"Columbia Pictures' "Black Hawk Down," the holiday action adventure movie about the 1993 Somalia debacle that cost 18 U.S. soldiers their lives, was set to explicity blame ex-President Clinton for the 9/11 terrorist attacks before the film's director and producers decided to soft-peddle the connection. In mid-November, before the decision to tone down the Clinton angle, the film was previewed for a handful journalists. Before its final edit "Black Hawk's" closing crawl highlighted a series of events following the Somalia mission, including Clinton's humiliating troop withdrawal from the country, the humanitarian disasters in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo and, finally, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. "With what happened in Mogadishu, with the way that all came down, you end up with the terrorism we see today," the film's producer Joe Roth told the New York Times on Wednesday. "It's so obvious now, eight years later." Roth said his partner Jerry Bruckheimer and "Black Hawk's" director Ridley Scott agreed with him that "we would be remiss in not making this connection to the general audience." But ultimately the filmakers, along with Mark Bowden, author of the best-selling book upon which the movie is based, decided that blaming Clinton explicitly would be "unnecessary and too distracting."'
Thanks, Mia...MUD