Disney/ABC: Do the right thing, or the puppet gets it

Well, I've stayed out of this on the blog. I've done my research. Reviewed the available clips. Compared the clips against all the appropriate chapters in my copy of 9-11 Report book.

Verdict: The movie is magical, which is perfect for Disney. Magical Thinking? Maybe not. Not with History. Not where any number of whack jobs wanna believe that the Holocaust didn't happen or that Apollo 11 happened in a warehouse in Barstow, CA. Take, for instance, the 43% of Americans who still believe Saddam was behind 9-11 even while their president, finally, says clearly it just ain't so. (Yeah, yeah, his #2 used to say it was “pretty well confirmed” that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers. But that's now so 2001.)

Why would all those people think such things? The power of suggestion? Flouridated water?

The essential thrust of The Path to 9/11 is revisionist propaganda. I know this for two reasons.

1) Professor Hugh Hewitt tells us this:

the blame on the Clinton team is in the DNA of the project

Seems so.

Reason 2), The "DNA of blame" is not solely on the Clinton team in the thick and footnoted book the movie claims it "Dramatizes." It's a book, by a Commission, that alternately, should be trusted or castigated according to the Administration message of the day. It's the Gospel, or it's bullshit depending on the news cycle and polling. Equally odd, I haven't heard Democrats criticize it much except to say the panels recomendations still aren't being implemented by the Majority and by the Executive. The panel itself gives "Failing grades" 2 years later.

Gee, why so upset by the flick about it then, Donkeys? Let's quickly recount:

Frat-house camp-follower* and professional harridan, Ann Coulter, would have us believe that the Commission was a Democratic put-up job. (*familiar w/species and habitat - Sig Ep #133,761)

Bush/Cheney did not want this commission till public pressure and the visibly angry widows called The Jersey Girls got all up in their grille. (Eerily similar to the DHS they didn't want, resisted, then wrested from Hill (D)s, and whereabouts our friendly small-govt (R)s then turned into the socialist org-chart from hell.)

The first efforts at staffing the thing, stacking the deck with adminsitration sympathizers made even Tom Kean (R), McCain and others embarrassed. But even when it became more truly "Bipartisan," Lee Hamilton (D), was Vice Chairman... Kean was still Chairman. Not "co-Chairman" as many believe and say. That mattered. Because Kean got first dibs on "picking" the staff director, the person in charge of deciding the tenor and allegiance of all thsoe folk who would be poring through millionsof pages of documents, flagging things, and, not flagging things. That executive director was Philip D. Zelikow, longtime Bush hand. He's now Condi Rice's legal counsel at State. And Kean is co-exec-pro ducer and prime consultant for the move.

It's pointless for me to go on. As a reader with your own ideas about how things are, or ought to be you're going to watch this movie (if it runs), and either curse the gods or pat yourself on the back.

The movie is bullshit masquerading as a sober, serious "Dramatization." That fact, thankfully, seems to be viral. ABC is backpedalling furiously; Fox News had Chris Wallace calling it "slanderous, defamatory," and remiscent of what CBS tried with "The Reagans" in '04. Scholastic has disavowed its veracity and apolitical merit and now will use it to teach "Critical Thinking and Media Literacy Skills."

Yeah, good luck with that. Docudrama, Documentary, Dramatization, Composite character, Creative license. To borrow from Barry Goldwater, not a dime's bit of difference between them in the minds of average Jane in Artesian, SD or Joe in Winslow, AZ. With what feels like 250 focus groups under my belt, experience tells me one thing will compute:

It's on TV. Important companies like ABC and Disney made it. It must be true. Such is the making of vaporous $1000 haircuts and Vince Foster consipiraicies.

If you can't stomach reading the book or it's online presentation, here's a pretty good NYT article from way back in March 2004, that shows many had their heads up their ass in both administrations. And some, as usual, not in the spotlight or in the bowels of several agencies, were quite prescient.

I'll end with some simple math.

The first WTC bombing: Feb 26, 1993 - 37 days into the Clinton Administration; no warning or notes from the previous George Herbert Walker Bush Executive. Clinton is accused of being soft, but bombers Yousef, Abdel-Rahman and others were found, put in jail, and the inter-agency hunt for bin Laden commenced.

The second WTC Attack: Sept 11, 2001 - 234 days into the Bush Administration. Clinton's people transfered voluminous notes, meetings, warnings, a plan ready to roll or the makings to roll your own. The parting advice to Condi Rice and the team? "You're going to spend more time during your four years on terrorism generally and Al Qaeda specifically than any [other] issue."

They told Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke and Bill Clinton to Fuck off. Don't tell us our priorities, "we are The Pros from Dover."(Atomic Scientists link.)

Today, nobody knows where bin Laden is. At least, nobody who's interested in sharing. Our ally, Pakistan, (map) has made an agrement with Pashtun tribes, mostly Wazir and Mahsud in the Wild-West northern PAK region known as Waziristan (closer-in map.) The deal is that the area will be off-limits to any military forces or meddling, PAK, NATO, US, whomever. It is a sanctuary. Bin Laden can prop his feet up if he so chooses. Mission Accomplished. Till next time.

Speaking of which, maybe next time we'll tackle some more Disney history, perhaps the difference between this



and this



..