 13

I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this weekend about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

ear Bill,

Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.

Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.

Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)

• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." - Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was...while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can't talk about oil.")


• "Of course we should go to war for oil. It's like saying, you're going to war just for oxygen, just for food. We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." - Ann Coulter, author, April 11, 2011. (Watch her say that here at 37:30.)


• "Of course it's about oil, it's very much about oil, and we can't really deny that. From the standpoint of a solider who's now fought in the middle east for six years - my son-in-law's fought there for four years, my daughter's been over there, my son has served the nation - my family has been fighting for a long time." - Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM, October 13, 2007. (Watch Abizaid say this here.)


• "We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil." - Midge Decter, author, May 21, 2004. (Listen here, at 35:55.)

I like to think the best about people. I know all you're looking for is an open, honest debate about Chuck Hagel's qualifications - with absolutely no smears or bullying. And because you feel that way, I'm sure you'll want to update what you wrote about Hagel with these quotes, and explain that Alan Greenspan and Ann Coulter and John Abizaid and Midge Decter are vulgar and disgusting and far-left too.

Obviously you don't need any incentive to do the right thing. But let me know the second you add them all to that post, and I'll send $1000 to any charity of your choice.

Say hi to Fred "I Read the Iliad" Barnes for me,

Michael Moore

P.S. You probably meet a lot of people, so maybe you don't remember Midge Decter. You can look her up here (speaking at an event honoring your dad), here (signing the founding "Statement of Principles" of your organization Project for the New American Century) and here (where you talked about how "so many of us" have followed "in Midge's footsteps"). Oh, by the way, you were on the 2004 radio program with her when she said the above quote.

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Source: rsn