RUSH: Well, in the trade paper Variety, the movie and television industry newspaper, the possibility has been posed that Disney will totally scrap the movie, The Path to 9/11, that Iger is not happy with it, and just may broom the whole thing. I don’t know if that will happen, but I’ll tell you what has happened here is so eye-opening and illustrative that I wish it were self-explanatory to a lot of people, but sadly it probably isn’t. What happened yesterday is that the Senate Democrats, a bunch of the leadership in the Senate, sent Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney, a threatening letter. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a mob-like reaction from partisan hacks to intimidate an American broadcast network — and that network, ABC, is being intimidated.
The idea that Bush is made to look good? Bush isn’t even in the movie! Condoleezza Rice is. But this is just mystifying — well, no. Wrong word. It’s not mystifying. Here’s what it illustrates. It illustrates that the Democrats fear, deathly fear the issue of national security becoming forefront in this campaign. They are deathly afraid of it, deathly, because they cannot compete against it. They know the truth about themselves in this regard. They know that because of their actions and because of their words and because there are people like me and others who can go back in time and report and remind people of their words and actions, that they can’t win that debate. They can’t win any debate, anyway. All they can do is silence their critics.
All they can do is attempt to shut people up who criticize them, or discredit those who are critics of theirs, rather than debate the issues. It also shows that they are fully aware that they cannot get anywhere without accomplice-type assistance from those in the so-called mainstream media. And so the full force of big-government intimidation was put to paper yesterday. Dingy Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats sent this letter off to Bob Iger. There is one scene in The Path to 9/11 that is — and, by the way, folks, I’ll tell you, you know it’s getting to the point now we need a docudrama on the docudrama. We need a docudrama to see exactly how (and to dramatize exactly how) it is that Bill Clinton and his hacks in the Democratic Party have attempted to intimidate a major broadcast network’s entertainment division! Let ’em try this on the news division. We need a docudrama of the docudrama to show how other media are sitting by and not saying a damn thing while one of their competitors, colleagues, whatever, is being threatened with its broadcast license!
We need a docudrama of the docudrama that illustrates exactly how big government is intimidating free speech in the entertainment community, and we need to see how the representatives of big government, in this case the Democrat Party, are acting. We also need this: Since everybody (Clinton, everybody else) is so concerned about the truth, all right! I’m up for that. We need a docudrama on what happened that caused the genocide in Rwanda during the Clinton administration, for which he has apologized and gotten great credit. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have done more about that, you know, but…’ Oh, he cares. After that we need a docudrama on Bill Clinton’s approval of the aerospace firm Loral, a big contributor to his campaign, selling satellite technology to the communist Chinese — and after that we need a docudrama on the Red Chinese contributions to the Clinton Legal Defense Fund and his reelection campaign — and how about a docudrama on all the Lincoln bedroom sleepovers? By the way, when are we going to get the docudrama on Monica Lewinsky?
‘If you kill bin Laden, we’re not going to be saddled with an assassination charge. We can’t do it. It’s against it law. If you kill any innocent civilians, there’s going to be hell to pay, so you don’t have authorization to do this.’ So they backed out. The Clinton people are saying this is totally fabricated. Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright say it never happened. Except: the fact that the actual CIA agent named Mike says that it did. His actual name is — and you’ve probably heard of this guy’s name. I’m not sure how to pronounce his last name because I’ve never watched with the sound up on TV. S-c-h-e-u-e-r. Scheuer? It doesn’t matter. He’s a 22-year veteran of the CIA who used to head up ‘Alec Station,’ the counter terrorist center’s Osama bin Laden unit. Now, just so you know, Michael Scheuer is the individual regularly referred to in the 9/11 Commission report as ‘Mike.’
He has also written some books: Imperial Hubris, Why the West is Losing the War On Terror, and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. He’s an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and its prosecution of the war on terror. He is also an opponent of the war in Iraq. So the point that I am making to you here is that he is not a friend of the Bush administration. Now, our buddies at NewsBusters.org have a post up by Noel Sheppard from yesterday, and Mr. Sheppard says that ‘after reading my piece about the smear campaign against ABC’s ‘The Path to 9/11,’ Scheuer apprised me of an op-ed he had written for the Washington Times on July 5th of this year. Given the context of this issue, I wanted to share it with our readers and will do so in its entirety in a moment,’ and it’s done so at the end of the piece here.
“However,” Mr. Sheppard writes, “before I do, let me first share a more recent opinion offered by Scheuer as answers to some questions I asked of him in response to his first e-mail message: ‘Is the scene in question as depicted by Rush an accurate account of the plan to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. If so, who do you believe gave the order to halt it?” And here is what Scheuer responded, who is the CIA agent Mike, composite figure as portrayed in the movie. He says, “Regarding the scene, it was never clear to my officers or myself who canceled the operation.” Well, right there, the lie is put to the lie that the Clinton administration says it never happened! It did happen, and the agent on the ground says, “It was never clear to my officers or myself who canceled the operation. It is true that Clarke was bad-mouthing it.
These statements are affirmed somewhat in the 9/11 Commission report. The 9/11 Commission report says, quote, “‘Mike’ thought the capture plan was ‘the perfect operation.’ It required minimum infrastructure. The plan had now been modified so that the tribals would keep Bin Ladin in a hiding place for up to a month before turning him over to the United States — thereby increasing the chances of keeping the U.S. hand out of sight. ‘Mike’ trusted the information from the Afghan network; it had been corroborated by other means, he told us. The lead CIA officer in the field, Gary Schroen, also had confidence in the tribals. In a May 6 cable to CIA headquarters, he pronounced their planning ‘almost as professional and detailed…as would be done by any U.S. military special operations element.'”
The event happened.
It took place.
The 9/11 Commission report even says it did. Scheuer thinks that the ultimate order came from the National Security Council, and that, ladies and gentlemen, happens to be how it is portrayed in the movie. The question that I have is why in the world are we going to believe the Clinton administration, and who says the 9/11 Commission is infallible? The people that put this movie together — well, I shouldn’t even have to say this! The people that put this movie together probably have a whole bunch of sources telling them things. I’ll betcha there is somebody out there who knows what really happened, and I’ll bet they can’t come forward. I bet they can’t come forward because of a whole bunch of reasons — propriety, security, anonymity, and this sort of thing.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Now, here is Michael Scheuer’s op-ed. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll read some excerpts of his op-ed that was published in the Washington Times on July 5th of this year. Let me read to you the open. “With one credible September 11 movie, ‘United 93,’ under our belts, it will be interesting to see whether ABC-TV will complete the September 11 Commission’s whitewashing of the pre-September 11 failure of U.S. intelligence-community leaders in its forthcoming mini-series based on Richard Clarke’s memoir, ‘Against All Enemies.’ Media teasers about the mini-series have said that Mr. Clarke — the former ‘terrorism czar’ — and a senior FBI officer, the late John O’Neill, will be the heroes of the saga. If true–” and, by the way, they are — “and if ABC’s fact-checkers are not diligent in verifying Mr. Clarke’s stories and claims, the mini-series will be the September 11 commission’s dream come true: The Bush administration will be blamed for September 11, the feckless moral cowardice of the Clinton administration will be disguised and Mr. Clarke and Mr. O’Neill — in my view, two principal authors of September 11 — will be beatified.”
“On the fantasy level, Mr. Clarke lays it on thick. His claim that the Clinton administration ‘defeated an al-Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia’ is nonsense; bin Laden sent few fighters there because he had no contiguous safe haven for them. Mr. Clarke’s claim that ‘the CIA had taken months to tell the FBI’ several hijackers were in America is a lie. FBI officers sat in the unit I first commanded and then served in and they read the same information I did. If the data did not get to FBI headquarters it is because the FBI then lacked, and still lacks, a useable computer system. The FBI did not know the September 11 hijackers were here because Judge Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller have failed to provide their officers computers that allow them to talk securely to their headquarters and other intelligence community elements.
‘He once told me that he and the FBI would oppose an operation to capture bin Laden and take him to a third country for incarceration. When I asked why, he replied, ‘Why should the FBI help to capture bin Laden if the bureau won’t get credit among Americans for his arrest and conviction’? ‘So,’ writes Mr. Scheuer, ‘I look forward to ABC’s mini-series, as well as to seeing the quality of the network’s fact-checkers. If they do their job well, some of the September 11 Commission’s whitewash may start to be peeled away. If they fail, however, the reality that Bill, Dick and Sandy helped to push Americans out of the windows of the World Trade Center on that September morning will be buried in miles of fantasy-filled celluloid.’ So the plot thickens here. The event happened. Scheuer has written of it three times and discussed it on air a number of times, and it apparently — well, there’s more here. I gotta run. The clock is ticking away here, ladies and gentlemen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s a lot of other things out there today. I’ve just got a couple more bits of information, a Dick Morris piece and some more points to make. But this is really, really, really Stalinist what’s going on here. Do you remember when Richard Nixon did this? I don’t know if you were paying attention long enough ago, but Richard Nixon was supposedly threatening broadcast licenses of news divisions that he didn’t like, but this makes Nixon — and there’s a guy writing about this at the American Thinker today, one of our all-time favorite blogs, Nixon was a piker! He was vilified for this, but he was a piker compared to what’s going on now.
How many of you people out there remember George W. Bush being referred to as a dictator? He wants to violate everybody’s freedoms. He wants to violate civil rights. He wants to violate human rights. He wants to spy on you with a domestic spy program. He’s been called Hitler and so forth. This miniseries, this docudrama, criticizes both sides. The irony here is the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, both sides did not react the same way. President Bush, who is labeled a near dictator, has not said a word about the program, hasn’t asked for it to be killed, hasn’t asked for it to be recut. Former President Clinton, who we are always told is the greatest president since FDR, did do both those things. He did call Iger last Friday, by the way. He called Iger personally before this four-page letter that Bruce Lindsey actually wrote, was mailed to Iger and Disney this week. You know, these guys are beyond description.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
If you want to think about a conspiracy to deny the truth and to present a lie, take a look at the willing accomplices in the Democratic Party, the criminal justice system, and the Drive-By Media. And now you’ve got these Stalinists in the Democratic Party threatening ABC’s broadcast licenses. By the way, let me, as a network, they do not have a broadcast license. The owned and operated stations have licenses. So they could go after ABC’s owned and operated stations’ licenses, and those are huge profit centers, ladies and gentlemen, those TV stations that they own. You know, they spend nothing producing the local news, just put a camera at an intersection, record a wreck, but a camera at a poor part of town, report a robbery, and you’ve got your local news. So it doesn’t cost much. Those are just huge profit centers.
I got an idea for these guys. Here’s a better way to handle this. Leave the movie uncut, Mr. President, and then when the scene goes by that you don’t like, have ABC run a graphic, ‘this scene not approved by Bill Clinton.’ And when a scene goes by that you do like, have it say ‘this scene approved by Bill Clinton’ so that every scene in the movie we get Clinton’s stamp of approval or disapproval, and then let Madeleine Albright have the same privilege. ‘This scene never happened, says Madeleine Albright.’ And then let Sandy Burglar get in on the action, too. ‘This scene questioned by Sandy Burglar.’ I mean, because that’s what’s it appears is going on. Whatever complaints these guys have, they are being addressed to one extent or another.
Now, here’s Greg Richards at the AmericanThinker.com. ‘Sens. Reid, Durbin, Stabenow, Schumer, and Dorgan sent a letter to Disney today containing the following passages,’ and I have read you the passages, and you know what they are now, threatening the broadcast license. ‘Nixon was a piker. This is a threat far more direct than ever made by the Nixon Administration on the TV licenses of the Washignton Post about which so much was made in the Watergate affair. But it is just business as usual for the party that thinks they can do what they want without consequence. If this had been issued by the Nixon Administration, we would still be reading about in it the history books as the next-to-last step to a fascist takeover of the Republic.’ And that is right on. And this is close to what this is. But you have to understand again what this represents.
It represents the flimsy foundation on which the Clinton legacy is built and constructed, and it cannot withstand a five-hour movie. Number two: it shows the utter fear and paranoia and panic of a Democratic Party cannot stand for the primary issue of this campaign to be national security. They can’t afford it. That’s what scares these Democrats. I don’t know that it’s so much loyalty to Clinton. That’s what scares the Democrats. They just can’t bear for this to happen. They have succeeded in whitewashing 9/11. It was only one episode and it’s a long time ago, and we’re not safe because Bush has botched the recovery and the retaliation for it. But they cannot, as a caller said yesterday, dare allow this movie to present the real enemy: Al-Qaeda Islamofascists. Dick Morris writes about this today at NewsMax. ‘The attack by Clinton and his allies on The Path to 9/11 is outrageous,’ charges Dick Morris.
Now, this is another controversial issue and scene in the movie. ‘According to the commission’s report, the United States alerted Pakistan because the missiles targeting bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan, had to cross Pakistan, and U.S. officials did not want Pakistan to think the missiles came from India. A third time, our plans to attack by missile were canceled, partially out of chagrin over having missed him before and partially because we had just bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by mistake and were worried about being called trigger happy.’ Numerous attempts to get bin Laden and the Clinton administration always found a reason not to do it.
This scene that Madeleine Albright doesn’t like? We are going to launch the missiles into the terrorist camps in Afghanistan. They gotta cross Pakistani airspace to get there, and somebody had to alert the Pakistanis — and they, Pakistanis, somebody there, then alerted bin Laden and he escaped. (Ex-caped for those of you in Rio Linda.) The movie says that it is Madeleine Albright that does this, that alerts the Pakistanis, and Madeleine Albright in the movie says that we have to do this because the president is in intense negotiations with the Palestinians and the Israelis on a Mideast peace plan. We have to do this. Albright says, ‘I didn’t make the call. Somebody else made the call.’ The event happened! The event happened just like the contested scene about the near capture of bin Laden. It happened, and this a docudrama… The Clinton administration was an utter failure, and they can’t stand for any light to be shown and cast on that failure. As I say, it’s illustrative of who they are, how flimsy and feeble their legacy is, how teetering on lies and spin their legacy is.
The Democrats are just plain panicked and fearful over the notion that national security is going to become an issue in the campaign. They know they can’t possibly win on that basis. Speaking of that, Washington, DC, at this moment is probably going nuts. A two-year investigation by the Senate intelligence committee has been concluded. Report issued today. The essence of the report is that, ‘There’s no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al Qaeda associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush’s justification for going to war. The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war… Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, a member of the committee, said the long-awaited report was ‘a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts’ to link Saddam to al Qaeda.’
They have never done that! They never linked Saddam to 9/11.
Zarqawi was in Iraq before we went to 9/11. Al-Qaeda was there. It’s not in dispute. This report says that Zarqawi and his presence were not known by Saddam? All of this is irrelevant! The Democrats want to refight the issue of the 2004 presidential race: going to Iraq was a mistake and that Bush and the CIA manipulated intelligence along with Cheney in order go to war in Iraq. They can’t let it go now. They can’t let it go and they want to refight the same thing. This is an irrelevant report. But the Democrats are screaming. They’re happy, by God! ‘We got something that can cover up the 9/11 movie! This is super! See? Bush lied! Bush lied! We’ve been telling you it all along Bush lied. Bush lied! We don’t need to be in Iraq. Al-Qaeda was not there.’ Well, the fact of the matter is we are there, and what’s going on there is going on there, and refighting decisions from two and three years ago is absolutely pointless. The Democrats continue to look backwards. This is why they are untrustworthy with this nation’s national security.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.