RUSH: There’s another great scene in The Path to 9/11. The ambassador to Yemen, whose name is Barbara Bodine, is portrayed by Patricia Heaton in this movie, Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond, and she basically prevents O’Neill from doing anything to uncover the Yemenis who might have blown up the USS Cole because she was more concerned about the effect on the Yemeni people. She didn’t want them thinking badly of the United States. She has an op-ed piece in the LA Times here denying this today. I’ll get to relevant parts it. It will come up at the break at the top of the hour.
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RUSH: And we plod on here, ladies and gentlemen, through the Stalinism of the Democratic Party. Former President Clinton and his hacks, five years out of office, are still trying to run things. The telephone number, 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program. E-mail address, Rush@eibnet.com. Let me give you a little detail here on what I blurbed right before the break at the top of the hour. Barbara Bodine, ambassador to Yemen at the time the USS Cole was exploded. “One of the myths…” She’s got an op-ed today in the LA Times, and I’m reading excerpts of it to you here. “One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of New York, John O’Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to that country. According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador. I am not here to either defend or attack O’Neill. He was a complex man.”
This character is portrayed, as I say, by Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond. “The realities of a U.S. investigative style inevitably collided headlong with the limited capabilities of Yemen. The Yemenis knew Aden and its people but lacked technical and professional competence; the FBI had the forensic and technical capability but could not operate ‘on the street’ in Aden. The friction, the suspicion, the miscommunication between the two could not, however, be allowed to derail a successful criminal investigation of the attack, its roots in Yemen and its links to other attacks against Americans around the world…
“In the aftermath of the attack on the Cole, the stakes were high. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s first lesson of leadership is that ‘being responsible sometimes means'” making people mad, although she uses the P-word instead of making people mad. “It’s inevitable, if you are honorable. The job of the ambassador is to make the tough calls. To paraphrase a fellow Missourian, the buck stopped on my desk.” So she’s denying what she…? What is she, confirming here? Anyway it’s a really good scene. It’s a talk scene. Here’s my thought about it. We’ve heard that there are dramatizations that are taking place. We have heard that there are literary liberties being taken. Let me ask you a question. How many of you have grown sick and tired of diplomats in this country, in this country and around the world saying, “No, we can’t do that because I’m afraid of what the world will think of us”? 
The idea, Ms. Bodine, that this is outrageous and could not have happened spares me my credulity. I’m sorry, madam. It may not have happened in your case but it’s a hallmark of our state department. It is a hallmark of our ambassadorial crew. It’s a hallmark of our diplomacy. In fact, one of the things hamstringing us right now is, “we must recapture our image in the world. We must be concerned with what people think about us.” For crying out loud, Madam Bodine, we didn’t go get bin Laden on a number of occasions because we were afraid we might kill civilians or we might get blamed or it might lead to something! We are always worried about what other people think. It is the nature of a bunch of diplomats because to them they take it personally.
So you’re always going to be concerned what people think, whereas the average American who’s dying out there in these attacks and is threatened by them and having to go through hell just to get into an airport and on an airplane actually doesn’t care what people think. Well, the wacko kooks and the lib fringe do. But that is my point. I don’t know whether this actually happened in her case. But this movie compiles attitudes that are undeniably true about the diplomatic corps, about the battles between CIA and the FBI and the inability to share information. There is no question the Clinton administration did nothing of any substance throughout the nineties. There’s no question whatsoever. I occasionally go to a blog out there called PowerLine. It’s three lawyers.
These guys are in Atlanta. They’re not particularly fond of talk radio, but I’ll be bigger than that and I will compliment them when they do something I like. Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff and John Hinderaker. (See, I don’t hear these people’s names pronounced so forgive me if I’m mispronouncing them.) They have a five-page post today that lists every terrorist event in the 1990s.
“Looking at the big picture, though, it’s a little hard to see what the Dems are complaining about. I haven’t seen the miniseries, but I take it that it doesn’t portray the Clinton administration as having taken very effective action against the growing threat from Islamic terrorists. What I don’t understand is how the Democrats think they can rewrite history to challenge that characterization. There is no doubt about the fact that the terrorist menace grew and became increasingly obvious during the Clinton administration. To note just a few highlights,” and I can’t — I?m not going to read this whole thing because it’s almost three pages of bullet points. Let me count them. Starting January 25, 1993 with a guy that fired an AK-47 into cars, a Pakistani, waiting “at a stoplight in front of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.” 
Then February 26, 1993, the first World Trade Center attack. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. It concludes with the October 12th, 2000, Al-Qaeda bombs of the USS Cole. “Between 1993 and 2000, everyone who was paying any attention knew that the threat from Islamic terrorism was grave and getting worse,” and then came 9/11. So what history are these people trying to change? Are they going to try to say these terrorist attacks are unrelated and they really didn’t happen? I mean, this is just absolutely outrageous, ladies and gentlemen. This is the United States of America — and, I’ll tell you what. When you have campaign finance reform — thank you, Senator McCain, and thank you Senator Feingold; when you have campaign finance reform — that chips away at free speech, at the First Amendment, in violation of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court didn’t stop it…
By the way, the president, in his signing statement on the McCain-Feingold bill, expressed his fears and cautions, but he said he was confident the Supreme Court would deal with it. They didn’t. So you know, we’re close to the moment now where no more advertising can take place for the November elections among special interest groups, 60 days out. It’s either now or soon. It’s no question this week. It’s either we’re at 61 days or 60 days now. It’s this weekend at some point. That’s it. Probably right now. November 8th, 30 days? Yeah, it’s right now. From now on, no more commercials on TV from certain groups, for people running for election, reelection, what have you, in November.
So now it’s easy to chip away at the First Amendment. Here comes the Democratic Party acting as pure Stalinists while claiming Bush is the dictator. Bush is the oppressor. Bush is spying. Bush is denying people all these privacy rights and civil rights and human rights, here come the Democratic Senate leadership, threatening ABC with its broadcast licenses and its owned and operated radio stations, for a movie. They’re squealing like stuck pigs. Folks, I hope that you are able to understand exactly what this means as it relates to their position on the whole issue of national security and their utter fear of being exposed as utterly useless to this country in that regard.
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