And We Could’ve Gotten Osama AGES Ago If We Didn’t Have Any Pesky LAWS To Pay Attention To…

Is this a tasteless cartoon? You’re damn right, it’s tasteless. But no more tasteless than the shameful and shameless politicizing of this tragedy on American soil by Bush, his administration and their corporate ilk. I only saw two hours of the ABC-Disney “Path to 9/11” last night because that was all I could stomach. Over and over again was this constant drone underneath every action: This wouldn’t have happened IF WE DIDN’T HAVE TO OBEY ANY LAWS.

DAMN YOU FOOLS–the fact that we pay attention to laws is the very thing that makes US the GOOD GUYS! Is this the legacy of 9/11? of the 3000 innocent dead? That this nation decides to step over the line and say, “We ARE the law, we don’t need to pay attention to any laws that are too inconvenient for us to follow!”? Is that why these people gave their lives?

President Bush is fond of saying that we are at war and we took the war to Afghanistan and to Iraq so we wouldn’t have to fight it here. But What in God’s Holy Name did 9/11 have to do with Iraq? (AFP) No Qaeda-Saddam Hussein links: US Senate report and (Reuters) Senate panel finds no prewar Iraq-Qaeda link

And yet, as late as a scant few weeks ago, El Exigente continued to link Saddam and 9/11 in a press conference: “I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would — who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. You know, I’ve heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of ‘we’re going to stir up the hornet’s nest’ theory. It just doesn’t hold water, as far as I’m concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.” And when the reporter he was speaking to dared question that connection: “Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?
THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Q: The attack on the World Trade Center?”
Bush whirled on him faster than Bela Lugosi on a recently lacerated finger and fired back, testily: “THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize….Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.” (From The Nation) At Press Conference, Bush Stays the Course What amazed me was that Georgie was so used to combining Saddam and 9/11 in one paragraph that he totally had no idea what the reporter was questioning when he asked what Iraq had to do with 9/11. WOW, doubleplusgood duckspeaker, that!

But let’s get back to The MOUSE. No, not the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I mean Disney-ABC and their probably-still-being-edited opus. We all know about Monica Lewinsky. Because of allegations about practically everything under the sun, Clinton was under investigation from the 2nd year of his incumbency. The only thing they could really get on him was that he’d had a dalliance with an intern. Not that that’s illegal, but by questioning him about it under oath while he was testifying about some other incident, he relied upon a studied prevarication, which was far enough away from the truth to allow him to be impeached on a charge of perjury. Now Bill Clinton isn’t the first Pres to have an affair in office, nor will he be the last, but I mean com’on, how many husbands would say I dood it unless they have to explain an illness or a baby, yanno’at I mean? Let’s be serious!

So, “PATH” segues from a discussion about how AMERICANS are in danger (in a made-up section of the screenplay) (MediaMatters) ABC retained fabricated scene showing Clinton officials aborting mission to capture Bin Laden to a shot of Monica Lewinsky on a television in a car with Richard Clarke and John O’Neill. (AP) ABC airs first night of 9/11 miniseries “In the original scene, an actor portraying White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke shares a limousine ride with FBI agent John O’Neill and tells him: ‘The Republicans are going all-out for impeachment. I just don’t see in that climate the president’s going to take chances’ and give the order to kill bin Laden.
“But in the film aired Sunday, Clarke says to O’Neill: ‘The president has assured me this … won’t affect his decision-making.’
“O’Neill replies: ‘So it’s OK if somebody kills bin Laden, as long as he didn’t give the order. It’s pathetic.”

Disney/ABC claims that the Lewinsky affair has been neutralized by this dialogue. But anyone in Film 101 can tell you, it doesn’t matter what’s SAID in a film, the very inclusion of a shot of Monica Lewinsky TELLS the viewer that the Lewinsky affair is MUCH more important than the dialogue indicates. And once again, O’Neill’s line about the unwillingness of Clinton to order an assassination being pathetic goes straight back to the thesis of this production, that if we didn’t have to follow laws, we could’ve dealt with this. I refer you to Executive Order 12333 (1981, signed by Ronald Reagan) part 2.11: Prohibition on Assassination. “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” It’s not only a law, by damn, it’s a REPUBLICAN law!

And yet John Lehman grouses in the aforementioned AP miniseries article, “‘And if you don’t like the hits to the Clinton administration, well, welcome to the club,’ Lehman said. ‘The Republicans have lived with Michael Moore and Oliver Stone and most of Hollywood as a fact of life.'” Welcome to Disingenuousland. Does Lehman mean to imply that there is a moral equivalency between a movie you have to leave your house and pay to see and one that’s beamed straight into your livingroom free of charge? I think he does. But I hope more people are beginning to see through the rhetorical tricks that are being used to pull the wool over the American people’s eyes. If there is any fitting memorial to the innocents of 9/11 I could wish, it would be the opening of the eyes of our country to the spirit of lawlessness, of the hunger for power for its own sake that is a cancer on what was once a land of integrity.