Cowardly Senate, DNC, DLC, DCCC & DSCC "Democrat leaders" PERFECTLY WILLING to let OUT OF POWER Clinton officials DEFEND Dem. honor re war v al Qaida
NOTHING gets to the heart-and-soul of the Democratic Party "leadership's" BETRAYAL of Democratic voters, working families, government whistleblowers, public education students, veterans, the environment, & etc., than the Dem. Party's REFUSAL to CONFRONT the Rethuglican karl rove PROPAGANDA media message.
Here it is just EIGHT WEEKS from the critical mid-term election 2006... and ALREADY our COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Democrat "leaders" ARE TRYING TO ROLL OUT their "SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY" template as created by Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, by Senate Majority 'leader' Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman (again) during the 2002 national mid-term elections, and by John Kerry and his pathetic DNC-approved 'stand there like a box-of-rocks and let Bush-Rove hit you below the belt' campaign of 2004.
"DO IT FOR OUR BIG CAMPAIGN DONORS!" is the mantra of the DNC and Senate Dems.... "SELL OUT Democratic voters, as long as you can feather YOUR nest with $10,000 contributions from the oil, gas, nuclear, auto, big pharmaceutical, chemical, "privatization," job-exporting, and above all, war, defense, and AIPAC lobbies."
In this case, right on schedule, the Rove/major-media/Bush/GOP propaganda machine is set to roll out an ABC "miniseries" THAT DEPICTS THE CLINTON administration AS RESPONSIBLE FOR 9-11!!
The basic argument for this fallacy is an urban myth that has much traction in America-land and Red-state America in particular: that President Clinton " was offered the arrest of Osama bin Laden" on a silver platter by foreign security services (Sudan), yet the Clinton White House allegedly "turned down" that offer.
THIS STORY IS A BLATANT, UNSUPPORTED LIE... one the bush-rove-cheney criminal White House is MORE than willing to perpetuate and propagate, just as Republican character assassins first suggested that the Clintons had broken laws by firing the Republican-favorite White House travel service (as if an American president did not have the right every other American has, to change his travel agents!); just as that "TRAVEL-GATE!" *SMEAR CAMPAIGN* having led Vince Foster to COMMIT SUICIDE, the Republican ghouls next piled on suggesting the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
(Note: today, in a case of "Stockholm syndrome" - identifying with your kidnappers - or in a case of joining the AIPAC lobby in putting the Israel/neo-con agenda first by conflating the "war on terror" with sound American policy in the Mideast, Hillary Clinton, the intended target of the "Travel-gate" and "Vince Foster murdered" smear-attacks, has now joined Joe Liebeman in being almost 100% in agreement with the Bush-Rove bullying thugs re prosecution of the War in Iraq as a subset of the infinite and ever expanding "war on terror" and dictatorial powers it confers on the Bush administration.)
IT IS THIS 'MEDIA MESSAGE' that puts the Democrat party in the perpetual, out-of-power minority... and with EIGHT WEEKS to go before the major 2006 mid-term elections, NOT ONLY ARE THE COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS DEMOCRATS ONCE AGAIN ENABLING the Republican smear campaign, but former "Democrat' JOE LIEBERMAN is the unambiguous, stab-Democratic-voters-in-the-back POSTER BOY of that Democrat TREACHERY, and STILL the Senate Democrats regard Lieberman as their friend and hero!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060906/ap_on_el_se/connecticut_senate
THERE IS *NO* SMEAR, BULLYING, CHARACTER ASSASSINATION, OR CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush White House that the COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Senate Democrats will not ROLL OVER and BETRAY DEMOCRATIC VOTERS FOR - including the REPEATED SMEARING of former Clinton White House officials, even though there are REAMS of stories and first hand accounts that the outgoing Clinton administration WARNED the incoming Bush-Cheney national security team that AL QAIDA TERRORISM would be AMERICA's GREATEST THREAT in the coming years.. indeed, Al Qaida had ATTACKED and nearly sunk the US warship USS Cole in Yemen, in OCTOBER of 2000, while the entire Bush national-security team (including former Secretaries of Defense Cheney and Rumsfeld, former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and future National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice) were ALL ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL (and presumably "up" on national security issues) for Bush that month!
This generation of Senate Democrats are DEFINED by SELLING AMERICAN CITIZENS and especially Democratic Voters DOWN THE RIVER: from (#1.) Florida voters DISENFRANCHISED in 2000 (at the hands of criminal election fraud by the Jeb Bush-Katherine Harris administration) to (#2.) the victims of 9-11 who deserved AN HONEST and TENACIOUS 9-11 Commission investigation (instead of the Lee Hamilton/Thomas Keene/Bob Kerrey WHITEWASH, with NOT ONE FEDERAL OFFICIAL FIRED or even reprimanded, INCLUDING THE FBI SUPERVISOR who REFUSED to grant a search warrant for KNOWN Al QAIDA SYMPATHIZER Zacarias Moussaoui, despite Moussaoui's paying CASH for expensive airliner flight simulator training WITHOUT WANTING TO LEARN HOW TO LAND OR TAKEOFF!!)...
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/27/time.fbi/
...to (#3.) the ENRON workers, pensioners, investors, and customers BETRAYED by Joe Lieberman's FAILURE to vigorously PROSECUTE ENRON FRAUD while Lieberman chaired the Senate Enron investigations in 2002 (a BETRAYAL and FAILURE on the part of Washington DC 'Democrats' that led DIRECTLY to the Bush-Cheney administration running interference for MORE ENRON FRAUD in California, Enron officials extorting BILLIONS of dollars from California electric consumers with coordinated plant- and grid shutdowns that made energy prices SKYROCKET in California, and ultimately lost the tepid and timid Democrats the governor's mansion in that state), to (#4.) VETERANS ** DENIED the $2.7 billion in funding for the Murray Amendment ** for VA funding and veteran's rehab ***because the cowardly Democratic 'leaders' REFUSE TO MAKE AN ISSUE*** of this WINNING, "portray Republicans as liars when they CLAIM to 'support the troops' but at every opportunity instead SHAFT the troops" issue.....
....to off course (#5.) the ULTIMATE Democratic TREACHERY, BETRAYAL, and COWARDICE, the inability or UNWILLINGNESS to CONFRONT and CONDEMN the Bush-Rove-Republican Party for the ALMOST TWO-THOUSAND NEW ORLEANS FLOODING VICTIMS WHO DIED in the days after the New Orleans floods, as BUSH WHITE HOUSE and the administration's federal emergency officials ALLOWED VICTIMS TO DIE OF THIRST in nursing homes, the Superdome and throughout New Orleans, even as network news crews had NO PROBLEM DRIVING UP TO THE SUPERDOME with their huge satellite-TV trucks!
BETRAYAL and TREACHERY and COWARDICE is THE Democratic Party's wishy-washy, SELL VOTERS DOWN THE RIVER template in 2006, with the Senate and DLC, DNC, DCCC, and DSCC "leaders" WORKING OVERTIME to HELP the Bush-Rove-Cheney crew PUSH NED LAMONT's WINNING anti-Lieberman campaign OFF America's FRONT PAGES and TV SCREENS!!!
(Note: Katie Couric's ditzy "I'm a network prime-time news anchor now!" promotion - WITHOUT GETTING INTO THE VITAL nuts-and-bolts issues of voters needs and desires for the 2006 elections - is the PERFECT METAPHOR for ditz-and-glitz over substance that the American media has devolved to - WITH THE COMPLICITY of the cowering and TREACHEROUS Democratic "leadership".)
================================
Clinton Administration Officials Assail ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601819.html
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
Save & Share
Tag This Article
Saving options
ABC's entertainment division said the six-hour movie, "The Path to 9/11," will say in a disclaimer that it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes." But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission's report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
Berger said in an interview that ABC is "certainly trying to create the impression that this is realistic, but it's a fabrication."
Marc Platt, the film's executive producer, said that although it "does contain composite and conflated scenes and representative characters and dialogue, we've worked very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they're wrongly portrayed, that's obviously of concern. We've portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view."
The former Clinton aides voiced their objections in letters to Robert A. Iger, chief executive of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., but the network refused to make changes or to give them advance copies of the movie. They were not interviewed by ABC; it hired as a co-executive producer Thomas H. Kean, the Republican who chaired the Sept. 11 commission, but no Democratic members of the panel.
"In an undertaking this gargantuan," Platt said, "it's impossible to interview every single person available, and we didn't believe we needed to." He said that "maybe I'm naive" in thinking that hiring only Kean would not prompt criticism of a political slant.
The fierceness of the debate reflects a recognition that a $40 million miniseries -- whose cast includes Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Penny Johnson Jerald -- can damage Clinton's legacy in the anti-terrorism fight on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Among the scenes that the Clinton team said are fictional:
· Berger is seen as refusing authorization for a proposed raid to capture bin Laden in spring 1998 to CIA operatives in Afghanistan who have the terrorist leader in their sights. A CIA operative sends a message: "We're ready to load the package. Repeat, do we have clearance to load the package?" Berger responds: "I don't have that authority."
Berger said that neither he nor Clinton ever rejected a CIA or military request to conduct an operation against bin Laden. The Sept. 11 commission said no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work.
· Tenet is depicted as challenging Albright for having alerted Pakistan in advance of the August 1998 missile strike that unsuccessfully targeted bin Laden.
"Madame Secretary," Tenet is seen saying, "the Pakistani security service, the ISI, has close ties with the Taliban." Albright is seen shouting: "We had to inform the Pakistanis. There are regional factors involved." Tenet then complains that "we've enhanced bin Laden's stature."
Albright said she never warned Pakistan. The Sept. 11 commission found that a senior U.S. military official warned Pakistan that missiles crossing its airspace would not be from its archenemy, India.
Save & Share
Tag This Article
Saving options
· "The Path to 9/11" uses news footage to suggest that Clinton was distracted by the Republican drive to impeach him. Veteran White House counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, who also disputes the film's accuracy, is portrayed as telling FBI agent John P. O'Neill: "Republicans went all out for impeachment. I just don't see the president in this climate willing to take chances."
O'Neill responds: "So it's okay if somebody kills bin Laden, so long as he didn't give the order. . . . It's pathetic." The Sept. 11 commission found no evidence that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal played a role in the August 1998 missile strike, but added that the "intense partisanship of the period" was one factor that "likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against bin Laden."
Clinton allies have complained that advance copies were sent to a number of conservative commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, but not to liberals. Limbaugh, saying that the screenwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, is a friend of his, told his radio audience that the film "indicts the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger. It is just devastating to the Clinton administration. It talks about how we had chances to capture bin Laden in specific detail."
ABC said copies of the film were sent to media organizations and commentators without regard to ideology, and that Democrats and Republicans were invited to a screening in Washington. At the screening, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission, assailed the film as inaccurate.
Nowrasteh, who has described himself as a conservative, told Frontpage magazine that the movie illustrates "the frequent opportunities the administration had in the '90s to stop bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so."
Nowrasteh drew criticism from Reagan administration officials for his Showtime movie "The Day Reagan Was Shot." He told the Los Angeles Daily News then that he "made a conscious effort not to contact any members of the [Reagan] administration because I didn't want them to stymie my efforts."
The assault on "The Path to 9/11" assumed the trappings of a campaign yesterday. Four senior House Democrats -- John Conyers Jr., Jane Harman, John D. Dingell and Louise M. Slaughter -- have written Iger to demand that the inaccuracies be corrected. Spurred by the Center for American Progress, which is headed by Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta, 25,000 people have sent letters of protest to ABC.
Here it is just EIGHT WEEKS from the critical mid-term election 2006... and ALREADY our COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Democrat "leaders" ARE TRYING TO ROLL OUT their "SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY" template as created by Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, by Senate Majority 'leader' Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman (again) during the 2002 national mid-term elections, and by John Kerry and his pathetic DNC-approved 'stand there like a box-of-rocks and let Bush-Rove hit you below the belt' campaign of 2004.
"DO IT FOR OUR BIG CAMPAIGN DONORS!" is the mantra of the DNC and Senate Dems.... "SELL OUT Democratic voters, as long as you can feather YOUR nest with $10,000 contributions from the oil, gas, nuclear, auto, big pharmaceutical, chemical, "privatization," job-exporting, and above all, war, defense, and AIPAC lobbies."
In this case, right on schedule, the Rove/major-media/Bush/GOP propaganda machine is set to roll out an ABC "miniseries" THAT DEPICTS THE CLINTON administration AS RESPONSIBLE FOR 9-11!!
The basic argument for this fallacy is an urban myth that has much traction in America-land and Red-state America in particular: that President Clinton " was offered the arrest of Osama bin Laden" on a silver platter by foreign security services (Sudan), yet the Clinton White House allegedly "turned down" that offer.
THIS STORY IS A BLATANT, UNSUPPORTED LIE... one the bush-rove-cheney criminal White House is MORE than willing to perpetuate and propagate, just as Republican character assassins first suggested that the Clintons had broken laws by firing the Republican-favorite White House travel service (as if an American president did not have the right every other American has, to change his travel agents!); just as that "TRAVEL-GATE!" *SMEAR CAMPAIGN* having led Vince Foster to COMMIT SUICIDE, the Republican ghouls next piled on suggesting the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
(Note: today, in a case of "Stockholm syndrome" - identifying with your kidnappers - or in a case of joining the AIPAC lobby in putting the Israel/neo-con agenda first by conflating the "war on terror" with sound American policy in the Mideast, Hillary Clinton, the intended target of the "Travel-gate" and "Vince Foster murdered" smear-attacks, has now joined Joe Liebeman in being almost 100% in agreement with the Bush-Rove bullying thugs re prosecution of the War in Iraq as a subset of the infinite and ever expanding "war on terror" and dictatorial powers it confers on the Bush administration.)
IT IS THIS 'MEDIA MESSAGE' that puts the Democrat party in the perpetual, out-of-power minority... and with EIGHT WEEKS to go before the major 2006 mid-term elections, NOT ONLY ARE THE COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS DEMOCRATS ONCE AGAIN ENABLING the Republican smear campaign, but former "Democrat' JOE LIEBERMAN is the unambiguous, stab-Democratic-voters-in-the-back POSTER BOY of that Democrat TREACHERY, and STILL the Senate Democrats regard Lieberman as their friend and hero!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060906/ap_on_el_se/connecticut_senate
THERE IS *NO* SMEAR, BULLYING, CHARACTER ASSASSINATION, OR CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush White House that the COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Senate Democrats will not ROLL OVER and BETRAY DEMOCRATIC VOTERS FOR - including the REPEATED SMEARING of former Clinton White House officials, even though there are REAMS of stories and first hand accounts that the outgoing Clinton administration WARNED the incoming Bush-Cheney national security team that AL QAIDA TERRORISM would be AMERICA's GREATEST THREAT in the coming years.. indeed, Al Qaida had ATTACKED and nearly sunk the US warship USS Cole in Yemen, in OCTOBER of 2000, while the entire Bush national-security team (including former Secretaries of Defense Cheney and Rumsfeld, former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and future National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice) were ALL ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL (and presumably "up" on national security issues) for Bush that month!
This generation of Senate Democrats are DEFINED by SELLING AMERICAN CITIZENS and especially Democratic Voters DOWN THE RIVER: from (#1.) Florida voters DISENFRANCHISED in 2000 (at the hands of criminal election fraud by the Jeb Bush-Katherine Harris administration) to (#2.) the victims of 9-11 who deserved AN HONEST and TENACIOUS 9-11 Commission investigation (instead of the Lee Hamilton/Thomas Keene/Bob Kerrey WHITEWASH, with NOT ONE FEDERAL OFFICIAL FIRED or even reprimanded, INCLUDING THE FBI SUPERVISOR who REFUSED to grant a search warrant for KNOWN Al QAIDA SYMPATHIZER Zacarias Moussaoui, despite Moussaoui's paying CASH for expensive airliner flight simulator training WITHOUT WANTING TO LEARN HOW TO LAND OR TAKEOFF!!)...
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/27/time.fbi/
...to (#3.) the ENRON workers, pensioners, investors, and customers BETRAYED by Joe Lieberman's FAILURE to vigorously PROSECUTE ENRON FRAUD while Lieberman chaired the Senate Enron investigations in 2002 (a BETRAYAL and FAILURE on the part of Washington DC 'Democrats' that led DIRECTLY to the Bush-Cheney administration running interference for MORE ENRON FRAUD in California, Enron officials extorting BILLIONS of dollars from California electric consumers with coordinated plant- and grid shutdowns that made energy prices SKYROCKET in California, and ultimately lost the tepid and timid Democrats the governor's mansion in that state), to (#4.) VETERANS ** DENIED the $2.7 billion in funding for the Murray Amendment ** for VA funding and veteran's rehab ***because the cowardly Democratic 'leaders' REFUSE TO MAKE AN ISSUE*** of this WINNING, "portray Republicans as liars when they CLAIM to 'support the troops' but at every opportunity instead SHAFT the troops" issue.....
....to off course (#5.) the ULTIMATE Democratic TREACHERY, BETRAYAL, and COWARDICE, the inability or UNWILLINGNESS to CONFRONT and CONDEMN the Bush-Rove-Republican Party for the ALMOST TWO-THOUSAND NEW ORLEANS FLOODING VICTIMS WHO DIED in the days after the New Orleans floods, as BUSH WHITE HOUSE and the administration's federal emergency officials ALLOWED VICTIMS TO DIE OF THIRST in nursing homes, the Superdome and throughout New Orleans, even as network news crews had NO PROBLEM DRIVING UP TO THE SUPERDOME with their huge satellite-TV trucks!
BETRAYAL and TREACHERY and COWARDICE is THE Democratic Party's wishy-washy, SELL VOTERS DOWN THE RIVER template in 2006, with the Senate and DLC, DNC, DCCC, and DSCC "leaders" WORKING OVERTIME to HELP the Bush-Rove-Cheney crew PUSH NED LAMONT's WINNING anti-Lieberman campaign OFF America's FRONT PAGES and TV SCREENS!!!
(Note: Katie Couric's ditzy "I'm a network prime-time news anchor now!" promotion - WITHOUT GETTING INTO THE VITAL nuts-and-bolts issues of voters needs and desires for the 2006 elections - is the PERFECT METAPHOR for ditz-and-glitz over substance that the American media has devolved to - WITH THE COMPLICITY of the cowering and TREACHEROUS Democratic "leadership".)
================================
Clinton Administration Officials Assail ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601819.html
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
Save & Share
Tag This Article
Saving options
ABC's entertainment division said the six-hour movie, "The Path to 9/11," will say in a disclaimer that it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes." But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission's report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
Berger said in an interview that ABC is "certainly trying to create the impression that this is realistic, but it's a fabrication."
Marc Platt, the film's executive producer, said that although it "does contain composite and conflated scenes and representative characters and dialogue, we've worked very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they're wrongly portrayed, that's obviously of concern. We've portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view."
The former Clinton aides voiced their objections in letters to Robert A. Iger, chief executive of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., but the network refused to make changes or to give them advance copies of the movie. They were not interviewed by ABC; it hired as a co-executive producer Thomas H. Kean, the Republican who chaired the Sept. 11 commission, but no Democratic members of the panel.
"In an undertaking this gargantuan," Platt said, "it's impossible to interview every single person available, and we didn't believe we needed to." He said that "maybe I'm naive" in thinking that hiring only Kean would not prompt criticism of a political slant.
The fierceness of the debate reflects a recognition that a $40 million miniseries -- whose cast includes Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Penny Johnson Jerald -- can damage Clinton's legacy in the anti-terrorism fight on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Among the scenes that the Clinton team said are fictional:
· Berger is seen as refusing authorization for a proposed raid to capture bin Laden in spring 1998 to CIA operatives in Afghanistan who have the terrorist leader in their sights. A CIA operative sends a message: "We're ready to load the package. Repeat, do we have clearance to load the package?" Berger responds: "I don't have that authority."
Berger said that neither he nor Clinton ever rejected a CIA or military request to conduct an operation against bin Laden. The Sept. 11 commission said no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work.
· Tenet is depicted as challenging Albright for having alerted Pakistan in advance of the August 1998 missile strike that unsuccessfully targeted bin Laden.
"Madame Secretary," Tenet is seen saying, "the Pakistani security service, the ISI, has close ties with the Taliban." Albright is seen shouting: "We had to inform the Pakistanis. There are regional factors involved." Tenet then complains that "we've enhanced bin Laden's stature."
Albright said she never warned Pakistan. The Sept. 11 commission found that a senior U.S. military official warned Pakistan that missiles crossing its airspace would not be from its archenemy, India.
Save & Share
Tag This Article
Saving options
· "The Path to 9/11" uses news footage to suggest that Clinton was distracted by the Republican drive to impeach him. Veteran White House counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, who also disputes the film's accuracy, is portrayed as telling FBI agent John P. O'Neill: "Republicans went all out for impeachment. I just don't see the president in this climate willing to take chances."
O'Neill responds: "So it's okay if somebody kills bin Laden, so long as he didn't give the order. . . . It's pathetic." The Sept. 11 commission found no evidence that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal played a role in the August 1998 missile strike, but added that the "intense partisanship of the period" was one factor that "likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against bin Laden."
Clinton allies have complained that advance copies were sent to a number of conservative commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, but not to liberals. Limbaugh, saying that the screenwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, is a friend of his, told his radio audience that the film "indicts the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger. It is just devastating to the Clinton administration. It talks about how we had chances to capture bin Laden in specific detail."
ABC said copies of the film were sent to media organizations and commentators without regard to ideology, and that Democrats and Republicans were invited to a screening in Washington. At the screening, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission, assailed the film as inaccurate.
Nowrasteh, who has described himself as a conservative, told Frontpage magazine that the movie illustrates "the frequent opportunities the administration had in the '90s to stop bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so."
Nowrasteh drew criticism from Reagan administration officials for his Showtime movie "The Day Reagan Was Shot." He told the Los Angeles Daily News then that he "made a conscious effort not to contact any members of the [Reagan] administration because I didn't want them to stymie my efforts."
The assault on "The Path to 9/11" assumed the trappings of a campaign yesterday. Four senior House Democrats -- John Conyers Jr., Jane Harman, John D. Dingell and Louise M. Slaughter -- have written Iger to demand that the inaccuracies be corrected. Spurred by the Center for American Progress, which is headed by Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta, 25,000 people have sent letters of protest to ABC.
posted by verifi at 11:56 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home