IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF THE WORD "PATH" IS
Let us revisit, for a moment, Bill Clinton's contortive definitionof the word "is."
This, of course, was the tiny two-letter term he wrestled with during his grand jury testimony in 1998---a testimony during which he lied about his sexual relationship with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky.
Yet even as the forensic evidence made his sworn statements untenable, Clinton refused to 'fess upto what had long since become fodder for Leno and Letterman. And now he's at it again.
This week, those legacy-starved Clintonistas, reacting to an ABC docudrama called "The Path to 9/11," demonstrated that they've not changed a bit since 1998. The five-hour, two-part television series was a calumny, they cried, since it depicted eight years of Clintonian negligence and malfeasance.
This time, we suppose,it depends on what the meaning of the word "path" is...
In a fiery public letter to ABC that none-too-subtly threatened to pull the network's broadcast license, a handful of Democrat senators charged that "presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law."
We have to ask, does "inaccurate misinformation" mean it's true, or what?
The Democratic National Committee warned the Demo faithful that "'The Path to 9/11' is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election...
The mini-series, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. [It] mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth."
Having gotten the memo, the New York Times editorial board was just as quick out the gate, writing, "When attempting to recreate real events on screen, you do not show real people doing things theynever did."
If only such muscular statements were to guide the news content of the Gray Lady---Jayson Blair, call your office.
Theuber-Leftist Nation magazine, ever-present to protect us from ourselves, warned readers that David Cunningham, director of"The Path to 9/11," may be a part of that great conspiracy that threatens us all---evangelical Christianity. "
Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman," says The Nation.
"He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With a Mission..."
"The Path to 9/11" was so offensive, in fact, that Team Clinton wasn't content to let their attack dogs do the dirty work for them.
Referring to a scene in which she alerts the Pakistanis to an upcoming U.S. strike on Osama bin Laden, Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called her portrayal "false and defamatory."
Clinton White House aide Bruce Lindsey, currently at the helm of the William J. Clinton Foundation, also scolded ABC: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about oneof the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
Disgraced former National Security Advisor Sandy "Socks" Berger complained that the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions."
Unfortunately, we'll never know exactly what Berger's "personal actions" were, since his last official act before the 9/11 Commission was to admit to removing classified documents and handwritten notes from the National Archives on two occasions in2003.
Berger destroyed these vital documents, which pertained tothe Clinton administration's record on terrorism. He then pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for his actions and was stripped of his security clearances.
In a letter speaking for Clinton, Lindsey and Clintonista lawyers demanded the network "pull the drama." "The content of this drama,"the claimed, "is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely."
ABC responded by announcing a disclaimer that would call the mini-series a "dramatization" containing "fictionalized scenes."
Finally, even Bill Clinton himself came out swinging, but like his impeachment testimony eight years ago, his self-defense quickly turned to self-parody.
"I just want people to tell the truth,you know, and not pretend it's something it's not."
Truth, as we know, is not exactly the lingua franca of the Clintoncrowd. So, assuming that we know what the meaning of "is" is,what is the truth?
For starters, eight long years passed between the first World Trade Center attack in 1993---one month into Bill Clinton's first term in office---and the devastating attacks of September 11,2001, eight months after the end of the Clinton presidency. But while some blame for failing to prevent the attacks must be assumed by the Bush administration, we must also remember that,as journalist and intelligence expert Ronald Kessler concluded,it was not a matter of connecting the dots.
"The truth was that there were no dots to connect."
The reason for this inability to connect the dots---that is, the absence of actionable intelligence against Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida---lies squarely at the feet of the Clinton administration.
Bill Clinton has admitted as much. Speaking to the Long IslandAssociation in 2002, he confessed to turning down an opportunity to take custody of bin Laden:
"He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan, and we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. Theyreleased him.
At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."
Perhaps Mr. Clinton forgot that bin Laden had in 1995 been named a conspirator in the first WTC attack.
Later, in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Clinton dismissed his own statement as "inappropriate" which is to say, "truthful."
The 9/11 Commission's own conclusions on the Clinton administration's accountability are equally telling.
In 1998, the year that al-Qa'ida bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,U.S. assets had the opportunity to capture bin Laden at his Tarnak Farms compound in Afghanistan. According to the Commission's report,
"Before it was canceled, [senior CIA operations officer in Afghanistan, Gary] Schroen described it as the 'best plan we are going to come up with to capture [bin Laden] while he is in Afghanistan and bring him to justice.' No capture plan before9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation."
The Commission Report also asserts that Clinton "effectively relied on the CIA" for counter-terrorism planning, even though Clinton stopped receiving the CIA's Presidential Daily Brief and rarely, if ever, communicated with Director GeorgeTenet (
http://PatriotPost.US/news/tenet0404.asp).
Further,while the Clinton administration continued to treat terrorism at home as merely a matter of law enforcement,"the relationship between the [FBI Director [Robert Mueller]http://PatriotPost.US/news/mueller.asp] and the President was nearly nonexistent.
"Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, who carried the"nuclear football" during the Clinton years, says Clinton missed not one but several opportunities to capture or kill Osama binLaden.
According to Patterson, who consulted on "The Path to 9/11, "Clinton's failures to act against bin Laden directly facilitated a decade of terrorist attacks against the U.S. leading up to9/11. "[W]e could have prevented the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole,we could have prevented 9/11 and we could have prevented the bombings of the embassies in Africa if President Clinton had taken one of these opportunities."
Patterson continued, "We had eight chances at least to either nab bin Laden or to kill him."
Bill Clinton's cowardice all along the path to 9/11 is clearly a disgrace---perhaps even a criminal dereliction.
Let's just pray that the events of September 11,2001 (http://PatriotPost.US/September11/), mark the end of the"Clinton legacy" on terrorism.
