It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction.

UPDATE: Spike TV is already running trailers for the movie, using the "Bush playing golf" clip Hitch describes thus:

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.

UPDATE: Oh, lovely. Moore is now apologizing to Ray Bradbury:

The novel was a futuristic tale about a totalitarian society where books are burned to keep people from thinking independently. The temperature at which paper catches fire is 451 degrees. Moore says his film deals with the temperature at which freedom burns.

Bradbury is demanding an apology for not being asked permission to lift his book title and wants the film property renamed, something that is not likely to happen at this late stage.

"He suddenly realized he's let too much time go by," the author said.

"It has broken my heart," says Moore. "I've called to try and apologize and work it out and he's just ... oh, jeez I don't know what to say."

Moore says he tried to explain to the 83-year-old writer that the film could bring more young readers to his book but apparently no dice. He says if he had called the film The Diary of Michael Moore, surely people wouldn't confuse it with The Diary of Anne Frank.

"There's no confusion here, you know?"

Nope. Of course not.