For several reasons, I’ve been very eagerly awaiting Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s not because the documentary’s winning of the Plame D’or has piqued my interest or that I’m expecting a rigorous factually-driven political thesis. It isn’t the film I’m anticipating, it’s its impact.

Moore expands on the political chicanery evident to anyone who has the time and the interest to scratch below the surface of the Evening News. The stolen election is dealt with, something I’d almost completely ignored while it was happening. Yeah, it’s pretty scary I guess. But hey, I don’t live there so why should I care if the US’ electoral system is corrupt or not?

Then there’s the Bushes fraternal rapport with the Saudi elite. Here was an opportunity to explore the perilous state of global energy policies. But that’s probably far less boring than alluding to the administration’s complicity in or foreknowledge of 9/11. And that’s just what’s implied; that Bush had allowed the largest peacetime atrocity in America by incompetence or by design. I personally believe that the evil neocons simply dithered on terrorism in favour of working on their own long term policy agendas. Like Iraq.

This is really sticking the boot in. We’re twenty minutes in and Bush is in the dock for both stealing the election and of having a part in 9/11. Even though Moore stops at actually levelling those specific charges, that’s the clear impression the narrative left with me. Moore is fighting dirty.

Not very classy. This is the kind of cynical innuendo used by the Bush Administration when they conjured up images of Iraqi nukes air bursting over American cities and a cackling Saddam facilitating 9/11.

Yeah, I’m still angry about that scurrilous sleight of hand. I’m still sore, not so much at the subsequent brazen and insane conflict, but at the torrent of intelligence-insulting bullshit aired in the run up to war.

So, I’ll tolerate any tub thumping, fire and brimstone rhetorical flourishes from Moore if it represents a kick in the teeth to Bush in this election year. Bring on the maimed marines, dead A-rab babies and mothers collapsing in grief. It may not make for a great movie in its own right and it did make me cringe at times (like in Bowling for Columbine). It’s the ripples from Fahrenheit 9/11 that will ultimately decide this movie’s worth. In many ways Moore is like Bush: a useful idiot.