Path to 9/11 - ABC's Propaganda Machine in Mouse Ears

Or ... How To Make a Mickey Mouse Administration Look Competent
HINT: Hire Actors

Disney/ABC is planning to air "Path to 9/11' this week, a mini-series that is wrought with inaccuracies (can I say lies?) and inuendo - and which manages to shift the blame for 9/11 onto the tail-chasing shoulders of the Clinton Administration. The blogosphere is alive with criticism of this propagandistic attempt to rewrite history.

People need to see through the official justification "hey, it's a dramatization." People need to smell the rat of propaganda. If you haven't contacted ABC and Disney, I urge you to drop them a line and voice your displeasure. Here's a link to the Democratic Party page. One hundred and twenty thousand petitions have been sent so far! That's 120,000!

And to get you going, I thought this letter to ABC's Robert Iger was most impressive:

Dear Robert Iger:

We write as professional historians, who are deeply concerned by the continuing reports about ABC's scheduled broadcast of "The Path to 9/11." These reports document that this drama contains numerous flagrant falsehoods about critical events in recent American history. The key participants and eyewitnesses to these events state that the script distorts and even fabricates evidence in order to mislead viewers about the responsibility of numerous American officials for allegedly ignoring the terrorist threat before 2000.

The claim by the show's producers, broadcaster, and defenders, that these falsehoods are permissible because the show is merely a dramatization, is disingenuous and dangerous given their assertions that the show is also based on authoritative historical evidence. Whatever ABC's motivations might be, broadcasting these falsehoods, connected to the most traumatic historical event of our times, would be a gross disservice to the public. A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it. We strongly urge you to halt the show's broadcast and prevent misinforming Americans about their history.

Sincerely,
Arthur Schlesinger
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University,
Nicholas Salvatore, Cornell University;
Ted Widmer, Washington College;
Rick Perlstein, Independent Scholar;
David Blight, Yale University;
Eric Alterman, City University of New York.