Filmmaker Michael Moore on Midterm Elections, the Tea Party, and the Future of the Democratic Party

AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of war not really being mentioned—

MICHAEL MOORE: At all.

AMY GOODMAN:—in this—

MICHAEL MOORE: At all.

AMY GOODMAN:—in this midterm elections.

MICHAEL MOORE: Gone, right.

AMY GOODMAN: The talk shows on Sunday—WikiLeaks, the biggest military intelligence leak in the history of this country, that week the major agenda-setting talk shows on the networks there was no discussion—

MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN:—of what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MICHAEL MOORE: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: And when it’s raised with the hosts, they say, "Because we’re talking about the midterm elections."

MICHAEL MOORE: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Aren’t the elections a referendum on the major policy issues—

MICHAEL MOORE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN:—domestic and foreign?

MICHAEL MOORE: Right. You know, what I really want to say to that, I don’t want to say it. You know. 

AMY GOODMAN: Just don’t curse, because we want to play it on the air.

WikiLeaks Julian Assange: "Start imagining the war or stop supporting it"

Search for Accountability

As Wikileaks prepares to release more documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will greater accountability follow?

A string of shootings by British troops in a non-combat zone resulting in scores of dead civilians; a highway rampage by US troops; a deaf boy shot at when orders barked at him did not illicit a response; a previously unknown US special forces unit reporting directly to the White House, as well as a 'capture kill' list with which they operated, and their botched up missions that resulted in scores of casualties, including the deaths of children at an Islamic school.

The largest leak of classified military documents in US history revealed these incidents and many more. Nevertheless, the Afghan war logs published by Wikileaks on July 25 prompted no official apology or investigation into their contents.

Instead, they were swiftly downplayed by the White House and Pentagon, with Barack Obama, the US president, telling a press conference that "these documents do not reveal any issues that have not already informed our public debate on Afghanistan".

With several other leaks - including one with some 15,000 more documents on Afghanistan reported to include even more extensive and damming revelations – due to soon be released, the human rights community is hoping that a cue will be taken from their reactions to the first release and that increased accountability will follow.