Moore distorts the facts with facts, says conservative dunce.

The Guardian has a story on Fahrenheit 9/11 that contains this brilliant quote from David Hardy, co-author of a forthcoming book that aims to debunk much of Moore's work: "'He creates a false impression without ever uttering a word that is untrue,' said Hardy, adding that Moore was guilty of serial mendacity".
So I suppose that all the fuss about Moore isn't about his credibility or handling of the facts, but just his method of presentation. This strikes me as a major concession by the right insofar as it as it gives Moore a free pass on pretty much every point of fact. Instead, it seems that their criticism will look much like recent criticism of media coverage of the war. That is to say, they are creating the perception that this whole thing is screwed up because they are just showing all of the bad stuff and ignoring the good. Take this gem from Christopher Hitchens:

"If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar-an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building-is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left,like the parties of the Iraqi secular left, are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal".

First, Hitchens is absolutely guilty of doing exactly what he admonishes Moore for doing. Based strictly on Hitchens' presentation of the situation in Afghanistan we might be persuaded to conclude that everything is going great, but Hitchens fails to mention that, for example, Opium production has increased considerably post-Taliban or that the Taliban is making a comeback and President Hamid Karzai's government is totally impotent (that is, unable to control much of anything beyond the Capitol, include mal-treatment of women, access to schools and participation in that big election that Hitchens holds so dear). Since Hitchens seems to absolutely hate hypocrisy so much, but at the same time can't seem to resist it, maybe we ought to just ignore him; for now, lets just bracket that whole question and get back to the point at hand. Nothing mentioned above "contradicts" what Hitchens has said, but it certainly adds a new dimension to the picture. Anyway, I suppose it is this sort of cherry picking that Hitchens thinks makes Moore's film so bad, and to an extent, I think that this is a valid point. Lets take a look at the facts that I pointed to in response to Hitchens's facts; again, they don't contradict each other, so lets call them competing facts. Still, even though the evidence that I pointed to doesn't directly contradict Hitchens' claims, I would say that they definitelytely outweigh his claims in the sense that if we were to evaluate the situation in Afghanistan taking into account both his evidence and mine, I think that we would generally come to the conclusion that things are not going very well.
Again, I think that criticism of Fahrenheit 9/11 will take on pretty much the same form, and folks will scream and yell that Moore isn't showing buildings being repaired or whatever. But, I think that the obvious response to this sort of criticism would also take on the same form. That is, when we take the evidence of little kids getting school books and the like and weigh it against over 800 dead U.S. soldiers and countless Iraqis (not to mentioned the wounded)or the major destabilizing effect that this war has created, I think we would generally come to the conclusion that the situation over there is generally FUBAR.