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WALLACE: Aren't you Democrats playing with political fire here? [...]Read More »
[...] If you block, or if you're seen as blocking, the NSA warrantless wiretaps or military tribunals, don't you run the risk of exactly the same thing happening in 2006?
DEAN: Well, you know, I think the Republicans have some risk here too. Bill Clinton tried to expand wiretap authority, and the Republicans all wouldn't give it to him when he was president of the United States. So there's always politics, and you always have to watch politics on both sides.
What the Democrats want here is not politics. We think the president has played too much politics.
You know, the president got rid of the CIA unit that was supposed to track down Usama bin Laden. Then in the last three weeks, he's stepped that up again.
We think there's a lot of politics in this. We think there's a lot of politics in the president's speeches â?¦quot; one every day on terrorism. They think they can't win the elections unless they talk about terrorism all the time. We think we ought to talk about a new direction for the country.
So there's always the risk of politics. But in defending the United States, the best thing to do is do what you think is right. We want to get the terrorists. We think the civil war in Iraq has become a distraction to getting the terrorists. And we do want our Constitution and our laws to be upheld, because that, as I said before, that's what stands between us and the people we're fighting against.
I just watched the Sandy Berger scene. It is beyond defamatory. The reports you've read do not do it justice.Read More »
[... T]his is THE KEY SCENE of the entire first half of the movie. You can't cut it, or a good portion of the movie just makes no sense. But Disney/ABC can't leave the scene is because it simply did not happen. CIA agents weren't on the ground, they weren't with Massoud, nobody had bin Laden in their grasp, and Berger never refused to give the order to get the guy.
The entire culmination of the first half of the show is one big fat lie. This isn't just a small scene with a small error. It's THE scene and it NEVER HAPPENED AT ALL [...]
ABC alters 9/11 show under pressure
"The Path to 9/11," whose large ensemble includes Harvey Keitel and Patricia Heaton, offers a panoramic sweep of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The movie dramatizes what it deems intelligence and operational failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations, relying heavily on public records. Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 commission, served as a consultant.
After a screening of the first episode in Washington last week, some audience members attacked the film's depiction of the Clinton administration's pursuit of Osama bin Laden. Among those unhappy was Richard Ben-Veniste, an attorney and member of the 9/11 commission whom some conservatives have dismissed as a Democratic attack dog. Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, has criticized the movie for suggesting that the Clinton administration was in a position to capture Bin Laden in 1998 but canceled the mission at the last minute.
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.
Top Republicans Challenge Bush On Terror Prosecution...Read More »
The Bush administration's proposal to bring leading terror suspects to trial met stiff resistance Thursday from key Republicans and top military lawyers who said that some provisions would not withstand legal scrutiny or do enough to repair the nation's tarnished reputation internationally.
Democrats, meanwhile, said they were inclined to go along with Senate Republicans who have been drafting an alternative to the White House plan, one that would allow greater rights to defendants. That left Republicans to argue among themselves about what the tribunals would look like.

