My second point is the big one: how Bush supposedly gave up a chance to get Bin Laden.  The trick is the exact definition of “get”.

First off, if your transcript of F911 is accurate, he lifts almost two whole paragraphs verbatim from the following article from Green Press about the purported 9/11-Enron connection:

“The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan’s pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia.

“According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused.”

Regarding the mention of the Village Voice, I’ve found only two articles dealing with Hashami.  (Note: Village Voice and Green Press spell it “Hashami”, other outlets spell it “Hashemi”.  Keep that in mind if you do your own searches on the subject.) Both articles indicate that the Taliban was offering to keep Bin Laden in a single place for long enough so that the US could target and kill him in a bombing raid.  The reason the feds refused the offer is that they wanted Bin Laden alive, which would not have been part of the Taliban offer.  Here’s the link.

“On June 6, an article in the Voice by Camelia Fard and me set forth the odd doings of the Taliban’s roving de facto lobbyist in the U.S., Laili Helms, the niece of former CIA head Richard Helms. She told of getting word in 1999 from the Taliban leadership that they were willing to hand over to the U.S. all of bin Laden’s communications equipment that they had seized. That would mean the U.S. could close in and target bin Laden for bombing or a raid. When she told the State Department, according to her account, officials were at first interested, but later said, ‘No. We want him.’ “

Here’s a second story.

“Early this year, the Taliban’s ambassador at large, Hashami, a young man speaking perfect English, met with CIA operations people and State Department reps, Helms says. At this final meeting, she says, Hashami proposed that the Taliban hold bin Laden in one location long enough for the U.S. to locate and destroy him. The U.S. refused, says Helms, who claims she was the go-between in this deal between the supreme leader and the feds.

“A U.S. government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, made clear that the U.S. is not trying to kill bin Laden but instead wants him expelled from Afghanistan so he can be brought to justice. Acknowledging that Laili Helms does a lot of lobbying on behalf of the Taliban, this source said Helms does not speak to the Taliban for the U.S.”

Conclusion: Moore ripped off the Green Press article either without checking the facts or while willfully ignoring the errors.  The feds didn’t “inexplicably” refuse the offer; they had good reason: they wanted Bin Laden in one piece.  Besides, even if we had agreed simply to kill Bin Laden, the Taliban could have easily planted a look-alike.  The blast from the ensuing bombs would destroy any evidence that we got the wrong guy, and the Taliban could still cooperate with Bin Laden while still claiming to have upheld their end of the bargain. Considering how the Taliban didn’t hand over Bin Laden even when their very existence was on the line after Bush’s post-9/11 ultimatum, I doubt very much that they would have acted on any such plan in good faith when there was much less incentive for them to do so, pre-9/11.

Moore’s entire passage is designed to make it look like Bush had absolutely no interest in pursuing Bin Laden at all.  Remember that article I pointed out earlier?  That’s where the contradiction lies: Not only did Bush actually try to get Bin Laden alive, he also tried to get it done via UN resolutions!  So much for unilateralism.

Also, Moore doesn’t take into account how the US had passed up earlier offers of getting Bin Laden during the Clinton administration.  The following article has Hashemi saying that the Taliban offered to either punish Bin Laden themselves, try him in their own courts, or keep an international group monitoring Bin Laden.

‘“In 1998, they (the US) sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan… to kill Osama bin Laden… 75 cruise missiles… missed and killed 19 students and they never apologized.” The Ambassador said his country had offered to punish Osama bin Laden if the US gave proof of his embassy bombings. The US refused. They offered to try Osama in their courts. The US refused. Next offered, Hashemi said, was an international monitoring group in Afghanistan to watch bin Laden, also refused.’

And here we see the Clinton administration pass up an offer of actually capturing Bin Laden because we didn’t think we had enough evidence to hold him, from the Village Voice no less.

“When Washington finally declined the offer˜because the FBI did not believe it had sufficient evidence to try Bin Laden in a U.S. court˜and Saudi Arabia refused Washington’s request to arrest and even execute the terrorist, the U.S. demanded that Bin Laden leave Sudan for any other country except Somalia.”

So there you go: an act of plaigarism (if he didn’t credit the Green Press), a lie, and a ton of omissions, all in two convenient paragraphs, courtesy of Michael Moore.