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Request for Help from a Victim of Michael Moore: Interview with Joanne Duetsch
Ryan Mauro - 10/27/2005
Mrs. Joanne Duetsch appeared in filmmaker Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” during a scene filmed in Washington DC. In the film, Duetsch converses with Moore and his companion, Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq. Duetsch claims she never signed a release form, seeks legal assistance, and wants to reveal how Moore edited the scene. She has come to me asking for a way to tell her side of the story. These are her responses to my questions which were given via email and an in-person interview.

For those willing to help Mrs. Duetsch, legally or through media coverage, please email me at [email protected].

RM: Joanne, please tell us about your scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

JD: It was March 2004, soon after the bombings in Spain. I was in Laffayette Park sitting on a park bench in front of the White House. I saw a woman walking towards me dressed in black. When the movie came out I found out this was Lila Lipscomb.

I thought she was an actress because when she was being filmed, she looked somber. When the camera came off of her, her demeanor changed as she talked to the man with the camera (who turned out to be Michael Moore—I did not know who he was at the time). He was telling her what to do. I thought they were part of the local news and it was being staged. It dawned on me that the media was filming her to create a scene to embarrass the President.

At the same time, an anti-war demonstration was also being staged with props and lights. In my mind, I remembered Vietnam and what our soldiers had to see. I didn’t want them to have to come home and think we all hated them. They’re at war, they need to know we support them and what they’re doing. I did not want our troops to see this propaganda!

I went to Lila Lipscomb, who I still thought may be an actress. I asked what was going on and that is when I said the scene was staged. She explained that her son was killed in Iraq. I told her how sorry I was for her loss, I gave her a hug, and told her I couldn’t even imagine what she was going through. I have a son, so I know how horrible it must be. My heart went out to her and I was teary-eyed. She said the President killed her son and I said “No, it was Al-Qaeda and these terrorists that shot down your son.”

I said, “Many people have lost sons and daughters,” and then a voice interrupted me and said, “Did you lose someone in Iraq?” I turned and saw I was being filmed. I said, “No, I was referring to 9/11!” Coming from New Jersey I know many people who have lost loved ones on 9/11, including some very close to me. I thought this was the local news, I still did not know this was for Michael Moore’s movie.

In the movie, Michael Moore edited out what I said, edited out all the sympathies and emotion I expressed for Lila. When she said, “I lost my son,” he edited it to make it appear as if my response was simply “Many people have lost sons and daughters,” making me look heartless to the world. He knew I was referring to 9/11, he was right there listening.

RM: He never had you sign a release form?

JD: I never signed a release form.

RM: What has happened in your life as a result of the movie?

JD: I feel I did the right thing by trying to prevent him from demoralizing the troops with a phony demonstration. I acted like I felt an American should act.

I had anxieties and lost a lot of sleep over his misrepresentation of the facts. When the DVD came out before the election I felt worse. I left my yoga class when the instructor started talking about the movie. I felt like I was stabbed all over again and was very upset. My children saw the movie, they understood what happened. My niece contacted me crying from college. She said her friends thought I was a bad person. Michael Moore had just spoken at her college also.

Lila Lipscomb on June 30, 2004 did rounds of personal interviews on “Good Morning America,” “Entertainment Tonight,” etc., with clips showing me in front of the world. I never gave my permission to them!

RM: Are you considering legal action?

JD: I wish I could consider legal action. If anyone thinks I could win this case against Michael Moore, Lions Gate and Miramax, let me know. They are the big guns, and I am the little man.

Originally published here.

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Bush is a mis-leader

Osama:

Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before.

Other Places:

You did this while misleading their parents and the nation with bogus lies about weapons of mass destruction and scary phony Saddam ties to al Qaeda.

Bush is under the control of the Saudi royal Family:

Osama:

Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military.

Other Places:

“The entire royal family seems to be indebted to you - or is it the other way round?

The citizens themselves can stop the terrorism:

Osama:

Your security is in your hands. Each state that doenst mess with our security has automatically secured their security.

Other Places:

You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don’t want to kill him! Funny how that works”

The Patriot Act is tyranny:

Osama:

So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism.

Other Places:

“The Patriot Act broadens terrorism to include “domestic terrorism” which could potentially be used to target activist groups within the country speaking out against Bush’s treacherous deeds.

Those Seven Minutes made all the difference:

Osama:

Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.

Other Places:

But Bush choked at the most important moment a President could have. We’re lucky Al Qaeda had done its worst by the time he pulled himself away from the photo op.

You get the picture, Osama’s message reads like Roger Ebert’s review of Fahrenheit 9/11. I wonder if he had popcorn and twizlers while he watched the “documentary” in his Pakistani hideout. The power of the medium was obviously not lost on the terrorists.

For the second time this week, we’ve been treated to two nastygrams from the terrorist, threatening us with death and pain and rivers of blood, blah blah blah. The first one claimed we would pay the ultimate price for avenging the attacks from Alqaeda and doing the ol’ Yoko Ono on the Taliban. This second one, explains why Al qaeda attacked us in the first place, our alliance with Isreal. Funny how neither of these terrorists named our invasion of Iraq as a motivation for their continued fight.

Both however made it clear by the timing of these releases that they have one very firm goal. They wish to shake our will. Not on the “Iraq thing”, they couldn’t care less. They want us to abandon Isreal and if we don’t, they will try to kill us.

So now we must really look at ourselves and ask the question: What kind of country are we? Are we a scared people? Are we unprincipaled? Are we willing to trade our morals for safety? I think not. If anything, I think Saddam and his sidekick “the tablecloth kid” have reminded us of which mile marker we stand at on the road of history. We are in a war that we did not want, we did not seek, and did not deserve. Luckily for us, we have the ability to look at the road already traveled to see the reminders of what “giving in” brings. Let’s not forget that Osama formally declared war on the US back in 1998. 

If for no other reason, as a unified country, we should vote for george Bush on tuesday. I just can’t see letting the terrorist get their way on anything, and an anti-Bush mandate from the electorate would do a great deal to embolden theses guys in their goal of finding our weak spot.

If it pisses off Michael Moore, well, that would just be a bonus.

Update by JimK

Great minds indeed.  We’re not the only ones saying this, the Moore/bin Laden connection is all over the Internet.  INDC is all over the Dem/Moore/bin Laden trinity.

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Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

“The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units,” Mr. Shaw said. “Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units.”

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam’s most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam’s weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.

Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.

“That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible,” Mr. Shaw said. “And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there.”

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army’s 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.

The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

“The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division’s arrival at the facility,” the statement said.

The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam’s regime.

According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.

It is not known if the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam’s government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq’s Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.

The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq’s 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq’s largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. “The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict,” Mr. Shaw said.

The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam’s Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.

The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.

Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a “redoubt” in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.

Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.

“Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border,” the defense official said.

Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.

The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam’s minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.

The Russian “spetsnaz” or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.

The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military “plastic” high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

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Was it those 7 minutes when Bush was scared stiff in his chair, which turned out to be five minutes while Bush was waiting for the “all okay” from his staff to excuse himself? (After all, there was a probable assaniation attempt on his life just a few hours earlier.)

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the oil pipeline that Bush helped the Taliban build through Afghanistan, which turned out to be a natural gas pipeline and was scrapped in the planning phase during the last administration?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the haunting scene of the Army reservist Peter Damon, who has lost both his arms and was being “left behind” by the Army, who turned out to be mad as hell for being included in Moore’s movie without his permission ,and in fact supports the President and the war, and loathes Moore.  Not to mention Lt. Col. Chester Buckenmaier, the anesthesiologist who treated Damon at the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, who stated
“I was appalled. This was Joseph Goebbels-type propaganda,”

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was is the revelation that Bush somehow finagled a job for his cousin to sit at the decision desk at Fox news to call the election for him, but it turned out happened to be that his cousin was a 23 year veteran election analyst who, along with a group of others ( dems and repubs)called not the election, but their announcement of the results as reported by VNS four hours after the last poll closed?(they were also the last to retract Gore’s name as victor)

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it that damning headline that showed Bush has lost the recount, which turned out to be a total fabrication, based on an op-ed page in an obscure newspaper?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it those dastardly Marine recruiters who were caught slinking away from the more affluent mall to go recruit from the other less affluent mall in the suburbs, which as it turns out was exactly the opposite as we learned with a little research.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the scene with the Congressman who avoided Moore’s question “Why don’t you sign up you child to go fight in Iraq?”, who it turns out doesn’t even have a child?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the revelation that Bush personally authorized the Saudi Flights while airspace was closed when it turns out that Richard Clarke admitted doing it and they actually flew out after airspace opened, which the 9-11 commission confirmed this as well.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was is the revelation that the Saudi embassy gets special protection from Bush, when it turns out that any embassy gets Secret Service protection if they request it.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the imagery of a jocular prewar Iraq with kids flying kites and people sipping tea in the market just before American bombs rained down on them, when it turns out that Iraq was actually torturing those men and those kids were lucky to not be in “kids prison” with their friends as a punishment to their parents.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the crass statement Bush made about stopping terrorism during that montage of politicians talking about the Iraq war, and then he ended it with that “Now watch this drive” statement, when in reality that statement was made before the Iraq war , and he was talking about the problems in Israel, and the terrorist attck in Isreal that morning?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the shocking revelation that not one single Congressman or Senator read the Patriot act before signing it, despite the obvious fact that Congressmen and Senators wrote the Patriot act, which was largely made up of RICO laws, with “and terrorists too” tacked on the end of each of them?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was is the scene where Moore describes Bush’s Presidency as “having not been able to get anything done” before 9-11, yet in reality, he got the largest tax cut in history passed and passed the largest bi-partisan educational bill in history?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the scene where Jeffery Tobin states that “If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.”, despite that a recount was conducted,(no “if’s Jeffery) actually five times, and in all but one, including the one that Gore asked for, Bush won?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it that quote from the Washington Post that incorrectly stated that Bush spent 42% of his first 7 months on office on vacation, but that time included weekends, time he spent in church, and time at Camp David with foreign leaders.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it Moore’s statement that, after becoming despondent because of his failure to pass anything, ( see above) Bush spent the “rest of the month of August at his ranch in Crawford”, despite the fact that he traveled to five different states in just one week in late August?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it that Moore tried to prove that the administration was trying to tie Iraq to 9/11 with this quote from Condaleeza Rice :

“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.”

When in fact, the entire quote was :

“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”

?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the revelation that the Right Wing Carlyle Evil Empire hired Bush’s father as a consultant, while omitting the other Evil Right Wing investors, such as billionaire George Soros, Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, Clinton’s former SEC head?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it that Amnesty International designated “human rights violator Saudi Arabia” ( a distinction they share with Iraq) invested 1.4 million in the BDM which was owned by Carlyle Group, where the President’s father was a consultant, despite the fact that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it that crass statement from Bush that Moore showed us: “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base” as he stood there among a bunch of rich folks, despite that the uncropped shot of that speech showed that Bush was sitting next to Al Gore at that fundraiser, not for a campaign, but for a children’s hospital where they raised 10 million for the charity?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it Moore’s revelation that Bush was closing down Veteran’s hospitals, despite the fact that the hospitals being closed down were in areas of shrinking populations and being replaced with new Veteran’s hospitals. He also increased funding for all VA hospitals.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it Moore’s revelation that a majority of the folks purged from Florida’s voter rolls before the election in 2000 were Black, despite the discovery that in fact less than half of the folks purged were Black?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the sad footage of the Military funeral at Arlington national cemetery that Moore didn’t have permission from the family to use? The family refers to Moore as a maggot that eats off the dead.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the footage of the goofball with the parachute escape system who didn’t give Moore permission to use his image or his name? I read he just filed a lawsiut.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it Moore’s statement that

“No President had ever witnessed such a thing on his inauguration day...”

in reference to the protests at Bush’s inauguration, despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln actually had to sneak through Baltimore after his inauguration and the city wouldn’t even provide police protection?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the astonishing before and after transformation the Moore showed us of a happy, Patriotic Military Mom before and a emotional shell of a woman after her son was killed in Iraq, despite that the happy scenes were filmed after her son was killed also?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it the creepy blackout scene with just the sounds of the planes crashing on 9/11 that Moore blatantly stole form another documentary in his typical unimaginative fashion?

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it those references from Craig Unger’s Book , House of Bush , House of Saud, which was refused publishing in Britain because of their libel laws, which means you can’t publish outright lies over there without being sued? Moore uses this one book as the only source for many of his “shocking revelations”.

Nope, that can’t be it.

Was it those interviews with soldiers that Moore took without from George Gittoes’ movie, The Soundtrack of War which made Mr Gittoes very unhappy “because their interviews were taken out of context,” and stated “Michael got access to my stuff and assumed that I would be happy for it to be in 9/11. I would actually have been quite happy for it not to be in 9/11.” Luckily for Gittoes, Moore ended up paying him $50,000.00 a month or so after F911 came out. He soon stopped complianing about his footage being mis-used.

Nope, that can’t be it.

It can’t be any of that stuff. So what exactly is it that Moore is right about? What is Fahrenheit9/11 right about? More importantly, if Moore is right about his “message” than why in the hell would he need to use peoples images without their permission, edit speeches, use creative cropping to change the reference of the real scene, fabricate newspaper headlines, quote from a book so dubious that it can’t even be published in Britain, use quotes out of context, change time lines, steal scenes from other movies, switch the economic demographics of malls, tell half stories, and all of the other visual tricks he uses?

If Bush is as bad as Moore says he is, if our troops are that bad, if America is that messed up, why didn’t he just come out and prove it? Why all the tricks? Why the innuendo? Why the implications? Why not just prove it?

You know why.

Update*

Yes, you have my permission to reprint this, e-mail this, or link this.

Update2* I just went in and fixed all of my sloppy typos. ugh! How embarrassing!

Update3* I just fact-fixed the “now watch this drive” part , as I had attributed it to the wrong date. Thanks to a keen eyed reader.

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