Decision ‘08

Tell It, JPod!

John Podhoretz is about as good on “The Path To 9/11″ as anyone I’ve seen (for the record, he says it’s a bore):

Of course, the question obsessing everyone today is: Does the movie misrepresent events, conversations and policies of the Clinton administration?

Yes and no.

Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s anger is unquestionably justified. The version that I saw has her self-righteously owning up to actions that effectively tipped off Osama bin Laden to a strike against his Afghan training camp. “We had to inform the Pakistanis,” the movie’s Albright insists.

The real Albright says she neither did nor said such a thing and that the meeting we see in the movie never took place. The 9/11 Commission report, on which the film is partly based, says it was a senior military official who told the Pakistanis.

The portrait of Albright is an unacceptable revision of recent history and an unfair mark on a public servant who, no matter her shortcomings, doesn’t deserve to be remembered by millions of Americans as the inadvertent (and truculent) savior of Osama bin Laden.

Samuel Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, also seems to have just cause for complaint. The version of the film I saw portrays him as having ruined the CIA’s one clear shot at bin Laden himself.

“Do we have clearance” to shoot, the CIA asks Berger, with Osama in their sights, and Berger responds, “I don’t have that authority.” That scene never took place in real life. The imputation that an actual living person named Sandy Berger refused to give a specific OK to an operation that would have put an end to Osama bin Laden three years before 9/11 is a libel.

If, as reported, ABC has revised that scene to conform more closely to reality, the network has done the right thing.

The one person who has no grounds for complaint is Bill Clinton himself.

“The Path to 9/11″ gives the impression that, as president, Clinton never took bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States and the West seriously enough. And that is simply the unvarnished, undeniable truth.

Still, even here “The Path to 9/11″ gets it wrong. The real truth about the failures of the U.S. government under both Clinton and Bush is not, as “The Path to 9/11″ would have it, that the diabolical nature of the al Qaeda threat was obvious and unmistakable and that it was ignored by fools, charlatans and other downright unpleasant people who refused to listen to the Few Who Knew the Truth (meaning the late FBI official John O’Neill and that legend in his own mind, former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke).

The simple fact of the matter is that, with a million other things going on all at once - all of which seemed more pressing at the time, the threat went uncomprehended.

The 9/11 Commission rightly called this a “failure of imagination.” It’s the docudrama’s failure to portray the False Peace accurately as a “failure of imagination” that makes “The Path to 9/11″ entirely unworthy of your time on the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

That’s exactly right, in my view; the Clinton Administration didn’t miss getting Osama because they were idiots; they were overly cautious with the benefit of hindsight, but they just didn’t imagine it could REALLY happen (I know, people keep telling me Tom Clancy this, and government report that - listen - nobody, I mean nobody, saw it coming)…

18 Responses to “Tell It, JPod!”

1 peter Says:
September 8th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
“The 9/11 Commission report, on which the film is partly based, says it was a senior military official who told the Pakistanis:” apparently Pakistan was tipped off so they did not think that it was hostile fire from India.

Had Pakistan not been tipped off, it is conceivable that this could have been the tripwire which would have started a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The implication that it was done to shield bin Laden is scurrilous and defamatory.
2 too many steves Says:
September 8th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
I agree with jpod: no one anticipated that other human beings would hijack planes and drive them, full of people, into large buildings. Call it failure of imagination or over reliance on criminal versus war time predisposition or whatever; the simple fact is that there was a broad bi-partisan ignorance of the nature and seriousness of the threat. That ignorance existed through eight years of the Clinton presidency and the first eight months of that of GWB.

We can learn from this experience without villifying anyone. None of us knew. None of us suspected. None of us were aware enough. It really is that simple and so is the lesson of 9/11.
3 peter Says:
September 8th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
I totally agree.

One wonders, then, what purpose is served by having a distorted and defamatory “docudrama” (whatever that is) on network television. I’m all for freedom of speech — and I agree with the Supreme Court decision which says that public figures essentially cannot sue for libel — so Disney has every right in the world to broadcast it.

However, Disney would have no right to complain if, for example, another network were to run a “docudrama” which shows that Walt Disney first drew Mickey Mouse when he was on cocaine (a persistent rumor — true or not, I have no idea) or that the rides at Disneyland are really death traps. If you’re going to be sloppy about what you say about others, then you have no right to complain when others take pot shots at you, true or not.
4 mtl Says:
September 8th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Iam not happy to see history distorted, but then I wasn’t happy with Michael Moore’s propoganda either.

The closing scene should include the note that Samuel Berger was convicted of stealing and destroying documents related to the Clinton administration handling of terrorism.

No need to distort facts, just give the simple truths.
5 jpe Says:
September 8th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
I think jpod is typically a gasbag, but he’s dead on here.
6 too many steves Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 6:05 am
One of the interesting angles on this, and it applies to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 and Bowling for Columbine, is that the reason given for inserting the fake bits is to dramatize and emphasize a (partisan?) point of view - but doing so actually undermines confidence in the overall message, thus defeating the maker’s purpose. People seem to think: well, if they made that part up, what else is not true?

The facts are what they are and pretty well documented besides, why wouldn’t you go to great lengths to tell the real story so as to get the message across accurately and believably? I get that they may be motivated by a partisan desire to go after certain people but who did they think they would be able to deceive?
7 CrawlinKingSnake Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 10:35 am
“Who did they think they would be able to deceive?”
Probably the same type of people who blindly bought into Farenheit and those who still follow it as the word of God. They took for granted however that people are not as easily blinded by hatred on this side of the fence.
8 peter Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 11:34 am
I’ve never seen a Micheal Moore film, so I’m not the best person to compare his oeuvre to “Path to 9/11″. However, I think you can draw a distinction between an explicitly polemical film and a docudrama. Micheal Moore makes no pretense of being fair or balanced, and people who see his films do not go there to watch a Ken Burns documentary. However, there is an implicit assumption that a docudrama will more or less stick to the truth, and will dramatize events for entertainment reasons and not to skew the program in one direction or another.

I also think that network television should have a higher bar than a movie, and there are certain obligations to the public which networks have which movie studios do not have.
9 mtl Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
“However, I think you can draw a distinction between an explicitly polemical film and a docudrama. Micheal Moore makes no pretense of being fair or balanced, and people who see his films do not go there to watch a Ken Burns documentary.”

If you make a distorted movie, you are a guest of honor at the democratic convention. If you make a distorted tv drama, then you should be censored.

The same democrats who whine now, would be silent if the movie planted words in the mouth of the current admin. In recent history, several dem leaders have ‘misrepresented words/actions’ about rove’s involvement in the Plame investigation, but since it is the news media doing it, it matters little.
10 mtl Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
The problems that dems already have:

“In an August 2006 PSRA/Pew Research Center poll, 57 percent said they would be concerned that Democrats would weaken the country’s efforts to combat terrorism if Democrats took control of Congress. Forty percent were not concerned.”

This movie is not going to help that perception, and will likely expand the seperation. (Funny, becuase this was a pew research poll, one of Albright’s own employers.)

Rove was straightfoward on his staement that the 06 election would be about national security. Regardless of the actual movie that does come out, the discussion is about willingness and preparedness to make hard decisions and the current dems do not inspire that, outside their 40% base.
11 mtl Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
It is funny to watch the dems try the litmus test:

Are you safer now than you were 5 years ago?

Their logic is that they want to exploit the fear of an imminent attack, and the media has been throwing out poll numbers which lead dems to an illogical conclusion-that they are considered an equivalent in the public opinion in regards to fighting terrorism is simply not the case.

They discuss it at their own peril, but I must question the wisdom of going after a “we can fight terrorism better”, when the polls don’t support this belief. In their obsessing over Clinton/Berger/Albright actual roles, they are simply confirming some larger public opinions.
12 mtl Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
A few more numbers of terrorism:

http://pollingreport.com/terror.htm#Pew

“In general, how well do you think the U.S. government is doing in reducing the threat of terrorism: very well, fairly well, not too well, or not at all well?”

74%-very/fairly well.

“What concerns you more about the government’s anti-terrorism policies — that they have not gone far enough to adequately protect the country, OR, that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties?”

55%-not far enough, up from 46% in Jan 06.

Welcome to the gop strategy for 2006.
13 too many steves Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
I’m not sure who did the choosing - I suspect and believe it was Michael Moore himself - but both “Fahrenheit 911″ and “Bowling for Columbine” are listed on imdb in the documentary category.

I don’t like fabrication of facts in any case but would certainly argue that playing fast and loose with the facts in a supposed documentary is the greater sin.
14 mtl Says:
September 9th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
You wouldn’t know what slacker is about?
15 too many steves Says:
September 10th, 2006 at 5:45 am
Btw, I read that Clinton made many of his comments while in Toronto for the film festival there. I wonder if he knows about today’s screening of a film titled “Death of a President”. In the film George W. Bush is assassinated. Not some fictional president, no, in this movie the current president is gunned down.

Here is how Noah Cowan, one of the film festival’s coordinators, describes the film:

“Death of a President” is “a classic cautionary tale.” Well, yes, Bush’s assassination is “harrowing,” he says, but what the film is really about is “how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush’s divisive partisanship and race-baiting has forever altered America.”.

Got it, thanks.

Here’s a link to a sample of the outrage expressed by the Democrats:
16 Mark Says:
September 10th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Hey, too many steves, your link didn’t show u- … um, never mind….
17 mtl Says:
September 10th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I’m giddy with anticipation of this film. That is all this thing is: a film.

I spent two years explaining that Bush did not let the Bin Laden family go, and that it was Richard Clarke who authorized their air travel during a restricted time-an action I agree with, reagrdless of who authorized it-after Farhenheit 9/11.

The difference now is that none of the central characters are in the process of seeking reelection…so let the crap fly.

For every instance of ‘creative’ scripting, there will be ten factual pieces that the clinton defenders will have to address. No one is going to be quoting the film as they were Moore’s opus. No director is going to be sitting in the republican convention hall. Less than 10% of the audience of Farhenheit 9/11 will ever see this piece.

Imagine the fans/believers of Moore seeing MM’s agitprop in 94, enthralled. They are easy to identify, they are the same people who saw the previews of ‘flight 93′ and ‘WTC’ and shouted:

Too soon.

This film is going to enrage those who care to watch it. With or without the quotes. Posner has a book-While america slept-which is the most descriptive name of the American policy regarding terrorism from 1991-9/11. I have heard of all the failures of Bush and his 9 months, and now the public will get to see the failures of Clinton and 8 years. I forgive both gentleman, but not the people who have failed to see Bush’s role as consistent with Clinton’s.

I didn’t have to see this film, to know the dems are soft of national defense, but by the way the clintonistas are squirming this makes the kerry swift boating look more a like a macaca moment. Truth hurts, especially when you have made your existence tolerable by telling everyone you know that you did try, and a simple piece of propoganda tears away the facade, from friends, and from themselves.
18 mtl Says:
September 10th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
here’s a factual albright tale, augmented by Richard Clarke:

“According to several accounts, the American ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in an April 1998 letter directly to Albright. Bushnell was ignored. [6] In “Against All Enemies,” Richard Clarke writes about an exchange with Albright several months after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. “What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?” Clarke asked. “The Republicans in Congress will go after you.” “First of all, I didn’t lose these two embassies,” Albright shot back. “I inherited them in the shape they were.” According to Clarke, Albright, realizing that Clarke was a friend, smiled coyly at him. Albright was sworn in as Secretary of State more than 18 months before the embassies she inherited were bombed.”

Sounds a lot like, ‘you got war with the army you got’.