Random Michael Moore Deceits [#9]

Lockheed Martin Missiles [in Bowling For Columbine]

Bowling contains a sequence filmed at a Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility near Columbine. Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep." Moore asks whether knowledge that weapons of "mass destruction" were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters.

After Bowling was released someone checked and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.

Moore's website has his response:

"[T]he Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "

Nice try, Mike.

(1) that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting.

Quote:

"So you don't think our kids say to themselves, 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'"

(2) One of that plant's major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and converting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units."

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There, Moore makes the assertion that a Columbine-area Lockheed Martin plant makes weapons of mass destruction. The PR person Moore interviews, Evan McCollum, is filmed in front of what looks like a giant missile and looks like an idiot when Moore asks questions about WMD and McCollum beats around the bush with his answers.

This is because the Lockheed Martin plant makes weather satellites - like the one that's behind McCollum - not bombs.

One of Moore's interns narrates the scene for us [on the commentary of the dvd] with what is obviously the utmost respect for its filmed subject: "like, this guy who works for Lockheed Martin is a robot. He like talks like a robot. 'Look at me, I am a robot.' And like, they make bombs at that place and he won't even admit it. They like, ship bombs in the middle of the night - like Mike says - and they like won't even 'fess up to, like, making bombs and stuff."

(Lockheed Martin, McCollum explained to me, ships their satellites in the middle of the night as a means of avoiding downtown Denver traffic. The satellites require a slow-moving convoy to avoid power lines.)

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