The After-Path

The first half of the Path to 9/11 has already been "reviewed" in numerous blogs today. I link here to Instapundit's "liveblogging" entry written both last night with updates today:

I think it was a big mistake for Democrats to draw attention to this film by attacking it and trying to block its broadcast. I wouldn't have watched it without the hype, and I'll be that's true for a lot of people.

Meanwhile, Richard Clarke seems to be ass-covering in the after-show news segment. But George Tenet is getting hammered.

And later today, he gives us this:

Dean Barnett is crying foul:

As a historical document, its rampant inaccuracies both bothered and distracted me. Osama bin Laden did not fund Ramsi Yousef. Al Qaeda did not control the Taliban. The film’s implication that the Taliban was bin Laden’s puppet is absurd. Al Qaeda was not awash in riches; the organization was chronically impoverished. In other words, it really disturbed me how the film magnified and exaggerated the capabilities, reach and power of Al Qaeda.

Okay, now a word on THE SCENE, the one where the Northern Alliance and a few intrepid CIA men were ready to snatch or kill bin Laden only to have gutless Washington bureaucrats thwart their efforts. Nothing like it ever happened.

Actually, I believe that Al Qaeda pretty much did control the Taliban, at least with regard to stuff that Al Qaeda cared about. As for THE SCENE, I had never heard this story before the film, and have no reason to doubt Barnett's characterization.

Cyrus Nowrasteh indicated in his interview last week with Hugh Hewitt that THE SCENE was a composite, multiple events distilled into one for the purposes of plot, pacing and dramatization. Seems the extension of the idea that the producers shouldn't have condensed such details leads (and maybe it's just me) to a bizarre conclusion.

Would the Clinton's have preferred we see on an individual basis the 6, 8, even-dozen opportunities that they refused to take advantage of to apprehend Bin Laden? The NY Times wrote of at least one plan tossed out by the Clinton Administration in 1998.

Whether it was once, a dozen times or a number in-between, the Clinton Administration passed on something that it ought to have done and there is no reason that such shouldn't be told of.