Again ignoring numerous falsehoods, NY Times falsely suggested that only Clinton administration officials objected to ABC's Path to 9/11
SUMMARY: A New York Times article stated, "In 2006 ABC made changes to 'The Path to 9/11' after complaints from former Clinton administration officials that it portrayed them as less than vigilant in their pursuit of Osama bin Laden." But the article did not note that, despite editing, the final version of the ABC miniseries still included several fabricated scenes, falsehoods, and sharp discrepancies between its account of certain events and the findings laid out in the 9-11 Commission's report.
In a May 14 article about the upcoming HBO film Recount, New York Times writer Edward Wyatt reported, "In 2006 ABC made changes to 'The Path to 9/11' after complaints from former Clinton administration officials that it portrayed them as less than vigilant in their pursuit of Osama bin Laden," but did not note that, despite editing, the final version of the ABC miniseries still included several fabricated scenes, falsehoods, and sharp discrepancies between its account of certain events and the findings laid out in the 9-11 Commission's report. Indeed, Wyatt himself wrote in a September 18, 2006, Times article: "It's little wonder that ABC's mini-series 'The Path to 9/11' drew stinging criticism earlier this month for its invented scenes, fabricated dialogue and unsubstantiated accounts of how the Clinton and [George W.] Bush administrations conducted themselves in the years encompassing the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and 2001." These falsehoods and discrepancies have been noted by Media Matters for America and numerous others.
In mentioning only "complaints from former Clinton administration officials" -- and not actual falsehoods in the movie -- the May 14 article repeated the Times' 2006 suggestion that criticism of the movie was leveled exclusively by former Clinton officials upset at their portrayal in the film. In fact, the film was criticized for its falsehoods regarding both the Clinton and the Bush administrations' handling of the terrorist threat by people from across the political spectrum, including journalists and participants in the film's production as well as a number of conservative commentators, as Media Matters has documented.
From Wyatt's May 14 New York Times article:
As many dramatizations do, "Recount" includes invented scenes and dialogue. Danny Strong, who wrote the screenplay, said in an interview that while those inventions condensed events, they reflect what actually happened. "The film tries to give the essence of the truth," he said, and is based on his own research and interviews, as well as on books and newspaper and magazine articles documenting the recount effort.
Dramatizations of historical events, particularly political ones, have frequently given trouble to writers and producers trying to create compelling entertainment. In 2006 ABC made changes to "The Path to 9/11" after complaints from former Clinton administration officials that it portrayed them as less than vigilant in their pursuit of Osama bin Laden. CBS dropped plans to show "The Reagans," a 2003 mini-series, after Republican and conservative groups protested its portrayal of President Reagan as forgetful and unsympathetic to AIDS victims. (The series was broadcast on Showtime.)
"Recount," which has been screened for invited audiences in Washington and New York and will be shown in Florida this week, is inspiring similar protests.
Oh here we go again. Another inconclusive report that will lead to another years worth of debating if Al really did win or not. Round and round and round we go........
Nope. Al lost the election, so the Americans got 'Mission Accomplished' instead of Osama bin Laden's head.
I take it you're happy that the most evil terrorist in the world is running loose in Afghanistan/Pakistan??
Half of my conclusion was reached by the knowledge that Osama bin Laden is alive and well, and continuing his terrorist activities. Would you dispute that?
The other half of my conclusion is based on the foreign policy blunders and ineptitude of the current administration. I don't know for certain if Al Gore would have caught Osama bin Laden, but I'm SURE he would have tried harder, and I'm fairly certain the war in Afghanistan would be over by now had we not decided to pre-emptively invade Iraq.
Did you understand any of that?
He didn't try the 8 years he was there.
Al would have continued the global warming is worse that terrorism rhetoric.
whatever the clinton administration did, it was way more than bush. bush admitted he was "not on point" about bin laden prior to 9-11 and said he didn't feel a "sense of urgency" about him. there were several attacks stopped during the clinton administration, but the bush people didn't care. richard clarke was pushed aside and ignored by bush, the opposite of the clinton era.
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2004/0326terrorism_daalder.aspx
Agree Dems, aren't there enough relevant battles to fight than whether or not the Clintons liked the 9/11 movie, or whether Al won this or George won that?
Con misinfo must be on the wane....
the writer/producer of "the path to 9-11", cyrus nowrasteh, is a right winger who claimed he had to do additional research because the 9-11 report "only goes back to 1998". besides being a bald-face lie, it doesn't even make sense. but who did he rely on for information? "buzz" patterson, who has tried to portray himself as a clinton insider privy to all decisions and who has written anti-clinton books. the truth is that patterson was one of the 5 people at any time who carry the nuclear launch codes, and he did so for two years, 1996 to 1998. nowrasteh still complains that abc refuses to release his propaganda on dvd.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51898
patterson told a denver radio show in 2006 that clinton refused to order an air strike against bin laden in 1996. as a caller to the show pointed out, patterson himself wrote in his book that the incident involved a strike against iraq, not bin laden. so much for being a reliable source.
http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200609270002?f=s_search
"Con misinfo must be on the wane...." ---TommyJUst
Just tune into Rush Limbaugh.
I truly can understand the sentiment of people who would like to move on from a contested, heated, and extremely close election, but I think that the 2000 election showed some very troubling things that we as a country need to address.
Regardless of what team you're on or who ended up winning or how that person did in office, the fact remains that the SCOTUS inserted themselves into a decidedly state level issue and cast a horribly partisan vote. The most egregious part was that they explicitly stated that the ruling was not to be used as precident for any other ruling. Think about that for a minute. All rulings are intended to create president for future rulings. The only conclusion to be drawn from not wanting that to happen is if you know it is a flawed ruling that you don't want coming back in your face down the road.
We now know that that disturbing slice of partisanship was a window into the terrible governance and judgment by all three branches over the next eight years.
"All rulings are intended to create president for future rulings."
That is a GREAT Freudian slip!
Where would we be, without members of the Writers Guild of America (East and West) and the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, to "reflect what actually happened" and "give the essence of the truth" to current events, and political events, and even U.S. History.
I see in the credits of "Recount", in the long cast list, that the part of "Al Gore" will be played by "Himself (archive footage)"...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000771/
...good, because I don't see how there's any member of the Screen Actors Guild that could possibly do the part justice, more than "Al Gore Himself (archive footage)" did.
I'm especially eager to see again, where Vice President Al Gore Presides over the actual opening and counting of the Electoral Ballots, right there in the House of Representatives (as it is all Constitutionally mandated, including the Vice President's role in "opening all the Certificates, and counting the Votes")...
To see where Members of the House who are also members of the Congressional Black Caucus, attempting to Motion to Mr. Gore (as Presiding over the opening of the Certificates and counting of the Votes), attempting to Motion in their own House, led by Members of Florida's Delegation to the House, to be heard in the matter of Florida's Certificates... to at least have their words on the Record of the Proceeding, that perhaps many thousands of People in Florida had been disenfranchised in the election, by not allowing for their Ballots to be picked up off the floor where the danged machines had spat them out as "under-count" or "over-count"...
And wanting to be heard as to the point of many of Florida's People not having their Votes COUNTED, or RECOUNTED...
...Mr. Gore wouldn't recognize them... in their own House, they couldn't get recognized by Mr. Gore, as he Presided over the opening of the Certificates and counting of the Votes, in an election that he lost...
Because all of the Votes weren't counted.
I hope that scene is in the movie, because it'll be fun to see Al Gore Himself (archive footage) again, in that his lowest and lamest and most ineffectually worst moment, failing to stand up for the many millions of American People who Voted for him... refusing to recognize those House Members from Florida... refusing them to speak in their own House
I wouldn't count on this movie to give you any satisfaction if what you're looking for is truth. As we now know from the New York Times article referenced at the top of this thread, the screenwriter avoided talking to key players, like Warren Christopher and Bill Daley, until the film had already begun shooting. While he apparently thought that going to Christopher's tailor to get a suit made for the Christopher character was imperative, he treated the facts as a secondary concern.
The problem here--as with the 9/11 film--is that the people who write and finance them are more than willing to be hypocrites. Strong says he only intends to convey "the essence of truth," not to mislead viewers into thinking that they're seeing history exactly as it took place. What he sidesteps, of course, is that the film is being sold to the public not as the “essence” of what happened in 2000 but as “the story of the 2000 presidential election.” He and HBO know that the public wants to treat as fact what is fed to them as "docu-drama." They want to believe they are witnessing historic events as they actually occurred. That they are consuming an ounce of “docu” for every gallon of “drama” is an inconvenient truth that no one, certainly not Danny Strong nor HBO, wants to point out to them. And like it or not, what the viewers treat as fact becomes fact for others in this generation and those following.
POV,
Well-established by who, Sean Hannity?
Fried
Come on man....how many attacks were there on US interests that Clinton never responded to? He could have had bin laden, and decided not to do it. How many bases, ships, and embassys were attacked that Clinton simply let go without a response?
" i do not believe to this day it would have been a good thing to respond to the cole...". condi to bob kerrey, discussing the fact that the evidence of responsibility did not become available until the bush administration came into office.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/
the clinton administration tried to get bin laden expelled from sudan and returned to saudi control, but there was no way to bring him here legally. as the 9-11 commission wrote {page 110}: "ambassador {to sudan} carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the sudanese since, at the time {1995}, there was no indictment outstanding". compare that to bush, who told bob woodward that he was "not on point" about bin laden prior to 9-11, and then a year after 9-11 said he was not worried about where bin laden was.
POV,
I remember the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing were never responded to ... oh, wait, Clinton wasn't President back then, so I'm sure that doesn't count, right. It could be easily argued that Red Ink RayGuns failure to do anything after that attack is what emboldened the terrorists and has led us to where we are today.
POV,
So, no links? Just because there were attacks doesn't mean Clinton could have had him. If that was the case, why hasn't Bush found him? Probably because he doesn't "spend much time on him."
How do you measure well established? For example is your fact as 'well established' as the following:
George W. Bush was informed on Aug. 6, 2001, that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on U.S soil.
So... here we are SEVEN years later and Mr. Bush still can't find him?
But sure, Clinton didn't do enough. Also, he cheated on his wife, which led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Good luck 'establishing' the causation.
You guys with all your facts.--Colonel
Colonel, this reminds me of a conversation I heard a couple days ago between Michael Medved and a caller (gotta hand it to him, he does take some confrontational calls.) This guy sounded maybe 30 and was obviously agitated and displeased with Medved's approval of McCain. The interesting thing to me was that although the caller sounded like a dominant male judging by the timber of his voice, his poise, and his articulation, the basis of his argument was that all the other talk show guys he listened to (he named 3 or 4) disagreed with Medved! Not at all substantive reasoning---purely a consensus driven and other-dependent opinion. Although this caller, I would venture to guess, had the capacity to use the sense God gave him to make up his own mind based on the evidence, this didn't even seem to occur to him.
Hey, Eddy, you're right, Medved isn't as scared as Rush or Hannity to take calls with opposing views. Medved is of a different school, having the same lack of logic as his wingnut brothers, but backed up by a pretty amazing mind for trivia and distraction.
I posted recently about my past calls to righty radio hosts, and their tendency to cut me off and claim that I hung up. I got through to Medved once, and I'll admit that he got me so confused with his tangents into Pres. Taft's secretary of state and some senate bill from 1970 that I probably came off as pretty stoopid.
He may have a staff on the internet feeding him lines, but I think he actually has a pretty good "Rain Man" type of brain for digging up meaningless points that seem to support his position.If you listen to his show, check this tactic out; any time a caller has a good argument against him, he seems to bring up a "gotcha" that really has nothing to do with the topic .
I haven’t heard him that often, but now that you mention it, he does seem to have had a plan for how he approached the tougher calls. And I suppose he could have his staff carefully select from those types of calls only the ones he has a clever response to.
The tactic which I noticed was asking the caller or guest to substantiate his claim even when (I presume) he knows the caller or guest is right. If the caller, or more likely the guest, actually is able to back up his assertion, Medved pipes down and tries to move the conversation away from that point. The tactic usually works though, as it’s unlikely the typical caller is going to have the material he needs at hand or be so well versed on the subject that he has it committed to memory.
My armchair psychoanalysis of Medved is that it’s a game to him. He thinks of himself as a very smart/clever guy and gets a kick out of pulling the wool over people’s eyes. Also he’s an extremist. When he was a Democrat he had very liberal views and now as Republican his views are at the other end of the spectrum.
It is well established that Clinton could have had Bin Laden, and let him go.
LOL
What happened to phony playing cowboys "wanted dead or alive"?
It's been 7 years since the worst attack on American soil and Bush STILL can't find the mastermind, Osama. Osama sends tapes 2 and 3 times a year reminding Americans that even after the worst attack on American soil, he's still living. Yes that's right, the man who planned and executed 9/11 is STILL breathing after 7 years, yet you still want to talk about Bill? BUY A F**KING CLUE!
Actually, he didn't. Buried in the newspapers (because they concluded their analysis just as 9/11 happened), by all ways of counting the ballots in Florida, Gore came out ahead. And he won the popular vote as well. And if you also count all the voters who were disenfranchised by the GOP paid Choice Point, targeting Democrats to throw legitimate voters off the roles, Al would have won by even more votes.
As for Kerry, Florida and Ohio and other states had enough election fraud happening in 2004 that we will never know how an honest vote would have gone.