The Death of Truth

So there is much buzz about ABCs new miniseries The Path to 911. I hope to find time to watch it, but that may or may not be possible. ABC is under immense pressure from Democrats and Clinton supporters, (free speech champions all) to cancel the series. The reason is for certain events being "conflated" so that multiple statements from a variety of sources are attributed to single individuals, implying that they said specific words that they didn't actually say.

The AP report by David Bauder indicates:

"A cut of the film distributed to TV critics depicts a team poised in darkness outside bin Laden's cave fortress in Afghanistan, while an actor portraying Berger in Washington stalls on giving the final go-ahead to carry out the seizure. He confers via video phone to CIA chief George Tenet.

"'Look, George," Berger says, "if you feel confident, you can present your recommendation to the president yourself.'

"Tenet responds angrily, then Berger's screen goes blank. He has hung up."
Madeline Albright is also upset:

"Albright objected to a scene that reportedly shows her warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, which resulted in bin Laden's escape. She said the scene was false and defamatory.:"
And Richard Clarke:

"Another scene in the movie depicts counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke explaining to FBI agent John O'Neill that he doesn't believe Clinton will take chances to kill bin Laden at a time Republicans were pressing for impeachment."

So because the film takes liberties with the association of certain statements with specific people who weren't the ones who made them, Clinton's people and much of the Democratic party is crying for the film to be edited if not scrapped entirely (that is, censored, isn't it?). Sandy Berger, best known for stuffing secret documents in his pants in the defense of truth and justice claims: "You can't fix it, you gotta yank it."

On the one hand, I am uncomfortable with the "docudrama" genre. By its very nature, it is difficult to compress a mountain of "docu-" into even five hours worth of "-drama" in a way that is watchable. There were plenty of complaints about the liberties Peter Jackson had to take with The Lord of the Rings. Had he not conflated certain passages, the film would either have been unwatchable, or key elements would have been left out completely. Certainly writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh faced those sorts of decisions. Still, attributing specific words to individuals when they didn't say them, even though they said or did things consistent with the words is problematic. So I don't entirely blame Albright, for example.

But I have to say, there is considerable hypocrisy in the outrage.

How many Democrats were outraged by the inaccuracies and outright lies of Michael Moore, whom Christopher Hitchens', in his demolition of Farenheit 911, referred to as "beneath contempt".

Is anyone in the Democratic alternate universe upset about charges that President Bush let people die in New Orleans based on economic status or race?

The fact that we should even be wasting time having to debunk 9-11 myths is an indication of how useless the words "journalism" and "objectivity" have become, but nobody in Bill Clinton's party seems to be concerned about fairness there, much less serious about actually fighting the terrorists who were responsible. Frightening how willfully blind to the needs of the hour these people are.

And aside from "conflation" of events, the events that implicate the Clinton administration in failing to comprehend any sort of threat appear to be worthy of examination. Powerline documents the long string of Islamic extremist attacks during the Clinton years, attacks that were rarely, and completely unsuccessfully responded to.

And now, the Senate Intelligence Committee once again insists there was no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, an unfortunate conclusion apparently in search of evidence from the start. There appears to be a fair amount of evidence in documents recoved in Iraq that would contradict such a conclusion, but presumably this evidence was dismissed. Thomas Joscelyn's article in the Weekly Standard notes at least a couple of pieces of evidence available to the general public that were apparently conveniently ignored in the report:

"One of Saddam's senior intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was questioned about his contacts with bin Laden and al Qaeda.

"Hijazi admitted to meeting bin Laden once in 1995, but claimed that "this was his sole meeting with bin Ladin or a member of al Qaeda and he is not aware of any other individual following up on the initial contact.

"This is not true. Hijazi's best known contact with bin Laden came in December 1998, days after the Clinton administration's Operation Desert Fox concluded. We know the meeting happened because the worldwide media reported it. The meeting took place on December 21, 1998.

"There is a voluminous body of evidence surrounding this December 1998 meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden--yet there is not a single mention of it in the committee's report."

No president in history has been treated with the personalized contempt that G.W. Bush has. See this as just one example. Sorry Mr. Clinton. While I wish the film had attributed specific words or events to the right people, the idea that you and your staff are being treated unfairly rings a little hollow. I actually agree that docudrama's should be accurate, even if it means they are more "docu" than "drama". But the hypocritical and calculated moral outrage over this, under the circumstances, is rather sickening. The president famous for the line "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is." has no place complaining about a lack of truthfulness, even if he has a point about the details.