Furtive Glances - "Movin' Too Fast" Edition

This is what I get for having a 11 hour workday and kids.  A host of stories have been racing along at breakneck speed, and me unable to blog them in thoughtful and timely fashion.  Oh, well. There are plenty of others covering the stories, that's for sure.

• Let's start with a relatively simple story.  A bill passed the Senate today, establishing a public searchable database for earmarks - congressional pork.  Other bloggers have been very active in holding feet to the fire in pursuit of this.  The goal is to make the process more transparent, so that if a member of Congress tries to ship a large portion of the GNP back to his home state as local "projects," at least the public will know about it.  Originally the bill was brought by Senator Coburn (R) of Oklahoma - a physician no less - but was held up by secret 'holds' from Senator Stevens (R) of Alaska and Senator Byrd (D) of West Virginia.  The bloggers smoked them out, and Majority Leader Bill Frist finally got the bill to the floor today.  It passed unanimously, but that didn't take much courage.  It would have been awful hard to vote against.

The theory is that such exposure might embarass the member into some restraint.  The evidence would suggest that most members of Congress can't be embarassed, and so this is unlikely to work.

• A much bigger story involves the ABC miniseries, The Path to 9-11.  I haven't screened the show, as some have, but it is reported to contain a scene that is rather unflattering to the terrorism bona fides of Bill Clinton and his national security apparatus.  Former National Security Adviser Sandy "What do you mean you can't take documents from the National Archives in your pants?" Berger is shown failing to make the call to cap Osama Bin Laden when asked by CIA who were ready to pull the trigger.  Well, when the Clintons and their entourage got wind of the content they protested wildly, and have been badgering  ABC to edit the show to  eliminate this  scene.

Check out Memeorandum for all of the furor.  It seems ABC has caved.

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton's national security advisor, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

"That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said, adding: "These are very slight alterations."

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply "based on" the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film's version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries "is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews."

Some insist that this is a relatively accurate depiction of events, others not so much.  I have not the time to research it right now, but there are plenty of others out there doing so.  To me, though, it's irrelevant.  Anyone who could suggest that the Clinton administration took terrorism and the threat of radical Islamists as seriously as was necessary is living in a dreamworld.  By now pretty much everyone can run off the list of terrorist events that occurred during Mr. Clinton's term, and the weak and ineffectual responses to these acts - if there was any response at all.  Usually there was simply braggadocio and tough talk, but no action.  Here's an example, to refresh your memory.  Even the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center wasn't enough to convince them that the "wall of separation", established in 1995, was a bad idea.  How preposterous is that?

So cut the scene.  Or keep it.  It doesn't matter, because it doesn't change the facts, the ones that clearly show a lack of seriousness about this very serious problem.

• One more, because I'm getting tired now.  A newly released snippet of video on Al Jazeera shows Osama Bin Laden meeting with two of the 9-11 hijackers before the attack.  Those who insisted that there was doubt that Bin Laden was involved in ordering the attack can pipe down now.

9/8/06 0940: Jay Tea stopped by with a modification to Mr. Berger's middle name (see comments), and has a post over at Wizbang that nails another facet of the manipulative kerfuffle over The Path to 9/11.

Instead, the Democratic party is showing one area where it actually has some testicular fortitude -- if you say something (or even might be planning to say something) that threatens their heroes, that makes them look bad, they'll go straight for your jugular with all the power of the federal government they can muster. Constitutional principles (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and so on) be damned.

If only the Democrats in Congress and the former Clintonistas currently badgering and threatening ABC had such courage and determination in the war on terror ...

9/8/06 1045: Michael Scheuer, on MSNBC (via Allah/Hot Air)

O‘DONNELL:  What—who then is to blame?  I think the American people want to know, then, who then is to blame for this? 

SCHEUER:  It can only be the policy-makers and the elected officials.…

O‘DONNELL: So what you‘re saying is that when you ran the bin Laden desk, you knew where bin Laden was. You knew that bin Laden was trying to attack the United States. You knew that bin Laden had the wherewithal and that the policy-makers in the Clinton administration and then the Bush administration did not heed your warnings?

SCHEUER: Not my warnings. I hate to make myself the center of anything, ma‘am. But the intelligence community as a whole had warned the administration repeatedly. And I think there‘s no lack of record of that. It just—the 9/11 Commission failed to find anyone responsible for anything. The CIA can‘t order an attack. Only the National Security Council and the president can order an attack. …

Comments

[Jay Tea]

One minor correction: the fellow's full title is "Former National Security Adviser Sandy 'What do you mean you can't take documents from the National Archives in your pants and destroy them?" Berger."

One must give the fellow his full due.

J.