Friday, September 08, 2006

ABC Caves... Edits

The Path to 9/11 is still slated to air on Sunday, but the Clintons and the Democrats have evidently twisted enough arms to force an edit of the original production.

But so far the Democrats have not been successful in editing the following events from history:

02/26/1993 – World Trade Center bombed
03/08/1995 – Two U.S. diplomats in Pakistan murdered
06/25/1996 - Khobar Towers bombed
11/12/1997 – Four U.S. businessmen kidnapped and murdered
08/07/1998 – Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya bombed
10/12/2000 – U.S.S. Cole attacked by suicide bombers

It is not a great mystery as to why the Clintons and the Dems are raising such royal ruckus over this docu-drama. The Clinton years will forever be remembered for oral sex and impeachment, and if you throw into the mix an incompetence that led to 9/11, the former president is nudged into the realm of historically "bad presidents", regardless of fortuitous economic numbers.

And the last thing the Dems want to see parlayed about around the water coolers of America is anything to do with our security and who is best at securing it.

But in the age of Michael Moore and other Left-Wing historical and political liars, the Democrat protests ring rather petty.
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12 comments:

SkyePuppy said...

Oh, but if you listen to the Left, Clinton was a Great President. And Bush is the Worst President because he got us into a war for NO REASON AT ALL!!!

9/08/2006 7:45 AM
Anonymous said...

No one had any idea how destructive these elements were till 9/11. You are incorrect in holding Clinton responsible when any President would have been the same. If Republicans would have held investigations/hearings on those events instead of some stupid scandals, things would have been far better.

9/08/2006 3:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Incorrect in holding Clinton responsible?

Consider the following excerpt:

"In the reality check department, here's what Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA and head of the agency's bin Laden unit, has to say, published today in The Washington Times: 'Mr. [Richard] Clarke never mentions that President Bush had no chances to kill bin Laden before September 11 and leaves readers with the false impression that he, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, did their best to end the bin Laden threat. That trio, in my view, abetted Al Qaeda.'

Mr. Scheuer says the CIA gave Mr. Clarke and Mr. Clinton eight to ten shots at bin Laden — eight to ten times they had him in the crosshairs — and Clarke, Clinton, Berger et al never could pull the trigger."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2933,212844,00.html

9/08/2006 7:37 PM
Anonymous said...

You were reading my mind Andrew!
Clinton, Berger and Clarke were to busy watching poll numbers and checking the legality of capturing/killing the evil mastermind. And let's not even go into the part Carter played in this whole mess.
Great response Andrew, Bravo!

9/09/2006 12:08 PM
Anonymous said...

Thanks, Jihadi Tracker. You are too kind. Sadly, your comments about preoccupation with poll numbers is all too true as well. I saw the comments from Scheuer yesterday and just shook my head. As more and more information comes out about the Clinton administration's general "lack of interest" while global terror was on the rise, it becomes painfully clear that Scheuer is spot on in his allegation that Clinton actually aided and abetted Al Qaeda.

Ironically, it seems more and more certain that history will bear out that Mr. Clinton's preoccupation with his own legacy resulted in a gross negligence in the foreign policy realm that has and will continue to cost this country dearly.

9/09/2006 1:48 PM
Anonymous said...

Some of "Michael Scheuer" opinions match CAIR (and worse maybe Persian lobby) when it comes to belief in Jewish conspiracy.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006274
Well Regan could have got rid of Khomeini (which was not a very big deal) when his followers caused embassy bombing in Lebanon. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was far easier under first Bush and would you blame him for the Iraqi mess that we are in now (inspite of being warned by a section of CIA). Would you not remember cruise missile strikes during Clinton presidency? He did his best in his time what he felt was appropriate. Even the current President would not have fared any better than Clinton during that time. It is general belief and popular opinion that current President was as unintrested about issues like terrorism before 9/11.

9/09/2006 11:55 PM
Malott said...

Anonymous,

I believe all the criticism of the President and former presidents mentioned in these comments is legitimate.

But it's only the Clintons and the Dems that want to edit or yank the broadcast.

And based on what President Bush has shown us in the last five years, if the six events I listed in my original post had happened on his watch, bin Laden would not have been around on 09/11/01.

9/10/2006 6:13 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm taking some paragraphs from this link.
----------------------------------
Back in 2003, CBS was forced to pull its miniseries "The Reagans," after conservative groups lambasted the network for crossing the line into advocacy against the Reagan administration. A similar effort should perhaps be undertaken to compel ABC to pull "The Path to 9/11." At no time should a conservative producer with an anti-Clinton axe to grind be allowed to use public airwaves to broadcast a rank distortion of the truth, especially on the anniversary of the worst day in our history.
----------------------------------
Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton's 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion. The following is a partial list of the initiatives offered by the Clinton anti-terrorism bill:

Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 million

Screen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 million

Passenger Profiling: $10 million

Screener Training: $5.3 million

Screen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 million

Deploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4
million

Provide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 million

Explosives Detection Training: $1.8 million

Augment FAA Security Research: $20 million

Customs Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 million

Anti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 million

Capacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 million

Improve Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 million

Critical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 million

Additional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 million

Firefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 million

Public Building and Museum Security: $7.3 million

Improve Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 million

Critical Incident Response Facility: $2 million

Counter-Terrorism Fund: $35 million

Explosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 million

Office of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million
-----------------------------------

My Opinion:
Bin Laden became more and more elusive after the first failed strike to eliminate him during Clinton Presidency. After that and till this point, his capture became more difficult. You may have bet that Bush might have been sucessful in his first strike if he was President during Clinton era.

9/10/2006 8:30 AM
Anonymous said...

Anonymous, with regard to the anti-terrorism bill which you tout, consider the following summary from a Salon.com article (not exactly a bastion of conservative thinking):

"Clinton did little that was effective. The 1996 anti-terrorism bill, while modestly helpful, was focused on domestic terrorism after Oklahoma City and was still reactive, not proactive. Its key provisions -- enabling the death penalty for terrorist offenses and placing chemical tags in explosives -- were very weak weapons for dealing with the real threat, al-Qaida. More was politically unnecessary. Clinton had such a commanding lead over Bob Dole that the difficulties of corralling Congress, browbeating the bureaucracy, or mounting a sustained military campaign against terrorism didn't seem worth the effort. Notice that he was not actually constrained by public opinion. Morris' polling had shown such measures would actually have been popular. Instead, Clinton ordered his trusty vice president to chair a commission on airline safety and security. By February 1997, it recommended a whole slew of proposals, including a federalized airline screening service, computer cross-checks for different airlines to vet potential terrorists, and so on. The report was never implemented. If it had been, simple computer checks could have exposed two of the terrorists who boarded American Airlines flights under their own names on Sept. 11.

"The Clinton White House also allowed new constraints to be placed on the CIA, forbidding it from hiring or using any undercover agents with dubious or criminal pasts. In fact, for the entire period of Clinton's presidency, there was not a single undercover agent in Afghanistan who could speak Arabic, a deficiency highlighted by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht in the Atlantic, the Weekly Standard and elsewhere. To make matters worse, even as late as 1997, al-Qaida was not listed as an official terrorist organization by the U.S. government. This, despite the fact that a top-level defector had warned in late 1996 that al-Qaida was planning a direct attack on the United States. No one in the upper reaches of the administration seemed to take his warnings seriously.

"In 1998, the gravity of the threat became clearer. The African embassy bombings showed beyond any shadow of a doubt the danger and professionalism of bin Laden's network. Hundreds were killed on sovereign American soil. Clinton responded not with an overhaul of security and intelligence or a coordinated military strategy to defeat al-Qaida but by lobbing cruise missiles at al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. In these actions, the president bypassed normal command procedures in a way that clearly suggested he wanted a quick attack to distract from his own impeachment woes, rather than an earnest attempt to cripple al-Qaida."

In addition, I think it pretty compelling evidence that Dick Morris has called Clinton's attack on The Path to 9/11 "outrageous". The following excerpt comes from a NewsMax interview with Morris (and addresses, among other things, your cruise missile argument):

"The [9/11] commission's report, released in the summer of 2004, 'highlighted the weak, incompetent, hesitant, and inconsistent attempts of the Clinton administration to kill or capture Osama bin Laden,' according to [Morris'] book, which devotes an entire chapter to Clinton's mishandling of the threat. 'The report's account shows the president and his advisers at their worst.'

"One time, the United States 'canceled an attempt to kidnap bin Laden out of concern that we might injure or kill him and be accused of using assassination as a policy tool,' Morris told NewsMax. 'The president had yet to make a finding that it was OK to kill bin Laden. The reason he had not is that he did not yet know bin Laden's connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The reason he did not know that is that he did not fast-track the investigation.'

"'A second time, we did fire missiles but alerted the Pakistani military to our plans and they tipped off bin Laden, and he escaped.'

"According to the commission's report, the United States alerted Pakistan because the missiles targeting bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan, had to cross Pakistan, and U.S. officials did not want Pakistan to think the missiles came from India.

"'A third time, our plans to attack by missile were canceled, partially out of chagrin over having missed him before and partially because we had just bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by mistake and were worried about being called trigger happy,' said Morris.

"'The president was also concerned about civilian deaths in any such attack.'

"'The underlying theme of the ABC coverage, that he was distracted by impeachment, is of course true. But more so, he was 'gun-shy' because he was afraid conservatives would say he had launched a failed attack 'in an effort to 'wag the dog' and distract people from the Monica Lewinsky affair.'

"Morris concluded: 'His fear of such attacks on him inhibited him from acting.'"

Anonymous, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

9/10/2006 1:53 PM
Anonymous said...

Sorry, the cite for the Salon article is: http://dir.salon.com/
story/politics/feature/2002/
01/09/clinton/index.html?pn=2

The cite for the NewsMax story is:
http://www.newsmax.com/
archives/articles/2006/9/7/
203153.shtml?s=lh

9/10/2006 2:16 PM
Anonymous said...

We cannot agree any further. However I'll watch the ABC 9/11 show.

9/10/2006 4:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Finished watching this. You can watch second part of this series today itself. Just grab a DVD of "Fareinheit 9/11" from local Blockbuster where you'll also get a glimpse of "Path after 9/11".

9/10/2006 10:59 PM

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