I haven't read the thread so sorry if I'm repeating things but I watched the movie after all the football was over and here are my impressions:
The storyline seems a bit jumbled although the point that comes across is that a lot of field-level people were trying to get the upper administration's attention and failing to do so.
Fair is fair. We tend to give GWB a pass because 9-11 happened only eight months into his presidency but the first WTC bombing took place only one month into the Clinton presidency. And, to be honest, other warning signs were clear before even the first WTC bombing. Failing to take seriously the threat if Islamic terrorism has been a failure of both Democrat and Republican administrations and if somehow 9-11 were thwarted, we'd probably still be asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting ourselves.
I thought we turned down Osama when he was in Sudan, not Afghanistan. Even with artistic license, I think that's a major factual blunder.
The timeline keeps jumping around. We're in 2001, no we're in 1993, no we're in 1999, no we're in 1995, no we're back to 2001. It makes it very hard to follow the story.
The guy they found to play Mohammad Atta looks too nice. They needed someone who looks like Dracula - like his well-circulated ID photo.
I wonder if they will show the time Atta tried to get a small business loan and starts making threats.
I can see why the Democrats would look at it as a smear job. Dragging the whole Lewinsky thing into it was bound to set their hairs on end even if the rest of it wasn't blatantly political. It's not really political other than it was a Democrat administration calling the shots at the time and basically not taking the threat seriously.
As for the movie itself, I HATE the cinematic style. The fast-paced, blurry jumpy can't-you-just-hold-the-damn-camera-still-for-two-seconds type of cinematography just gives me a major headache. Couple that with the too-close-for-comfort close-ups and I probably would have walked out on this if it were being shown in a movie theatre. Since it was on tv, I could stand up, walk around, take some advil, etc. Because of the important nature, I hung in there to watch the whole 2-1/2 hours but it was not easy. They probably could have whittled an hour of extraneous shots out of this and made it a much tighter script.
No, they had more than one chance to catch him. The Sudan and Northern Alliance chances are just the best-known.
Regarding your assertion that Clinton is being criticized unfairly because the first World Trade Center bombing was one month after his inauguration, nobody is blaming Clinton FOR the bombing happening. Instead, Clinton is criticized for not retaliating for the 1993 bombing. On the other hand, Bush retaliated (and that's an understatement!) after the first terrorist attack of his presidency.
Completely disagree with you. This was a very well done movie and if anything whitewashed the level of incompetence of the clinton administration.
His fear of having a picture of a dead baby on nationwide news while the Lewinsky affair was going on was his overriding fear. He was completely disengaged with terrorism and never truly understood what they were capable of.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
It was all the tinny music in the background that got to me.That was horrible sounding. The street scenes were way too cluttered. Maybe that is the way it is over there in those backward countries but it doesn't make for easy watching. If you only watched 2-1/2 hours you missed the last 20+ minutes of ABC interpretation. We were all treated to Richard Clark pinning the not getting binLadin to George Tenet. Clark is a ABC consultant. How nice for him that he has a job.