Sep 10 2006
The Path To 9-11, Part I
My impressions from night one of this TV movie. First off, well done. I was rivetted to the movie. But I think LJStrata had more important observations (being a normal human being with a life). First, she said it was choppy and hard to follow if you were not up on all the details and the characters. Remember, this is from someone who reads (and spell checks) this blog daily. But she is also focused on raising our twin daughters, seeing our oldest daughter graduate college and our son get his butt out of High School. So to say she has other priorities is an understatement. So I am not sure this is hitting those who know Richard Clarke from John O’Neill the same way it is hitting America in general. LJStrata is one of the smartest people I know. But we had to pause the movie many times so I could give background (and now I know I need to get myself a life!).
The movie is absolutely neutral on Clinton’s run up to 9-11. The mistakes are clearly offset with the accomplishments. The capture of Ramsi Yousef was a huge success. The trepidation on gettin Bin Laden and becoming associated with the Northern Alliance was tragic – but understandable. Individuals do not fair so well in my opinion. Richard Clark comes off as a someone without spine. When it comes time to get Yousef he doesn’t add his voice to John O’Neill’s in supporting the capture, he tells O’Neill to get State on board (while he obviously goes back to bed). The fact Clark is not adding his voice to the call to get Yousef shows him to be nothing more than a background voice.
If Clinton is worried about his reputation, Tenet should be totally embarrassed. Tenet looks like a total idiot with no backbone. In the Yousef discussion he equivocates. When he must face Madeliene Albright he looks totally emasculated.
Albright looks like a pushy, overbearing jerk. The pre-release theories about the storyline apparently were all wrong. Bin Laden was probably alerted by ISI associates because the DoD alerted the Pakistani’s of a pending missile attack and wanted to avoid confusing our attack with some military action by India. But what got me was how she dominated the debate. Berger looks like a political animal – which he is. Was Clinton dealing with Monica-gate while this went on? Of course! But they stopped as many attacks as they missed. So I think the Clinton’s overreacted.
I will end this with another striking observation by LJStrata which was echoed in the film. It is amazing that observant women law enforcement officers in the Phillipines and America were able to come closest to detecting and stopping Al Qaeda. So when people slam Condi Rice, remember men missed what women did not.
Looking forward to part II. It is a really good story, but most of America is probably missing much of the nuance. How many people know who Mary Joe White is and her battles against Reno and Gorelick and their barriers between intelligence and law enforcement. Too few I am afraid.
Addendum: I do think one other area looked really bad for the Clintons, and that was the weak response to the Embassy bombings in Africa. To see the death and destruction from Al Qaeda’s attack and then see aspirin bottles on the ground as a response just made me cringe. They killed many people and we demolished some buildings (and missed Bin Laden anyway). That was embarrassing to watch.
I have just finished the first half of the first half and love it. (We have tivo’d it, of course.)
I saw right away why the Left hated this! Heh heh… wow. This is no Farenheit 9/11. This is not a Syriana. This is filled with facts… and while a docudrama, it hits on what is really important for the American people to know.
Because it strains to tell the truth, real important facts are brought out to the people at almost every juncture.
From one of the first scenes where they have the terrorists blowing up the WTC tower in the first attack… it is excellent. It shows how they were anxious to get out of the parking lot. And it zero’d in on the pretty, young, pregnant guard. The Left must have dropped their jaw at that. No way would they want that kind of thing shown to the people.
And that is just from one of the first scenes.
What I don’t get is what has happened to our society that we haven’t had an expose like this since 9/11. We have Oliver Stone’s film where “Muslim” is not even mentioned. We have Farenheit 9/11 whose main point is that “Bush sucks” and is full of crazy lies. We have 9/11 conspiracy theory films…
Very, very sad.
I hope a lot of people are watching this to finally get some kind of clue as to the real issues going on here.
I saw a couple of places where editing was done compared to some of the uncut clips available on the net before the broadcast.
Also the movie portrayed one of the basic inconsistancies that the Clinton agenda about OBL never quite jelled with me.
Clinton supposedly always considered it a criminal v a military problem.
How does that square with first having a snatch team on steroids (that evidently wasn’t pre approved to finish the job) followed up by a cruise missle strike.
To put assets in place at risk without either pre approval fully or at least having authorized decision makers in the loop is to say the least a big duh.
I thought it was pretty good. They left out a few attacks and I thought there was supposed to be some stuff in there about Clinton’s preoccupation with Iraq, but other than that I thought the film was pretty easy on the Clinton people. After seeing it I really don’t know what the problem was.
I purposely set my DVDR to record both parts because I want to watch it after I’ve seen, heard and read the various reactions to it. Plus I’ll probably watch it more than once. I’ve bookmarked links to the clips that were made available on the Web over the weekend to compare with the finished product. It wasn’t practical to watch them on my dial-up connection, but I’m finally getting DSL on Thursday. I imagine this will be the topic de jour in the Blogosphere for quite a while. The few comments here have already been very instructive.
TERRYE, as for you comment about going easy on the Clintons, my guess is that, if changes were made to mollify them at the last minute, more people will know what they were than if the Clintons had just kept quiet in the first place. I realize only a small percentage of the population reads blogs, but Limbaugh’s program reaches close to 10% of the population, and you know he’s going to do an extensive analysis. Word of mouth will take it from there. Plus the more the Left protests, the worse they’re going to look.
Outrage of the Week…
ABC News presented a special edition of “Nightline” last night to bash the Bush administration after presenting the failures of the Clinton administration in the docu-drama “The Path tyo 9-11.” As I sat and watched in amazement, I realized the mast…
I agree with AJ’s take on the movie.
Where I think that this movie does the most damage is not in its negative portrayal of Clinton, because it is not really negative, and not in leaving you with the impression that the MAIN PREOCCUPATION of practically everybody involved in national security were POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Obviously mistakes were made and wrong decisions were taken but I think that most people would understand that, as tragic as the results of these mistakes were, humans are not perfect no matter how high a position in government they reach. I think, though, that where this movie is going to have a large impact is in bringing forth that there is NO DIFFERENCE in approach, with respect to national security especially when dealing with terrorism, BETWEEN THE PAST AND CLEARLY FAILED CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AND THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
If I am correct this will have a huge impact on the upcoming elections: If you do not like what was done in the run-up to 9/11 then you better not elect Democrats!
for a longer more complete review of the clinton failures 1993-2000
http://tinyurl.com/nww97
this is an audio link for the ten times he missed ole bin
http://tinyurl.com/h6m4m
and this is the comparison video of the edits to the movie
http://tinyurl.com/kr3un
i think the dems went ballistic in their opposition to the series because if nothing else, after the first part, i was left with the thought, thank god bush, cheney, rumsfeld et al have been in the white house these last six years with two more to follow………..
SEPTEMBER 11, 2006…
AJ Strata says First off, well done. Â… Looking forward to part II. It is a really good story, but most of America is probably missing much of the nuance….