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[Milwaukiedave]

Laying Blame and Passing the Buck, Dramatized

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: September 8, 2006

THE first words spoken on �The Path to 9/11� are at check-in at Logan Airport at 7:13 a.m. �O.K., Mr. Atta,� an American Airlines agent says over the clickety-clack of computer keys. �One way, nonstop to Los Angeles, no return.�

Moments before American Airlines Flight 11 hits its target, ABC�s mini-series pivots back 8� years to a Ryder rental van that blew up in the parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993.

And the events leading up to disaster unfold like a spy thriller. The two-part narrative, which ABC is scheduled to broadcast Sunday and Monday night, follows a few men and women who took the Osama bin Laden threat seriously and devoted their careers to battling it. Many are real, like the former F.B.I. counterterrorism expert John P. O�Neill, who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is played by Harvey Keitel. A few are composites, like an intrepid C.I.A. officer with the code name Kirk (Donnie Wahlberg).

The terrorists are ruthless and implacable. Some foreign informants and obscure civil servants turn out to be inspiringly tough-minded and smart: low profiles in courage. But �The Path to 9/11� is an unsparing, and at times hyperbolic, portrait of bureaucratic turf wars, buck passing and complacency. Senior managers at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. are overwhelmed and quicker to protect their own hides than national security. It�s always the enemy within that nettles the most.

ABC has been under assault by bloggers and former officials who claim the film paints an unfairly censorious portrait of the Clinton administration, with a lobbying campaign reminiscent of the one that drove CBS to cancel �The Reagans� biopic in 2003. (CBS�s parent company, Viacom, kicked it to the cable channel Showtime.) Some kind of reaction was inevitable this time.

All mini-series Photoshop the facts. �The Path to 9/11� is not a documentary, or even a docu-drama; it is a fictionalized account of what took place. It relies on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the King James version of all Sept. 11 accounts, as well as other material and memoirs. Some scenes come straight from the writers� imaginations. Yet any depiction of those times would have to focus on those who were in charge, and by their own accounts mistakes were made.

The first bombing of the World Trade Center happened on Bill Clinton�s watch. So did the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. The president�s staff � and the civil servants who worked for them � witnessed the danger of Al Qaeda close up and personally. Some even lost their lives.

In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled �Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,� and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal. It�s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student�s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better. (It�s safe to assume that any future mini-series about American foreign policy will not delve flatteringly into Mr. Bush�s march to war in Iraq.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/arts/television/08path.html

[Octavius Hite]

Does anyone remember the Regan miniseries a year or two back. The Right wing went crazy because it wouldn't portray him as the epic mind that he was, lol. Its funny, when the left makes a realistic docudrama about a very controversial character its all lies. when the right does it and its cleary false in some regards its ok. I'm so glad i'm not from that country.

[Milwaukiedave]

[laogaiguk]

Clinton officials to ABC: Fix or pull 9/11 miniseries

This is the CNN link. I saw this and found it strange...

[Milwaukiedave]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[sundubuman]

[Kuros]

[Milwaukiedave]

Geez...please let me into Canada! The government has been overrun by the gestapo.

[some waygug-in]

Which one? The way Harper is cozying up to the Bush administration, I'm not entirely sure Canada is any better off.

But back to the thread topic:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 10: Weekend Edition Special Report
Top 10 Errors: ABC Corporation's Distortion of History Far-Reaching, Joe Conason [numbers ours]



http://www.bushwatch.com/

[Gopher]

[freethought]

The piece of fiction that will air on ABC is exactly that, and can/will likely be subject to legal action, I should think.

But with regards to the idea that Clinton and the democrats are somehow to blame, that's nonsense. The Clinton administration was highly focussed on bin Laden especially from about 1997 on. The Bush admin completely ignored the man from the moment they took office.

But we've mentioned Reagan so far in this thread, and that is where a lot of the blame lies. Not with the man, because in my opinion the guy had little actual control of his own administration, and that's why the admin at large is responsible. You remove Afghanistan from the AlQaeda equation and you don't have much of an organization. The US policy in the 80s was to back the most radical extremist in Afghanistan, and this support continued well after the Soviets had announced a pull-out. Had they decided not to go for the out and out humiliation of the Soviets to send Reagan off with a bang, then the country may have been far more stable, and the initial stirrings that gave rise to the Taliban would never have occurred. The people of Afghanistan would have been better off, for certain, and odds are that few of us would have heard of Alqaeda.

The fact that something like this can air is a sign that Americans everywhere need to give serious consideration to the state of the media in the nation. If I were to draw a parallel, a loose one, it would be like ABC making a documentary about the moon landing and giving credit for the idea/vision to Nixon, who was in the oval office at the time.

Credit where Credit is due.

[On the other hand]

Gopher wrote:

[Ya-ta Boy]

I agree with Gopher on this one. There was a general consensus for a long time, especially on foreign policy where it was agreed that disagreement 'ended at the shore lines ' (that quote isn't quite right, but it's close).

The consensus was not shattered easily. Each and every part of the body politic took body blows of enormous proportions before the fractures and fissures turned th buried fault lines into chasms. The governing coalition squandered it's hold on power by betraying its supporters, issue by issue.

It's one thing to disagree with your government's policy on a particular issue, it's another thing entirely to feel betrayed by your own government.

Books about political theory are fine as far as they go, but I've never run across one about any time in history that gets down to the level of the people who lived it. I think only novels can illustrate on an emotional level the 'truth' of a time, and no great novel has been written about those times being talked about here.

I wish Rteacher would show up here. Judging by some things he has said, I think he could shed some light on this.

[Gopher]