Clinton vs ABC

It would seem that Bill is none too pleased about his portrayal in the upcoming ABC mini-series “The Path to 9/11.”

A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series “The Path to 9/11” grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden – and he is demanding the network “pull the drama” if changes aren’t made.

There’s a whole lotta pointing going on, has been for years. Made me wonder, and then dig. It didn’t take long to find this from back in 2004:

As the 9/11 commission investigates what Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush might have done to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, one piece of evidence the commission will examine is a videotape secretly recorded by a CIA plane high above Afghanistan. The tape shows a man believed to Osama bin Laden walking at a known al-Qaida camp.

The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn’t he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.

In the fall of 2000, in Afghanistan, unmanned, unarmed spy planes called Predators flew over known al-Qaida training camps. The pictures that were transmitted live to CIA headquarters show al-Qaida terrorists firing at targets, conducting military drills and then scattering on cue through the desert.

Also, that fall, the Predator captured even more extraordinary pictures — a tall figure in flowing white robes. Many intelligence analysts believed then and now it is bin Laden.

Why does U.S. intelligence believe it was bin Laden? NBC showed the video to William Arkin, a former intelligence officer and now military analyst for NBC. “You see a tall man…. You see him surrounded by or at least protected by a group of guards.”

Bin Laden is 6 foot 5. The man in the video clearly towers over those around him and seems to be treated with great deference.

The tape proves the Clinton administration was aggressively tracking al-Qaida a year before 9/11. But that also raises one enormous question: If the U.S. government had bin Laden and the camps in its sights in real time, why was no action taken against them?

A Democratic member of the 9/11 commission says there was a larger issue: The Clinton administration treated bin Laden as a law enforcement problem.

Bob Kerry, a former senator and current 9/11 commission member, said, “The most important thing the Clinton administration could have done would have been for the president, either himself or by going to Congress, asking for a congressional declaration to declare war on al-Qaida, a military-political organization that had declared war on us.”

As Lex points out, the Michael Moore crowd had their day. I’d say equal coverage is long overdue. Still have your doubts about what Clinton could have/should have done? I suggest you pick up a copy of “Dereliction of Duty” by Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson. As one of five military aides to President Clinton assigned to carry the “nuclear football”, Buzz was right in the middle of the inaction.

On September 13, 1996 the U.S. military was on edge as they waited for orders from their commander in chief to begin a bombing mission over Iraq. Pilots were in the cockpits waiting to launch, targets were identified, and everything was in place. All they needed was the green light—but President Bill Clinton was too busy watching a golf match to respond to the situation, despite several urgent requests from National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. The mission was scrapped. Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson (Ret.), military aide to the president and carrier of the “nuclear football,” exposes this and provides numerous other firsthand accounts of Bill Clinton’s reckless and cavalier disregard for America’s national security in his new book, Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security (Regnery, 2003).

President Bill Clinton certainly owns at least partial culpability in the fact that Osama bin Laden is still alive and thousands of Americans are not.

**UPDATE 09/07/06 1930**
I knew this was coming but it still sickens me: from AllahPundit – ABC agrees to edit “Path to 9/11” after phone call from Clinton.