Who Was Really Disingenuous – Michael Moore or John McCain ?

In his speech at the Republican National Convention this week, John McCain turned the attention of the audience to a "disingenuous filmmaker", who happened to be in the audience during the speech. McCain said that the filmmaker, Michael Moore, had portrayed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as an "oasis of peace" in the movie "Fahrenheit 911". And probably every one of the millions of attendees of the movie (which apparently did not include McCain himself) scratched their heads in unison and said ,"Say What?"

Having seen the movie twice myself, I cannot recall any portrayal in the movie of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. I cannot recall any statement or implication that Saddam Hussein was a good guy, that his rule made Iraq an oasis of peace.

Did McCain write the speech himself? Did he have a fact checker to review the speech to prevent self-embarrassment?

How can a politician call an activist "disingenuous", when his example proving his point is itself disingenuous?

This is like Karl Rove calling John Kerry "unfit to command", when Kerry was an officer in combat in wartime in the U.S. military, while his own client, George W. Bush shirked his duties and never even bothered to report to his own commanders or for a mandatory flight physical during his stateside "service" designed to avoid combat.

Disingenuous has been raised to an art form by the entire Republican/Bush election apparatus. Disingenuous is Donald Rumsfeld quibbling over what constitutes "torture".

Disingenuous is Tom Ridge raising the terror alert status over old intelligence data, then claiming it was important to do so because terrorist planning is a multi-year process that may still be in progress for the targets listed, and then removing the terror alert despite no evidence whatsoever that his definition of multi-year planning and targeting has been invalidated for the targets he sought to protect.

Disingenuous is George W. Bush speaking of extending freedom and democracy to Iraq while suppressing and thwarting it in Florida and across the homeland.

Disingenuous is John McCain supporting George W. Bush at all, after being the victim of malicious dirty tricks in the last election cycle that were so personal and so horrific that only Rove/Bush could have concocted and enacted them.

Perhaps it is time for John McCain to actually view the motive Fahrenheit 911 and then he might see fit to critique it. Or he might wake up and withdraw his support for Bush/Cheney. That sort of move would not be disingenuous, but would be an act of ethical genius.