Friday, September 08, 2006

ABC edits "The Path To 9/11"

When the going gets tough, the tough start bullshitting, and ABC's upcoming propaganda piece "The Path To 9/11" is just one more weapon in the conservative arsenal of bovine excrement.

The movie is supposedly based on the 9/11 Commission Report and chronicles events over the 8 years leading up to 9/11. It tells a story of how government incompetence led to the disaster, from the Clinton administration to... the Clinton administration. The movie depicts Clinton as "soft on terrorism" and derelict in his duty as president to pursue the terrorist threat. Clinton allowed OBL to continue running terrorist camps. Clinton allowed OBL to bomb the US embassies in Africa. Clinton had the chance to take out OBL and blew it! Clinton was too busy fucking around with bullshit to pay attention.

The movie neglects to point out that it was republican-initiated bullshit that distracted Clinton for over a year. At a time when the terrorist threat should have been getting top priority, the republicans chose to turn the government into an episode of Jerry Springer. But what the movie neglects to point out, it makes up for in manufactured propaganda and outright lies. Things like the Clinton administration's efforts to obstruct the capture of Osama Bin Laden -- bullshit of the highest order.

The Bush administration, who arguably were to blame for allowing the attacks to happen (hello August 6 memo?), gets a pass. The movie doesn't show George sitting in the classroom reading My Pet Goat and looking moronic as he's told America is under attack. It doesn't show Cheney issuing the "Stand down" orders that kept at least 2 of the planes from being brought down, costing hundreds of lives. It doesn't show the outgoing Clinton administration practically screaming to the incoming Bush administration that terrorism should be their number one priority, and the bush administration blowing it off.

In its original form "Path to 9/11" was so rife with bullshit that ABC was forced to respond to complaints from democrats by cutting some parts, re-framing others, and adding a disclaimer that the movie is a "docudrama", not a documentary. Hopefully the edited version is a little closer to reality than the original. But any movie on this subject that doesn't show the complicity of the bush administration in allowing the disaster to happen still belongs in the Bullshit Bag, in my opinion. Even if it stars Harvey Keitel.