Congressional Democrats Threaten To Yank ABC's Broadcast License If They Air Unedited 9/11 Film

I posted this yesterday, but I didn't get the overtness of the threat. Spureill here bolds the threats to yank ABC's license.

Allah has a lot of updates on this. Bryan Preston notes in an update that a similar threat was made against Sinclair Broadcasting's planned airing of Stolen Honor, about John Kerry's slandering of Vietnam veterans. And yes, they caved.

Why is it the media never seems to mind a bit of intimidation and "chilling" when it comes from the left side of the aisle?

This is a precedent, as Allah notes. If an entire political party can threaten to pull a station's license when it likes, well then, that precedent applies equally to the GOP. Why should we play by the rules if they won't? Why shouldn't we use our power in such a thuggish manner, too?

The silence on this is astounding perfectly predictable. That, too, is precedent. If the media doesn't mind having such threats directed at them, well, something to keep in mind, isn't it?

The left found CBS' caving into threats of citizen boycotts over its Reagan hatchet job odious. But this is pretty shocking. The left is now so drunk with power dreams of power that it's actually celebrating this intimidation, unapologetically.

The Senate Democratic leadership just threatened Disney's broadcast license. Not the use of the word "trustee" at the beginning of the letter and "trust" at the end. This is nothing less than an implicit threat that if Disney tries to meddle in the US elections on behalf of the Republicans, they will pay a very serious price when the Democrats get back in power, or even before.

Mary Katherine Ham expected, as I did, that AmericaBlog would condemn the action based on that unapologetic, no-spin description of the letter. Wrong. AmericaBlog is jerking himself off over the power-play.

Or, if you were going to defend the letter, you'd have expected AmericaBlog to spin it as non-threatening, just "reminding ABC of its duties." Nope. He says it's a direct threat. He sees a "very serious price" to be paid after the election.

He's ecstatic about the strong, tough Democrats.

We can be strong, tough like this too, douchebag.

The scene in question is, well, not accurate. I wrote Justin Levine to clarify if the troops were depicted as part of a targeting/recon mission for a cruise missile strike on bin Ladin (which would be close enough to the truth) or actually poised to kill or capture bin Ladin himself. Levine reports it's clearly the latter -- which means yes, the scene is inaccurate.

As far as actual troops being in position to kill bin Ladin. But we had plenty of opportunities to kill him through airstrikes. The Clinton Administration was a miserable failure in passing up "8 to 10" good chances to kill bin Ladin, with its lawyers fretting more about bin Ladin's comfort than the urgent need to kill him:

When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden‘s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn‘t irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community.

It should be noted that the scene drawing the most controversy can be edited, I think, to better reflect the actual facts. They don't need to show troops in position -- they can show a man at a cruise missile targeting computer speaking with Berger instead. They don't have time to shoot this? Ah, don't be silly. There is plenty of footage from a million movies that can be used for a brief depiction of the man on the other end of the line, and dialogue can be dubbed/rerecorded to make it clear a Tomahawk cruise missile strike is contemplated, not a boots-on-the-ground covert operative raid.

That would be perfectly accurate.

But I suspect that's not what ABC will do.

The film will as a Whitewash of Clinton, with its only criticism directed at Bush.

Because that's how the left wants it, and in this country, despite their status as small political minority, the left always gets what it wants when it comes to the media.

More... A press release--

Former Presidential Aide and Carrier of “the football� Buzz Patterson’s Watched First Hand as Clinton Missed His Opportunity to Kill Bin Laden

I have seen the ABC mini-series. It is right on the money. I was there with Clinton and Berger and watched the missed opportunities occur. Anything to the contrary is political spin. – Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz� Patterson

Washington, DC - As the controversy rages over the airing of the much anticipated ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 – and Democratic Leaders desperately contend that the mini-series is inaccurate, Lt. Col Buzz Patterson knows the truth. In fact, the Former Presidential Aide and carrier of the “Football� – containing the codes to launch nuclear war – watched not only an early screening of the movie – but WITNESSED first hand the indifference of President Clinton to launch a strike against Bin Laden.

The ABC mini-series is scheduled to air uninterrupted Sunday night, September 10 and Monday night, September 11.

As Patterson reveals in his New York Times bestseller Dereliction of Duty- the first missed opportunity occurred when Clinton was engaged in watching a golf tournament and became irritated when Patterson approached him. After Patterson’s third attempt to get Clinton to return Sandy Berger’s urgent phone calls, Clinton gave Patterson a cool response he would phone Berger on his way back to the White House. The defeated Berger knew that the opportunity was gone.

In another shocking account in the situation room of the White House, Berger was told by a military watch officer “Sir, we’ve located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike.� After Clinton did not return phone calls from Berger for over an hour, Clinton then wanted more time to study the situation. Dereliction of Duty reveals “We ‘studied’ the issues until it was too late-the window of opportunity closed.�

posted by Ace at 12:04 PM

| Access Comments