TORONTO — With his controversial new film Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore, that scruffy-looking, baseball cap-wearing filmmaker from Flint, Mich., has gone from America's court jester to leader of his majesty's loyal opposition.

As he did with gun culture in Bowling for Columbine, Moore again provokes chuckles and gasps while he deftly slips his velvet-covered blade into the gizzard of his target, this time the Bush administration and its handling of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

But while the picture of high-level corruption and stupidity that he paints is scorching, it's likely that Moore will be preaching to the converted when his much-talked-about celluloid screed finally hits North American theatres this week. It's unlikely many Bush-ites will see this film, slap their foreheads and confess that their hearts and minds have been misplaced all along.

As in Bowling For Columbine, clever editing proves damning to his subjects. Not that in many cases they didn't do themselves in.

There's Bush looking shifty-eyed, almost satanic, just prior to a televised speech; deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz licking a comb to wet down his hair before the camera blinks; and Attorney General Ashcroft bursting into song at a staged event (not a bad voice, either).

From an opening pre-credit sequence in which he makes the case that Bush and his Florida governor brother hijacked the last U.S. election -- remember the hanging chads? -- to the closing with Neil Young on the soundtrack blaring Rockin' in the Free World ("There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead. Don't feel like Satan but I am to them.'') this is scathing, deliciously nasty filmmaking.

Moore has claimed this is a comedy but there are even fewer laughs here than in Bowling for Columbine.

He's included a lot of talked-about-but-unseen grim newsreel footage from Iraq, the kind Al-Jazeera might have aired but not CNN or Dan Rather. We see mangled Iraqi children, beheadings, the desecration of burned (American) corpses, and strung-out U.S. soldiers playing profane heavy metal music in their headphones while they search and destroy with immense firepower.

Amazingly, despite this graphic gore, Moore's screen goes dark when it comes time to show the planes hitting the towers. Blackness with only the wrenching sounds and screams, however, do the job. It recalls the emotional piledriver effect that the brief clip Denys Arcand included in The Barbarian Invasions had when seen on a giant theatre screen.

Despite a painstaking connecting of the dots that makes an impressive case that the Bush family had close business ties with the bin Laden family, that the administration built a baloney case for invading Iraq and that its cronies planned to reap plenty from the Iraq reconstruction, Moore claims to still love his country.

And to put the cherry atop this sundae from hell, he shows us a woman from his home town, a dyed-in-the-wool, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue all-American mother whose son died in Iraq. Her Yankee credentials are impeccable. But as she stands before the fortress-like White House, she collapses in grief at the sudden awareness that her family's sacrifice was for nothing.

The clips deftly parallel those of a kerchiefed Iraqi woman, wailing hysterically into the camera asking Allah why the Americans killed her family and destroyed her home. For nothing.

This time, Moore's hybrid talents of social humorist and documentarian soar to new heights -- or plunge to new depths, depending on your political bent.

He's been accused of playing unfair, and there may be a case for that. While he's a known political satirist, he must now also be considered an investigative journalist, although he doesn't seem required to abide by the traditional play-fair rules of bona fide journalism. There's no balance, no impartiality. And no apology.

So let's just call Fahrenheit 9/11 a piece of cinematic propaganda and leave it at that.

But it's very good propaganda.