Juan Cole has a pretty good rundown of the good and the bad of Fahrenheit 9/11. I think this is one of the more even-handed reviews (not saying it’s all great or it all is lies). I like the correction about the figures relating to the Saudi portion of the U.S. economy.

I read his criticisms and don’t exactly agree with all of them. The Saudi connection is a bit more complicated that Juan Cole presents it… there are questions about whether Usama bin Laden was cut off from his family which seem relevant. While some of the Saudi bashing was unnecessary, I took the major point of that segment to be that the Bush family may have mixed loyalties when dealing with the Saudis. It’s not that they were “complicit in 9/11″ but that they may have influenced our government’s actions post 9/11 in ways that might not be in Americans’ best interests. This doesn’t even touch the funding questions that come up (how much Saudi money was given to various terrorist groups, for example).

The Weekly Standard tries to bring up similar criticism in a more negative manner. In the end, however, I find that the Standard review simply shows that they lack any sense of humor. For example, criticizing the French sheet comment… it wasn’t a “class-war” line but a joke about it being “French.” I guess they must’ve purged that Freedom Fries moment from their collective memories.

Another small point… Moore didn’t seem to me to be questioning whether going into Afghanistan was right but saying that the choice of Karzai after the war indicated priorities after the war. The pipeline may not be evil, but appointing a President who has relationships with a private company may not be the best thing for the people of Afghanistan and perhaps us. That’s really the point.