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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

"The Smear Campaign Against ABC�_Ts �_~The Path to 9/11�_T

Headlined story is in second section below with bold emphasis added being mine.

First section from Powerline. Generally if they pick up something you can consider it having legs and won't go away.

"September 11, Five Years On

....."Which is where The Path to 9/11 comes in. I have no idea whether the scenes featuring Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger are accurate or not; it is certainly regrettable if they aren't. But they are at most an incidental aspect of the series. The real reason the Democrats don't want people to see it is that it reveals the utter failure of the Clinton approach to terrorism. Clinton's policies failed, and the failure didn't begin on 9/11. Over the course of the Clinton administration, there were dozens of successful attacks and near-misses, ( http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015216.php ) many of them directed against American interests both here and abroad. All the while, the terrorist movement grew stronger. This is certainly not a template to which we should want to return."

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015256.php

"Did the Dems Threaten ABC?

"There is no doubt about the fact that the terrorist menace grew and became increasingly obvious during the Clinton administration. To note just a few highlights: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents#1992 )

* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.

* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.

* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.

* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.

* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.

* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.

* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.

* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.

* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.

* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.

* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.

* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7

* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.

* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.

* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.

* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.

* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.

* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".

* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.

* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.

* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.

* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.

* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.

* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.

* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.

* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.

* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.

Between 1993 and 2000, everyone who was paying any attention knew that the threat from Islamic terrorism was grave and getting worse. The catastrophic losses that occurred on Septimeber 11, 2001, could just as easily have happened in 1993, when the first plot to destroy the World Trade Center was carried off successfully, but the terrorists had miscalculated the effect of their explosives, or in 1995, when the plot to destroy eleven American airplanes in flight was thwarted by counter-intelligence work in the Philippines. What did the Clinton administration do in response to this grave threat? Essentially nothing. Worse, Clinton tried to sweep the problem under the rug, lest it disrupt the surface calm and prosperity for which he was eager to claim credit.

However Path to 9/11 portrays the Clinton administration, it can be no worse than the reality.".........

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015216.php

"The Smear Campaign Against ABC’s ‘The Path to 9/11’

Written by Noel Sheppard
Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The fifth anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 has come and gone and Americans once again face the horrors surrounding this event and the ominous portent it conveyed. Yet, for some reason, one group of citizens has chosen to commemorate this solemn occasion by protesting an ABC miniseries documenting the history of this calamity.
As amazing as it might seem, the top brass in the liberal blogosphere’s “Netroots” have been frantically writing the past couple of days about “The Path to 9/11,” declaring to their readers that this docudrama is “a piece of fiction,” and that ABC’s airing it represents “gross negligence.”
At the heart of the controversy is the belief universally shared by these Michael Moore devotees that the ABC program in question doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of their Hero-in-Chief, William Jefferson Clinton. Yet, it appears that none of the disgruntled has actually seen the miniseries – a fact that some hypocritically suggest represents a part of the conspiracy – and, therefore, are coming to conclusions about the program’s contents from reviews by others.
Take for example Markos Moulitzas, the outspoken proprietor of Daily Kos. On September 5, he posted a blog (go here)at his website entitled “ABC’s Work of Fiction”:
ABC's piece of fiction, written by Rush Limbaugh's personal friend and marketed heavily in wingnut circles, bills itself as "objective" and a "docudrama". It includes the following scene, as recounted by Limbaugh.
That’s some truly objective review-work there, isn’t it? Wouldn’t every movie and television critic have an easy job if all he or she had to do was reference the opinions of others rather than actually see the film or program in question? Imagine the time you’d save!
Maybe more importantly, when did liberals start taking the word of Rush Limbaugh as the Gospel truth? Isn’t he wrong about everything in their view?
Yet, that wasn’t the only cardinal sin of journalism broken by Moulitzas. After copying the text from Limbaugh’s depiction of this scene, Kos then listed reasons why the miniseries was presenting falsehoods. Nowhere did Markos inform the reader that this analysis was apparently made by former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke as reported by another Netroot member, Think Progress (go here ).
Did Kos hide this from his readers due to the precarious credibility of Clarke, and the fact that his opinion on events leading up to 9/11 have come under serious question by many of his colleagues? In particular, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit – and no friend of the Bush administration! – Michael Scheuer, was not shy about his disgust for Clarke in a November 2004 Weekly Standard article (go here):

Scheuer thinks Clarke is a risk-averse poseur who didn't do enough to fight bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. At his breakfast with reporters, Scheuer said that on 10 separate occasions his unit, codename "Alec," provided key policymakers with information that could've lead to the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden. "In each of those 10 instances," Scheuer said, "the senior policymaker in charge, whether it was Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, or George Tenet," resisted taking action, afraid it would result in collateral damage or a backlash on the Arab street. According to Scheuer, Clarke's story has changed in the time since.
Regardless of Clarke’s lack of credibility, as a result of his position on what he perceived were inaccuracies in the ABC miniseries, TP’s editor, Judd Legum – who, like Kos, has apparently also not seen this “offensive” program for himself – concluded:
In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.
Really? Well, pages 110 through 115 of the 9/11 Commission report (go here) quite disagreed. In this section, subtitled “The CIA Develops a Capture Plan,” the commissioners chronicled a 1997 - 1998 strategy to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan:

A compound of about 80 concrete or mud-brick buildings surrounded by a 10-foot wall, Tarnak Farms was located in an isolated desert area on the outskirts of the Kandahar airport. CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Ladin’s wives and one where Bin Ladin himself was most likely to sleep. Working with the tribals, they drew up plans for the raid. They ran two complete rehearsals in the United States during the fall of 1997.
By early 1998, planners at the Counterterrorist Center were ready to come back to the White House to seek formal approval.
Sound like Nowrasteh “completely made up” this plan? As to who stopped this covert action, the Commission wasn’t sure:
Impressions vary as to who actually decided not to proceed with the operation. Clarke told us that the CSG [Counterterrorist Security Group headed by Clarke] saw the plan as flawed. He was said to have described it to a colleague on the NSC staff as “half-assed” and predicted the principals would not approve it. “Jeff” thought the decision had been made at the cabinet level. Pavitt thought that it was Berger’s doing, though perhaps on Tenet’s advice. Tenet told us that given the recommendation of his chief operations officers, he alone had decided to “turn off” the operation. He had simply informed Berger, who had not pushed back. Berger’s recollection was similar. He said the plan was never presented to the White House for a decision.
Hmmm. So, the 9/11 Commission wasn’t really sure who was responsible for putting the kibosh on this plan. However, given Clarke’s lack of credibility, and the fact that Sandy Berger was so intent on covering up the missteps of the Clinton administration that he actually stole documents from the National Archive just prior to testifying before the Commission, their take on this matter seems easily discounted.
Yet, questioning the accuracy of this miniseries wasn’t the only strategy involved in this smear campaign. Another high-ranking member of the Netroots, Americablog, posted a piece (go here) on September 4 entitled “GOP Congress Blocked Clinton Push For Anti-Terror Legislation.” The author used a July 30, 1996, article (go here) from CNN.com to make the point:
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, "These are very controversial provisions that the [Clinton] White House wants. Some they're not going to get." ....[Hatch] also said he had some problems with the president's proposals to expand wiretapping.
However, this posting, which was plastered all over the liberal blogosphere, including being the lead link at the September 5 Raw Story, omitted some key facts. First, on April 24, 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, (go here): which was the most comprehensive terrorism bill ever enacted by Congress up to that point. Contrary to the uninformed implications of Americablog, this was accomplished with tremendous support from Republicans who controlled both chambers at that time.
Also overlooked by the Netroots concerning this issue was that there was a bipartisan effort to stop the passage of this bill. As depicted by this December 6, 1995, letter (go here) to the then leaders of the House, disparate groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, the Cato Institute, defense lawyers, and law enforcement organizations all rallied to block the enactment of this legislation.
In addition, the restrictions to this bill, which were approved by the House on March 13, 1996, were passed in a bipartisan fashion by a margin of 246 to 171, with 68 Democrats voting in favor. As such, exclusively blaming Republicans for watering down this legislation is nothing less than absurd.
Another issue missed in Americablog’s lather was that this request by President Clinton for stronger antiterrorist legislation came two days after the Atlanta Olympics pipe-bombing, and less than two weeks after TWA flight 800 exploded over New York. As a result, within three days of this 1996 CNN report now making its way across the blogosphere, two antiterrorism bills were proposed in the House: one (go here) by Bud Schuster (R-Pennsylvania), and; a second (go here) by Henry Hyde (R-Illinois).

So much for Republicans blocking Clinton’s antiterror legislation. "

About the Writer: Noel Sheppard is a frequent contributor to The American Thinker. He is also contributing editor for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters blog, and a contributing writer to its Business & Media Institute. Noel welcomes feedback at ....."

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=23698

posted by konane # 11:08 AM

Comments:

What do the symbols mean on your blog heading or title after some of the words on the main blog page?
I's curious LOL

# posted by JAP69 : 8:35 PM

Those symbols are apparently a font that didn't transpose correctly from the copy and past of story title to the heading. Most of the stuff I post has embedded links to reference other stuff, so copy and paste in its original format. Rather than risking typos in titles I also do same for them. Todd could explain why in technical terms but that's the closest I can come. Also called not correcting my errors because I don't know HTML well enough to do it so definitely a deficiency on my end!!

# posted by konane : 9:16 PM

Also at least on my end those symbols don't show when viewing my blog in the Premium format.

# posted by konane : 9:19 PM

You Decide

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

"The Smear Campaign Against ABC�_Ts �_~The Path to 9/11�_T

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