It should not surprise us that once again Bill Clinton has disgraced the office he so callously and corruptly filled for 8 years. Nor should it surprise us that he would stoop to use his influence in order to attempt to alter a TV show that portrays him in anything less than the warm, soft light of angelic perfection. After all, anyone who could embarrass himself the way Clinton did has the evolved sensibilities of my pet cat Aramas. And at least Aramas has a slight idea of when to keep his wick dry and his pants zipped.

Clinton’s brazen and inappropriate interference in the debate over the showing of Path to 9/11 has no precedence of which I am aware. Presidents are supposed to be above this sort of thing. But apparently, Clinton has never met a challenge where the bar was placed too low for him to descend either morally or in the common decencies of public behavior and national tradition. Sanctity of the office meant nothing to him while he served. Why should we expect anything different now that he’s a private citizen?

One can understand Clinton’s trepidation at any rehash of the history of those times. With Hillary weighing a run for the White House, any rewrite of the carefully manufactured Narrative that Democrats have carefully, lovingly constructed block by lying block over these last 6 years that absolves Clinton of any responsibility for the fact that America was sleepwalking toward disaster during his entire term of office could hurt her chances for a return engagement at the Executive Mansion.

The bullying ex-President sent an angry letter to Disney chief Bob Iger demanding that he whitewash history by changing the show or pull the $40 million project completely:

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.

Albright said she never warned Pakistan. The Sept. 11 commission found that a senior U.S. military official warned Pakistan that missiles crossing its airspace would not be from its archenemy, India.

Giving such a warning was the responsible thing to do under the circumstances as anyone with half a brain knows. Pakistan is a nuclear power and would take a dim view of missiles of unknown origin flying over its territory. It is Tenet who comes off looking like a mindless drone in this scene if what Kurtz has is accurate.

As for Clinton’s claims that he was not distracted by the Lewinsky mess, the 9/11 Commission once again had a different take on the matter:

The Sept. 11 commission found no evidence that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal played a role in the August 1998 missile strike, but added that the “intense partisanship of the period” was one factor that “likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against bin Laden.”

This is hair splitting of the worst sort. My understanding from reading this piece in E & P that gives a detailed synopsis of the film is that shots of Clinton talking about the Lewinsky scandal are coupled with comments from characters to the effect that Republicans believe Clinton is taking the military action in order to deflect attention from the Lewinsky imbroglio.

Duh. And the idea that Clinton would deny that this charge didn’t color his decision making is an out and out lie, something we know Clinton does very well and does so routinely.

The Clintonistas have a point about the historical inaccuracy of the scene that shows CIA/Norther Alliance forces outside a house where Bin Laden is hiding failing to get a go ahead from Sandy Berger. But as it has been pointed out by former 9/11 Commission co-Chair Thomas Kean, this scene is a composite of several incidents where we had intimations of Osama’s whereabouts but failed to follow up.

From my own perspective, I would like to see that scene deleted to be replaced by four new scenes showing in excruciatingly accurate detail the 4 missed opportunities we had to kill Bin Laden. I’m sure our friends on the left would want to see history portrayed accurately in this regard.

Buzz Patterson, conservative writer and talk show host, paints a scene in his book Dereliction of Duty from one of those missed opportunities. And our lefty friends will be happy to know that in the interest of historical accuracy, I will reproduce it below:

It was fall 1998 and the National Security Council (NSC) and the “intelligence community” were tracking the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the shadowy mastermind of terrorist attacks on American targets overseas. “They’ve successfully triangulated his location,” yelled a “Sit Room” watch stander. “We’ve got him.”

Beneath the West Wing of the White House, behind a vaulted steel door, the Sit Room staff sprang into action. The watch officer notified National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, “Sir, we’ve located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike.”

[snip]

Berger ambled down the stairwell and entered the Sit Room. He picked up the phone at one of the busy controller consoles and called the president. Amazingly, President Clinton was not available. Berger tried again and again. Bin Laden was within striking distance. The window of opportunity was closing fast. The plan of attack was set and the Tomahawk crews were ready. For about an hour Berger couldn’t get the commander in chief on the line. Though the president was always accompanied by military aides and the Secret Service, he was somehow unavailable.

Berger stalked the Sit Room, anxious and impatient. Finally, the president accepted Berger’s call. There was discussion, there were pauses—and no decision. The president wanted to talk with his secretaries of defense and state. He wanted to study the issue further. Berger was forced to wait. The clock was ticking. The president eventually called back. He was still indecisive. He wanted more discussion. Berger alternated between phone calls and watching the clock.

The NSC watch officer was convinced we had the right target. The intelligence sources were conclusive. The president, however, wanted a guaranteed hit or nothing at all. This time, it was nothing at all. We didn’t pull the trigger. We “studied” the issue until it was too late—the window of opportunity closed. Al-Qaeda’s spiritual and organizational leader slipped through the noose.

Since Buzz Patterson has more integrity in his little finger than all the moral midgets and lying weasels who worked in the Clinton White House put together, who you gonna believe? Sandy Berger, whose clumsy attempts to alter history by stealing documents from the National Archives landed him the docket or a decorated combat pilot who was so trusted by the United States that he was granted the honor of carrying the nuclear “football” – the satchel containing our nuclear launch procedures and codes.

(As an aside, read about the jaw dropping incident in Patterson’s book where Clinton actually loses his codebook containing the instructions for launching a nuclear strike. Our Brave Sir President however, had no trouble taking Osama and his threats seriously, right?)

But it is Clinton’s blatant use of his status as an ex chief executive for his own self aggrandizement that is so shockingly out of kilter. It is one thing to have his high level ex-officials lobby appropriately on his behalf. It is quite another to throw his own weight around personally in an effort to bully ABC into taking out portions of the film that he finds objectionable. The unspoken threat of retaliation given his wife’s status as both a Senator and probably Presidential candidate drips from every word in that 4 page letter he sent to Iger. And the Disney chief ignores such warnings at his and his network’s peril.

Apparently, Iger and ABC are walking a tightrope by agreeing to alter the most egregious historically inaccurate scene involving the Berger refusal to give the go ahead to CIA people on the ground in Afghanistan while trying to maintain the integrity of the story:

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton’s national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

“That sequence has been the focus of attention,” the source said, adding: “These are very slight alterations.”

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based “in part” on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply “based on” the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film’s version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries “is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.”

These disclaimers should have been placed in the credits from the beginning. There has never been a docudrama in the history of television that did not take liberties with history by telescoping events or creating composite characters and scenes. And while ABC wants to underscore the care they took in trying to represent events accurately, they should have realized any deviation from history would have placed them in hot water with either liberals or conservatives.

In the end, Clinton will probably not get his way. Nor will the wailing and gnashing of teeth by liberals about the cracks that will now appear in their carefully constructed Narrative that holds blameless their Saint Bill while making Bush and not Osama Bin Laden the villain of that tragic day matter much in the end. The start of Monday Night Football will guarantee a limited audience for the film, something that the netnuts will gloat about for days following the airing of The Path to 9/11. So after all the left’s bloviating and after Bill Clinton’s shocking interference, we will be back to the reality of what 9/11 meant.

As long as the left sees 9/11 in isolation and not as part of the larger threat we face, these same arguments will echo across time and space awaiting the day that liberals engage the enemy as the enemy engages us; hand to throat and to the death. Until that day, we will be a divided nation, a weak nation, ripe for defeat.

Could The Path to 9/11 have altered their view? Not as long as they see the current political battles as more important than future battles to be fought in the War on Terror. For that change to occur, they will probably need another wake up call to convince them there are some things beyond politics, beyond the grasping for power that matter.

Maybe by the 5th anniversary of that attack, they will finally and forever get it.