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I thought ABC's 9-11 program last night was very well done. What did you think of it?
JL

I didn't watch it.

Wow. It was very well done. A few things really got me. The Northern Alliance army knew where Bin Laden was and needed the "go" from Washington. After the red tape, the Ameirican told the NA leader, no go. Then the NA leader said "Are there no more men left in Washington?"

And no one wanted to give the go ahead to get to Bin Laden because of the Waco fallout. Simply amazing.

I'd suggest to find a copy of the program and watch it. Real well done and if we continue with our lawyers and red tape, the terrorists will win.

I was actually amazed it was done as a network program. Maybe it will open the eyes of the CNN lovers.

According to the news, Clinton's lawyers tried to squash it. I guess ABC found some balls also. I thought they would cave!

That leader or, Masoud, was assassinated by Al Qaeda on September 13th 2001. I guess he paid the ultimate price for his allegiance to America.
That is and always will be a terrible thing to say, but so true!!!!

Try to remember this is a fictionalizd docudrama. Key word here is FICTION. Even the Wall Street Journal opined that docudramas like this one are a poor way to teach children and history.

ABC took the bull by the horns and even though this docu-drama was watered down it still resembles the intense relationship between America and radical Muslims during the Clinton administration.
A radicalism that only a few saw and determined how dangerous it really was, that is until 9/11/2001 when everyone saw.

I thought it was pretty well done, although if you read the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll (about the CIA in Afghanistan, from the Russian invasion to the death of Massoud), you'll see several places in which the movie strays from the facts.

Concerning above comments, Massoud was killed on Sept 10--before the attacks, not after.

Although the Northern Alliance turned out to be our major ally in the overthrow of the Taliban and the attacks on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the closest we came to having a legitimate shot at Bin Laden involved CIA assets other than the NA. They operated in the north of the country, and are of a different ethnic group than the majority Pashtuns--and Bin Laden spent most of his time in the south, Pashtun country.

In the movie, CIA Director Tenet seems to take a lot of blame for foot dragging about attempts on Bin Laden. You have to remember that assassination was made illegal under executive order back in the mid-70's, and that executive order is still in force--even now. But even Clinton's legal team determined that since Bin Laden had attacked us (the embassies in Africa), killing him did not constitute assassination. The problem came in the specific instructions passed down to CIA from the White House, which kept telling them that Bin Laden could only be killed in a legitimate attempt to capture him. The real foot-draggers were Berger, Reno (who insisted that Bin Laden should be arrested), and Clinton himself--because he wanted "consensus" from his cabinet on how to deal with the situation.

Apparently, Clinton and company did succeed in having some scenes changed or deleted. Too bad the Republicans didn't have the same censorship privileges over Michael Moore's garbage.

Less fiction, more truth in Moore.

The situation involving these events are so complicated and somewhat convoluted that its almost impossible to sort out the question "who is to blame". However,ABC tried a new approach unheard of before, they depicted the Clinton Administration as inept when it came to fighting terrorism. A story, regardless of how much non-fiction/fiction contained therein that had to be told. And I beleive alot of people needed this docu-drama to confirm their beliefs.

Cyrus, you forgot to add this to the end of your post or this
Maybe just, hehehehehehe!

ABC at least had the integrity to include a disclaimer, pointing out theirs was a "docudrama", with composite characters, compression of time, etc. Moore simply played fast and loose with the facts, and called his a documentary. Even Newsweek, hardly a bastion of Bush support, ran a column pointing out all the incorrect and/or misleading stuff in Moore's film.

Guess the Republicans should've made more noise and tried to get some stuff cut from "F 9/11".

Mr. Blackwell, perhaps you don't know that Col. Brown is a retired army intelligence officer. I am 99% sure of this from memory, if I am wrong I'm sure he will correct me.

Larry, I read a year or so ago in New York or London Review of Books or TLS that Kissinger addressing private SAS meeting in London said bin Laden escape Bora Bora was because of U.S. sensitivity to casualties. ABC indicated less than 60 Americans all ranks there. Can you help, please?

Larry -
I didn't read the Newsweek column you refer to, but am curious which parts of F911 were actually false. I don't think Moore makes any secret of where he's coming from, so a disclaimer shouldn't be necessary. He's essentially a satirist. Some of the clearest, most telling observations about society - and politics - comes from the satirists. We may not like the message, or the way it comes wrapped, but then we are free disagree or ignore it. I will admit, Moore is tough to ignore.

King, I too hope Larry answers your Q. I can provide a good clue that has not come to me from classified sources.

Short of tactical nuclear weapons, we have some large-area destructive bombs. I've heard that some work not only by blast but by oxygen deprival. The key point is they kill everything within a fairly large radius. One, I think is called the MOAB (perhaps a nickname -- "mother of all bombs"). The earlier, Viet Nam version could be delivered by a C 130 (per a pilot who did so). Obviously, assuming a fair number of proper aircraft were available, we could have killed whatever was in a fair amount of real estate.

I can also speculate that some of those likely might have been friendlies.

Can't help with the Tora Bora deal. Might have been only 60 Americans present. We pretty much took out the Taliban and broke up AQ using a relatively small number of "boots on the ground" (CIA in first, followed by SPECOPS about a month later), and their mission was mostly to supply our Northern Alliance allies and to call in air strikes. I don't think Kissinger would necessarily be the best source, since he was long out of the picture by then.

I'm no expert on Air Force weapons, but there was one bomb called a Daisy Cutter and another that had "fuel air" in its nomenclature. One or the other (or maybe they're the same) might fit your description. Seems I recall that one of them was normally dropped from a C-130.

As to Moore, he made the claim that Saudis were allowed to fly home before normal flights were back in operation after 9/11, and that they were not cleared by the FBI--if I recall correctly. Neither was true. And there were quite a few other factual problems with his film.

The Daisy Cutter was used in Afghanistan.

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb [MOAB] weapon is a 21,000 lbs, GPS-guided High Explosive bomb developed for the Iraq campaign.
It did not exist during Tora Bora

I didn't see it, but I heard on Face the Nation that the only thing ABC actually changed in the film was the credits, but I don't know for sure. The important thing is, the guy actually responsible for attacking us on 9/11 is still free. That's all I need to know.