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ABC News is devoting 6 hours of prime-time on September 10 and 11 to a “docudrama” written by a staunch conservative that, according to Rush Limbaugh, “really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration.”

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Of course the problem is that the Clinton administration tried to pass on everything it had regarding bin Laden and his bunch, but the newly installed Bush administration ignore their advice.

From the ThinkProgress website:

“On September 10 and 11, ABC will air a “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11.” It was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who describes himself as “more of a libertarian than a strict conservative,” and is giving interviews to hard-right sites like FrontPageMag to promote the film.

How does it deal with President Bush? Salon has a review:

Condoleezza Rice gets that fated memo about planes flying into buildings, and makes it very clear to anyone who’ll listen just how concerned President Bush is about these terrorist threats — despite the fact that we’re given little concrete evidence of the president’s concern or interest in taking action. Maybe my memory fails me, but the only person I remember talking about Osama bin Laden back in 1998 was President Clinton, while the current anti-terrorist stalwarts worked the country into a frenzy over what? Blow jobs. In the end, “The Path to 9/11″ feels like an excruciatingly long, winding and deceptive path, indeed.

The director of the film, David Cunningham, is already backtracking about its accuracy, saying “this is not a documentary.” OK, fair enough. But the movie is being billed as “based on The 9/11 Commission Report.”

However, here’s a newsflash from the realilty-based universe:

Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 30 August 2006

…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

The Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities (emphasis added) across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence community itself. Within the National Security Council, “threat meetings” were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure.

Clinton’s dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. (emphasis added) When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous “wag the dog” tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie “Wag the Dog” while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.

In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. (empahsis added) His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of. - Source : http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083006J.shtml

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