"What a Wonderful World" montage
The film cuts to a montage of American foreign policy decisions, with the intent to counter McCollum's statement by citing examples of how the United States has frequently been the aggressor nation. This montage is set to the song "What a Wonderful World", performed by Louis Armstrong.
The following is a transcript of the onscreen text in the Wonderful World segment:
1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mosaddegh of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator.
1954: U.S. overthrows democratically elected President Árbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed.
1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.
1963–75: American military kills 4 million civilians in Southeast Asia.
September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile. Democratically elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.
1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.
1980s: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion.
1981: Reagan administration trains and funds "contras". 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to help them kill Iraqis.
1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
1998: Clinton bombs "weapons factory" in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin.
1991 to 2003: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
2000–01: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid".
September 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.
The montage ends with handheld-camera footage of United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the audio consisting solely of the emotional reactions of the witnesses, recorded by the camera's microphone. On the website accompanying the film, Moore provides additional background information for this section.
