Is it Freedom of Speech or Not??

[mrs. red]

I am fascinated that the Democrats are screaming about the ABC 9-11 movie... if that is the case - that it should be pulled - then why not cancel the showings of shows like the West Wing... and the one with Gena Davis that has the first woman president, I mean we all know they are promoting Hillary.

Also, why not pull the movie that shows Bush being assassinated? What
about all the Micheal Moore movies?

Why are Schumer, Reid, et. al screaming to the high heavens over this movie?  Seems to me like they don't want the truth told....

[Carnut]

Looks like the Dem's are doing a pretty good job of publicizing the movie.

[Anna]

Speaking of Freedom of Speech, is that what this is as well?



Media Caught Lying About "Secret Prisons"
By Cliff Kincaid  |  September 7, 2006 The distortions about what Bush said on Wednesday should be a lesson to news consumers to not accept what they see, read, or hear in the major media.  
Led by the Associated Press (AP), the media have falsely reported that President Bush acknowledged the existence of CIA "secret prisons" in a speech on Wednesday. News flash! The President never used the term in the speech.  

But type in the words "secret prisons" in the Google search engine for current news and see how many hits you get in connection with the Bush speech. Some say Bush "admitted" or "confirmed" the existence of "secret prisons." But notice that Bush's acknowledgement, admission, or confirmation is never presented in quotation marks. That's the tip-off that he didn't say what the media claim he said. Our media lied.  

Leave it to Bob Schieffer, the former CBS Evening News anchorman, to admit the truth as he was being interviewed about the speech by new anchor Katie Couric on the Wednesday broadcast. "He never used the term 'prison,'" said Schieffer.

But if the President didn't use the word, then how can the media report that he did so? It's called "interpretive reporting." It's been taught in journalism classes for decades.  

Left-wing blogs, even some supposedly devoted to being media watchdogs, are already citing the erroneous news accounts of the Bush speech as "proof" that "secret prisons" existed. They didn't bother to check the actual text.  

All of this, however, is secondary to the fact that a secret CIA program to interrogate terrorists, including the architects of 9/11, did exist and should never have been the subject of stories in the media in the first place. But because of the exaggerated media coverage and attention given to the story, as well as a flawed Supreme Court decision about how to handle terrorists, the architects of 9/11 have now been transferred to the Guantanamo prison, once described by Amnesty International as the "gulag of our times" but which now serves Big Macs and offers first-class medical and dental care.  

The distortions about what Bush said on Wednesday should be a lesson to news consumers to not accept what they see, read, or hear in the major media. Another lesson is not to trust the liberal blogs which accept anything negative about Bush they can find in that same media.  

For the record, the President acknowledged that the CIA has maintained an interrogation "program" in which "a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States…" Bush said, "This group includes individuals believed to be the key architects of the September the 11th attacks, and attacks on the USS Cole, an operative involved in the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and individuals involved in other attacks that have taken the lives of innocent civilians across the world. These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans for new attacks. The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know." He referred to them having been "held in CIA custody."

Bush added, "Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged. Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country."

Those details are precisely what Dana Priest of the Washington Post was trying to expose in her November 2, 2005, Pulitzer Prize-winning story alleging that the "secret prisons" existed. Priest was attacked on various grounds for that story. Some suggested she should never have revealed the existence of such a program. AIM contended, and still does, that the story was essentially false, and that her prize should be revoked on that basis.    

In addition to using the phrase "secret prisons," Priest's tabloid treatment of the controversy included calling it a "covert prison system," a "hidden global internment network," and a "secret detention system." At the request of the administration, the Post agreed to delete certain country names from her article, but she retained the rhetoric in the very first paragraph about some al-Qaeda captives being kept at "a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe."  

That phrase provided an important insight into her motivation. She was trying to compare U.S. treatment of terrorists to Soviet mistreatment of dissidents. In fact, when Priest later gave an interview on the subject, she did not dispute the use of the term "secret gulags" in referring to the "secret prisons."  

What Priest did was pull a Dick Durbin, the liberal Illinois senator who earlier, in June 2005, had compared Guantanamo to the Soviet gulags and suggested that U.S. personnel interrogating suspected terrorists were acting like Communists, Nazis and Pol Pot. While Durbin eventually apologized for his remarks, Priest won an award for her story, which caused European leftists to go crazy with investigations of the CIA.  

Some might say that it doesn't matter whether the terrorists were held at prisons, detention facilities, camps, or whatever. But it does matter if accuracy in the media is to be upheld and for Priest to retain her Pulitzer. This Dick Durbin-style of journalism is a disgrace.  

The word "prison" in the American context suggests something like Alcatraz, the federal penitentiary with guards and towers that was closed in 1963. It held as many as 300 inmates. The number of detainees in the "secret prison" system, according to the Post itself, was about 100 "at various times," meaning the figure was usually much lower, and only 14, now transferred to Guantanamo, had remained. Bush referred to a "small number" in the CIA program. So how big of a "global internment network" was this anyway? A European politician investigating the matter told a Washington news conference earlier this year that he had heard reports that some of the terrorists may have been held in hotels or private homes.  

The basic disclosures from Bush were not a surprise. As I noted in an April column, the issue wasn't whether CIA flights with suspected terrorists had landed in some foreign countries and that terrorists were detained on foreign soil. The issue is whether these constituted some "network" of "secret prisons" that rivaled those of the Soviet era. Priest exaggerated the program into something it was not in order to kill it.

One current factor in the distorted coverage is the desire to make Bush look bad by suggesting he has finally come clean about a controversial counter-terrorist program. Another factor, I suspect, is to salvage the reputation of Dana Priest herself, whose coverage had come under searing attack. Priest became an embattled reporter whose left-wing credentials, marriage to a prominent anti-Bush activist, and alleged use of a pro-John Kerry fired CIA officer named Mary McCarthy had become matters of public interest. It is still not clear what role that rogue elements in the CIA played in her "scoop." Did they feed Priest disinformation? Or did she get the story wrong on her own?  

If Priest had simply reported that the CIA was holding a few terrorists and moving them around the globe, the reaction would have been ho hum. She would have been lucky to have gotten the story on page 15. But when the issue became "secret prisons" like the Soviet gulags, that got page-one treatment and helped to create an international controversy. Priest, in short, had created a stink. And that's apparently what Pulitzers are for. But it's the story that stinks.  

Another stinker was the first story I noticed erroneously reporting that Bush had "acknowledged Wednesday the existence of previous secret CIA prisons." It was written by Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler and I called to ask about her claim. "My story speaks for itself," she said. "I don't want to do any interviews on what went into writing the story." This exchange then ensued:

Kincaid: I'm asking you where the term prisons came from because it's not in the speech. The term secret prisons just isn't there.

Pickler: I don't want to discuss this any further but if you want to talk to some of our spokespeople you can but this isn't something I do-conduct interviews about what's in my stories.

Kincaid: Can you just tell me where the term secret prisons came from in his speech? That's all.

Pickler: I don't want to discuss how my stories were written. No.

Kincaid: Well, your story is wrong. I think you ought to have the integrity to admit it. He did not use the term secret prisons. Why don't you just report the facts? That's all I'm asking you."

Pickler: (Silence. Hangs up the phone).  

The truth will, of course, never catch up with the original erroneous reports, and my suspicion as the story developed over Wednesday night was that even some anonymous administration officials would begin to be cited as confirming the use of "secret prisons." This is how "conventional wisdom" based on media misinformation develops, even though the facts may be something else entirely.  

In fact, on Thursday morning, Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for AP, informed me that they checked the Pickler story with somebody at the White House, who said that the report about the President confirming the "secret prisons" was "just fine." But the identity of the White House official, she said, will just have to remain secret.  

This is a strange way to report the news. The President is alleged to have acknowledged something, even though he did not do so, and the story is then checked after the fact with somebody who doesn't object. That is supposed to be confirmation of what was originally reported.  

AP should have reported the President's actual remarks and not lied about them. If the President had wanted to confirm the existence of "secret prisons," he could have done so.  

AP seems to have perfected a method of reporting that avoids the facts and the need to correct mistakes. This bad journalism shows that AP-and those who carried the story and similar reports-can't be trusted.

http://www.aim.org/aim_column/4848_0_3_0_C/



So they are lying and misquoting yet again.  

[Anna]

Mrs. Red, back to your topic of the upcoming special by ABC, seems some just can't take the heat when the spotlight is turned on them for a change.  Bubba is demanding ABC pull the series unless they change the facts to suit his version of events.

----------

BUBBA GOES BALLISTIC ON ABC ABOUT ITS DAMNING 9/11 MOVIE
By IAN BISHOP Post Correspondent

September 7, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series "The Path to 9/11" grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden - and he is demanding the network "pull the drama" if changes aren't made.

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," the four-page letter said.

The movie is set to air on Sunday and Monday nights. Monday is the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Based on the 9/11 commission's report, the miniseries is also being provided to high schools as a teaching aid - although ABC admits key scenes are dramatizations.

The letter, written by Bruce Lindsey, head of the Clinton Foundation, and Douglas Bond, a top lawyer in Clinton's office, accuses the ABC drama of "bias" and a "fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans."

Clinton, whose aides first learned from a TV trailer about a week ago that the miniseries would slam his administration, was "surprised" and "incredulous" when told about the film's slant, sources said.

Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also dashed off letters to Iger, accusing the network of lying in the miniseries and demanding changes.

ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan last night defended the miniseries as a "dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews."

"Many of the people who have expressed opinions about the film have yet to see it in its entirety or in its final broadcast form," he said. "We hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast before forming their own opinion."

Executive producer Marc Platt told The Washington Post that he worked "very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they're wrongly portrayed, that's obviously of concern. We've portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view."

The miniseries' creator and the 9/11 panel's former co-chairman, Tom Kean, who was a paid adviser on the film, said some scenes are made up and plan to include a statement at the show's beginning.

In the movie, FBI anti-terror agent John O'Neill, played by Harvey Keitel, and a composite CIA operative named Kirk grouse about bureaucratic red tape following a meeting with Berger and Albright.

"How do you win a law-and-orderly war?" Kirk asks.

"You don't," O'Neill snaps.

The movie then cuts immediately to a newsreel close-up of Clinton insisting he did "not have sex with that woman" - Monica Lewinsky.

Although the movie thrust Lewinsky into the mix as a White House distraction, the 9/11 commission's report found Clinton was "deeply concerned about bin Laden" and that he received daily reports "on bin Laden's reported location," Clinton's letter notes.

In another scene, CIA operatives working with Afghani anti-al Qaeda fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated by bin Laden days before 9/11, gather on a hill near bin Laden's residence at Tarnak Farms - the terror thug easily in their grasp.

"It's perfect for us," says Kirk, a composite character played by Donnie Wahlberg. But the team aborts the mission when an actor portraying Berger tells them he can't authorize a strike.

"I don't have that authority," the Berger character says.

"Are there any men in Washington," Massoud asks Kirk later in the film, "or are they all cowards?"

The reps for an outraged Clinton wrote to Iger that "no such episode ever occurred - nor did anything like it."

The 9/11 commission report echoes his denial, and found that Clinton's Cabinet gave "its blessing" for a CIA plan to capture bin Laden and determined that ex-CIA Director George Tenet squashed the plan.

The third contested scene focuses on Albright, who is depicted alerting Pakistani officials in advance of a 1998 U.S. missile strike against bin Laden in Afghanistan - over the objections of the Pentagon. The movie claims the tip-off allowed bin Laden to escape.

But the 9/11 commission reported that it was a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff - not Albright - who met with a senior Pakistani Army official prior to the strike to "assure him the missiles were not coming from India."


ian.bishop@nypost.com


 
http://tinyurl.com/qpyep

--------------------------------------------------------

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are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Anna]

Uh oh!  Bubba is so mad he blew the margins!!  

Actually guess I did with that long url but thought it would wrap.  Sorry, will get tinyurl and ask Klaas to fix it.

[mrs. red]

Anna, I  am glad you are talking in here... I have really missed you in our political chats... did you see the article from the Tenneasean that I put in your UN thread?  Read it, it's very interesting...

back on topic....

 yep, the screamming reminds me of that famous line

"me thinks thou doth protest too much...."  Of course bubba doesn't want to admit he screwed up.... that will put a damper on his return to the White House as first "husband"....

[LouiseVargas]

I'd love to respond but I can't read and internalize the text when the margins are blown so widely.

[Anna]

I'd love to respond but I can't read and internalize the text when the margins are blown so widely.

Our wonderful Klaas fixed them pronto.  I sent her the tiny url and she was able to have them back to normal in no time.  What would we do without her!

[Red]

New Front Page Post:

Bill Clinton and Democrats Attack & Threaten ABC 9/11 TV drama, “The Path to 9/11

http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/2006/09/08/bill-clinton-and-democrats-attack-threaten-abc-911-tv-drama/

WATCH THE 2004 MSNBC VIDEO OF 1998 CIA SURVEILLANCE TAPES ...

EVERYONE DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT THE BUB BA ADMIN DID OR DID NOT DO.

[Cat]

I guess that I blamed Bubba along time ago,like when the WTC were bombed in 1993.You are all a bunch of sm.,but what the heck,that is a good thing.I have what Red is drinking,with Almond flavor if the tide loses tommorow.The movies are too incorrectly political,and people use them as their source.That why people beleive the witches were burned in Salem.They were not.Hey Bubba,alot of this happened on your watch,not all but alot/Al,have you been to the Ocoee valley where your family polluted the land so badly,nothing grows,after 60 years.And Klass,any cleanup of spelling and grammer is nice,I thank you.I will not watch it for 2 reasons,something else to do and I had an uncle,who  worked in the WTC.He died of a heart attack before,but his office was wiped out.Oh enough of a ramble,Good night and merry Christmas...CAT

[LouiseVargas]

ABC is making several "changes" to the movie. This is because Clinton and Albright put a lot of pressure on them. He and Madeleine Albright were not portrayed appropriately or else they were in a bad light. Also, since it is in two parts scheduled to air Sunday and Monday, ABC is working on changing the schedule of Part 2 since Bush is making a prime time speech on Monday.

Clinton wields a lot of power if he has been able to persuade ABC to edit the movie. I don't know why, but I'm thinking of the movie "The Godfather." Clinton could never aspire to that but there must be a powerful cabal somewhere. And then up pops Bush to make a speech on Monday prime time so ABC has to further reschedule Part 2.

Who controls the media, Monkeys? It's not the head honchos at ABC. Maybe it's not even the FCC. It's not even the government. It's a secret cabal.

Oh what I'd give to go back in time (I'd settle for 30 years - less than 1/2 my life) and watch Walter Cronkite. Three was no nonsense then. He reported the news. He would mention if a movie star died, but he would never report fluff.

[Cat]

Mrs Red,I red the Roe v Wade case at the same place you did.It is not good law,but it is convient law.I also read many other cases that made no sense.My question Monkeys,Why didn't Bubba appoint people to all the Judges posts?I thought that was part of his job.Hillary won't run yet.From a milatary view of many warrior priests in my family,Bush 1 made the correct choice by stopping outside of Bagdad.CAT

[mrs. red]

I want to know why "an inconvient truth" is taken as an absolute right and the ABC movie has to be edited.... bubba has way too many hollywood friends... and it seems like the journalist (so called) want to push their agenda regardless of what it is or who it hurts.....

ie. that Israel started the war ....
and it's ok for ppl to run amok stating that Bush and his administration did the 911 attacks on us.. but it's not ok to make a movie that promotes more of the truth....

that's so sad.... it's why we all read blogs now... thankfully there is a place where we can see all sides and make our own conclusions...

[LouiseVargas]

I heard a little blip on FOX that President Clinton's lawyers got in touch with ABC.

[Cat]

Nice ad for aruba on the blog.I guess this freedom of speech.Hey Bubba,do you think that bombs in the WTC,Waco?,OK city,our embassies,  and the Olypics,I could go on for awhile,The Cole,might be a wakeup call.Even you are being impeached,you have a duty.Where were you on your watch.The black helicoptors are circling again,time to swing off.CAT

[mrs. red]

Nice ad for aruba on the blog.I guess this freedom of speech.Hey Bubba,do you think that bombs in the WTC,Waco?,OK city,our embassies,  and the Olypics,I could go on for awhile,The Cole,might be a wakeup call.Even you are being impeached,you have a duty.Where were you on your watch.The black helicoptors are circling again,time to swing off.CAT

I hope that everyone watches this... they just showed what real torture is... don't ever say anything to me about Abu grav again..... I hope ppl get a damn clue....


Oh, I mean the ABC movie... they are talking about the 1993 bombing... and how badly it was so messed up!!

[Carnut]

Well, I'm glad it's being shown, just hoping it's not sanitized too much.

[mrs. red]

Well, I'm glad it's being shown, just hoping it's not sanitized too much.

Believe it or not, it's not that sanitized... they are now showing Clinton talking about not having sex with Monica.... and how we were poised to go in and take UBL using the Mudajadeen...

[Cat]

i saw,i watched,i retched.i didn't bring up abu grav.cat

[Red]

Why are the Democrats & Clinton So afraid that you will watch “The Path to 9/11″?

http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/2006/09/10/why-are-the-democrats-clinton-so-afraid-that-you-will-watch-the-path-to-911/

What movie in recent time was forced to have this attached?



The Democrats had this backfire in a couple of ways:
1. The talk/whining over the movie probably made people watch it.
2. To come across as over-bearing and bullying to force someone to not show a work of art hardly wins hearts and minds.
3. Are Dem the party of censorship?
4. All this complaining and for the most part even with edits by ABC this was pretty much on target and hardly showed Clinton in a good light.