Dude, Where's My Country?

I recently listened to Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore, on CD during my commute. Despite being a bit dated with Iraq information from just after the Iraq war started, it's a decent read. Moore hits President Bush hard, and I agree with about 75% of what he says.

Some things he's way out there on, like he's suspicious about 9/11 being blamed on Osama bin Laden, who he says is on dialysis (I hadn't heard this before), so would therefore have a problem masterminding the attacks. I think it's probably pretty settled that he's bankrolling al Queda, who certainly orchestrated the attacks.

But Moore's got some strong points about Bush and the Saudi royal family, as well as the bin Laden's themselves, like their financial ties and swift exodus from the country in the days after 9/11. I agree that it's odd that on the hijacked planes, 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi, none were Iraqi, yet we invaded Iraq. Moore points out that nobody says we were attacked by Saudi Arabia, yet if those hijackers had been Iraqi, we'd have heard that we were attacked by Iraq.

Moore gets into domestic issues too, but not as much as he could have. He does have some good points to make about the views of the American people (mostly liberal and tolerant) versus the Republican party (conservative and intolerant). And along those lines, how Republicans can keep winning elections. I'm not sure how serious he is about nominating Oprah, but it's not that bad an idea. She'd be more qualified than our current leader.

Overall, I'd give the book a B-. I can't really take off points for being out of date, since it was highly relevant at the time it was published. Still, more detail about the administration's awful policies would have been nice.



PS I have just started listening to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. 30 CDs. We'll see how long it takes to finish it.