I earlier noted that Michael Moore could have provided a more complete look at the state of the Iraqi people instead of just showing them enjoying themselves before the war. Moore responded to such a concern in an Entertainment Weekly interview:
But if you'd just taken a second to show that they weren't exactly living under the best circumstances, that would have defused this criticism from the beginning. Right?
No.
No?
I refuse to participate in the brainwashing that the media was doing to the American public. I didn't need to state the obvious. Kurt Vonnegut in ''Slaughterhouse-Five'' isn't criticized for not showing the horrors of the Nazi regime even though he shows that the people who we firebombed in Dresden were essentially old men, women, and children. Is he doing something dishonest or wrong? I know it upsets a lot of people in the media that I'm not playing ball, that I'm not showing the images that they showed. I know it's embarrassing to them because anybody who sees my film now knows that you were only presented with one side.