Furthermore, by fixating on the Bush family's financial interests, Moore fails to take into account some of the subtler and perhaps more sinister reasons George W. pushed for the invasion of Iraq -- most significantly, his sense of quasi-religious righteousness (as well as Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate his father). How many times have you heard someone say that the Iraq War is "all about oil"? It would almost be a relief if oil -- that is to say, simple greed -- were all that the war was about. Whatever is really going on in George W.'s head, and in those of his advisors, is probably infinitely scarier. Not to discount the enormous profits that Cheney's buddies at Halliburton are reaping, but Bush is surrounded by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, people who have long been ideologically fixated on Iraq.

When Moore isn't pounding away at Bush, he's busy playing the friend of the common man. But as he did in both "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," Moore can't help acting superior to his on-camera subjects. We meet Lila Lipscomb, a hardworking American of modest means who encouraged her children to go into the military, knowing that it could provide educational opportunities that she wouldn't have been able to give them herself. Lipscomb is proud of her country and proud of the young men and women who fight for it. At one point, she shows Moore the cross she wears around her neck -- it's a multicolored cross that, she explains, stands for her multicultural beliefs. "I'm multicultural," she states plainly.

At this moment, the audience I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" with snickered over what they must have perceived as Lipscomb's simplicity. But not long after, we see that Lipscomb's husband is African-American, and her large, extended family is multiracial. Yet Moore's audience has already been primed to laugh at the "simple folk" who make up the bulk of this great land o' ours. Moore's approach leaves Lipscomb open to ridicule (the same way he used the Rabbit Lady in "Roger & Me" -- the woman who sold live rabbits and their byproducts to bolster her meager government income checks -- to get laughs).

And then, we learn that Lipscomb's son has been killed in Iraq -- it's the clincher Moore has been saving. Lipscomb reads her son's last letter home aloud, and you'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by it. But there's still a sense that this woman's deep, raw grief is valuable to Moore primarily because it feeds his purpose: Look at how innocent, regular people suffer during wartime, he seems to be saying, as if the revelation had just occurred to him.

"Fahrenheit 9/11"

Directed by Michael Moore

Elsewhere, Moore shows us footage of grievously injured Iraqi children or, more arresting yet, their corpses. Many of these images are graphic, and I don't believe audiences should necessarily be sheltered from such pictures. But there's something wily and disingenuously wide-eyed about the way Moore uses these images to make his points about the horrors of war. Similarly, he expresses surprise and dismay that the military recruits heavily among African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities, as opposed to trying to attract rich kids. Stop the presses! Innocent civilians are killed during wartime; our armed services are made up largely of young men and women to whom our society has offered limited opportunities. Moore unveils these revelations with a flourish, relishing his role as the great teller of truths. What planet, exactly, has he been living on?

There's plenty in "Fahrenheit 9/11" to provoke true outrage, including some shameless Halliburton promotional materials touting the service and support that company is providing our armed forces overseas. Most powerful of all is the footage of Bush on the morning of 9/11: After learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center and that the nation was under attack, he sat for nearly seven minutes reading "My Pet Goat" to a group of Florida schoolchildren. We scan his face as those endless minutes pass, searching for clues: What is he thinking? What does he suppose he should do? Even here, Moore can't help indulging in cheap psychological analysis, instead of letting the pictures speak for themselves. Still, there's no getting around the cloudy befuddlement in Bush's eyes. The sequence captures the shamefulness of Bush's ineffectuality.

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