ABC Joins Rove Ranks

Fairy tales that try to rewrite history.

That's the stuff of political campaigns, and now it seems the media as ABC unloads a six hour mini-series "The Path to 9/11" on the public. A furious Bill Clinton is demanding the network pull the drama unless gross misrepresentations on his pursuit of Osama bin Laden are corrected.

In a four-page letter to ABC, Clinton refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal to care about bin Laden, and that a top advisor pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were moments away from bagging the terrorist.

And here is the kicker..... the mini-series is "also being provided to high schools as a teaching aid, although ABC admits key scenes are dramatizations." (New York Post) Is there no shame?

In fact, the 9/11 commission's report found Clinton was "deeply concerned about bin Laden," and found that Clinton's Cabinet gave "its blessing" for a CIA plan to capture bin Laden and determined that ex-CIA Director George "Presidential Medal of Freedom" Tenet squashed the plan.

Clinton allies claim that advance copies of the mini-series were sent to a number of echo-chamber conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, but not to liberals. Limbaugh, who says the screenwriter is a friend of his, gleefully told his radio audience that the film "indicts the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger... and is just devastating to the Clinton administration." (Washington Post)

And in the end, that appears to be what this is all about in this election season.... trying to shift the blame from the Bush administration's failure to capture bin Laden, and shift public attention away from Bush's failed and bloody pursuit of the war in Iraq.

This should be the news we talk about....in Iraq on Monday a soccer star was kidnapped and 35 bullet-ridden bodies found, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five more American troops and a roadside bomb killed two British soldiers.

But, before the November elections expect instead lots more cheap shot fairy tales, and lots less factual reporting on the war in Iraq and the Bush administration failures.