What is real

Documentary maker Michael Moore, so cocksure he has the market cornered on morality, also seems to think he's got the surest grip on reality.

From his comfortable Oscar perch Sunday night, at which he piously and contemptuously lectured our commander in chief, he attempted to explain what was real about the war in Iraq and what was not. It truly is amazing how much more our fantasy-dabblers in Hollywood know about reality than we do.

But as he rhetorically slipped a grenade under the tent of U.S. troops, there seemed to be some realities that eluded him.

Reality: The uncivilized neighborhood in which our troops are now fighting and dying for our safety - from Afghanistan to Iraq - is a breeding ground for racism, religious hatred, unbridled misogyny, mindless fanaticism, chronic warfare, barbaric treatment of both women and infidels and, in recent years, the very same global terrorism that killed 3,000 in ruthless, unprovoked attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The attacks that day proved that the war against the United States - begun years previously against military and diplomatic institutions - had now been declared against the U.S. population itself. And it proved that leaving these people alone to simmer in the bile of their own hatred is no longer an option.

Reality: If there was any doubt about the moral pedigree of the combatants, that doubt was erased this weekend with the treatment of POWs. While allied forces were no doubt giving Iraqi prisoners the best meals they'd had in a long time, and even performing surgery to relieve the abdominal suffering of one Iraqi, our POWs were clearly being abused and exploited on television, if not summarily executed.

We are fighting a backward, savage, immoral enemy. Yet we make every effort to spare lives and minimize damage - even if it makes things more dangerous for our own forces.

Reality: The propaganda machine in the Arab world - already reprehensible for its propagation of hate against the West - sunk to a new low by the inhumane airing of troglodytes celebrating our dead and intimidating our captured. U.S. actions are constantly under a microscope, but even a world blinded by hatred of the United States doesn't need special equipment to see the war crimes enabled by the Arab media.

Reality: The supposedly principled war opposition from the Russians and French - which is right up there with being lectured on morality by Hollywood - was not so principled after all. Russians have been arming our enemy with night-vision goggles and other equipment, and French fingerprints have only begun to be found on Saddam Hussein's militaristic regime.

Reality: Those animalistic enemies we are fighting - as well as turncoats who throw grenades at their own troops - are only emboldened, aided and abetted by shameless celebrities who, truth be known, have no clue what is real and what is not.