Here ya go!
Posted on 09/06/2006 6:02:32 AM PDT by PDR
The docudrama that ABC will air next week commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks seems likely to revive some long-running disputes over whether the Clinton or Bush administration has more to answer for in neglecting indications of a pending al Qaeda attack on the United States.
“The Path to 9/11,” a five-hour, two-part depiction of events prior to the attacks, is to air Sept. 10 and 11. And early reviews among veterans of the Clinton White House are decidedly negative: They argue that the show downplays the Bush White House’s culpability while inventing some scenes out of whole cloth to dramatize the supposed negligence of Clinton officials.
That complaint came to the fore at a National Press Club screening of the show late last month, when Richard Ben-Veniste — one of the 10 members of the independent Sept. 11 commission, whose final report producer Marc Platt credits with supplying much of the mini-series’ detail and narrative structure — rose to denounce the veracity of a key scene involving Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. Berger.
Berger, portrayed as a pasty-faced time-server by Kevin Dunn (Col. Hicks in “Godzilla”) freezes in dithering apprehension when a manly and virtuous CIA agent played by Donnie Wahlberg radios in from the wilds of Afghanistan to say that he and his noble band of local tribesmen have Osama bin Laden within sight and begs for the green light to terminate him with extreme prejudice. In the film, the line goes dead before Berger offers any reply.
The moment is clearly intended to encapsulate the notion of American inattentiveness to the terror threat in the 1990s — a point driven home when the camera pans back to show Berger surrounded by a supporting cast of fellow Clinton administration nervous Nellies, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.
So when the post-screening question-and-answer session began, Ben-Veniste stood to say that the Berger-bashing scene didn’t square with the research he and the other commissioners conducted. “There was no incident like that in the film that we came across. I am disturbed by that aspect of it,” Ben-Veniste, a loyal Democrat, told the panel, which included both the producer and the commission’s GOP chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey.
Berger, reached by phone after the screening, seconded Ben-Veniste’s criticism. “It’s a total fabrication,” he said tersely. “It did not happen.”
That is not likely to prevent the film from being embraced far and wide among Bush supporters. Even before its airdate, the show is being hailed as a breakthrough in the conservative blogosphere. One blogger marveled in an interview with scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh that “one unbelievable sequence shows how . . . Sandy Berger . . . actually hung up the phone on the CIA agent on the ground.”
Neither Berger nor Ben-Veniste was consulted on the film. Kean, however, is an official adviser; he says the incident was a fictionalized composite. It was “representative of a series of events compacted into one,” he replied to Ben-Veniste at the time. In a phone interview a few days later, he added, “It’s reasonably accurate.” And he offered a prediction that the show will “get just as many howls from Republicans.”
"Mr. Bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."
Dems still insist that Clinton did not refuse to take bin Laden when offered.
Ben Veniste IS the epitome of oozing evil!!
I'm glad others see things as I do - you get the feeling that there would be some strange smell in the air when he is in the room - like the Sasquatch people report - something sort of like wet fur combined with something burning - hard to explain but makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. Ewwwwww.
When I see his face I have an overwhelming desire to punch it. Not many of these lying creeps produce that desire.
Clinton ran that right wing boogyman menace issue to a successful re-election.
At its worst, he had the FBI wasting resources going after non-existent right wingers who were supposedly setting fire to minority churches. And that is in the later half of the 1990s when the terrorism is ramping up.
"Take him" means two things. There was no will to "take him out" with a military or CIA strike. And no will to prosecute him as a criminal.
James Bond is a wuss. I want to see the left boycott such films in the future because they clearly don't believe that anyone should have a license to kill.
Here ya go!
Thanks I REALLY needed THAT.
That picture makes me want to calmly remove his glasses, place them on the floor and stomp them into bits, and THEN punch him, multiple times.
In the dictionary his picture should be next to the definition of "smug".
Wow! Quite the pack of nitwits there! Sometimes its hard to believe we survived eight years with people like this running the show.
I agree with you; however, who's doing the preemptive howling? Republicans? Or Democrats?
I think you'll find that by and large Republicans want to solve the terrorism problem. Democrats want to take power in Washington...at any cost.
>>And early reviews among veterans of the Clinton White House are decidedly negative: They argue that the show downplays the Bush White House’s culpability<<
That's right. Bill Clinton did absolutely nothing in his 8 years in office, but since George Bush didn't do enough in his 8 months in office, its Bush's fault.
Anyone that doesn't get the logic of that needs to be flogged, shot and forced to watch Rahm Emmanuel on the floor of the House for 6 hours straight.
I remember that Clinton's admin did everything they could to make Bush 43's transition difficult. They even refused to give him the keys!
I seriously doubt anyone in that administration did anything whatsoever to warn, inform, or otherwise help the transition from Clinton to W.
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