I thought that the second part was much better than the first. The pace was much better - not as much extraneous information. And the last 20 minutes showing the attacks was absolutely riveting.
A few quibbles.
The order to shoot down the planes was never established conclusively as coming from the President. Incredibly, Air Force I was having problems communicating with the Sit Room. Cheney swears that Bush told him but the Commission can’t confirm it.
Overall, I think that they portrayed the Bush Administration as more concerned about terrorism than they actually were. At least that’s the impression I got. That said, I was happy to see the decisive meeting of September 4 in the movie. It was at this meeting that I think the Administration decided to take on al Qaeda and the Taliban. The latter is very important for obvious reasons. Whether the Administration would have followed through with anything is a matter of conjecture but I think both the August 6 PDB and the heightened alerts from around the world probably convinced Bush’s people that they had to deal with the threat.
Too little too late? Considering they were in office only 8 months is a mitigating factor but there should be no excuse for the delay. Protecting the country is not something that that you should “grow into.” That job should be up to snuff from day one.
“The wall” was portrayed accurately. I just wish they would have highlighted who it was that made it even stronger.
I thought despite what some on the left were saying, the arguments made by the Clinton people about why they couldn’t go after al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Bin Laden came across as sound (from their point of view). Certainly Albright had a point when in the movie she talked about any action taken against al Qaeda affecting the Arab-Israeli peace process. And she was right when she said that the peace negotiations were more important than going after “people in caves.” Please remember that precious few people in government thought al Qaeda capable of much more than truck bombs and suicide missions against small targets.
This, of course, was the failure of imagination that the 9/11 Commission talked about. And I find it curious that the hysterical critics of this film were opposed to showing even things that the Clinton people admitted to.
As for the attacks, they were staged well. But if you want to see a much better representation of what the FAA and the military were doing while the attacks were under way, your best bet would be to see United 93. It’s an eye opener.
In my view, Tenet got something of a pass in the film. There is little doubt that he is one of the most spectacularly incompetent DCI’s we’ve ever had with the possible exception of Stansfield Turner who served under Carter and was almost universally hated by agency analysts and operatives. Tenet may have been a good bureaucratic operator but in our hour of need he failed the United States twice - on 9/11 and Iraq WMD’s.
Condi Rice also was treated better than she deserved. Her “re-organization” of the NSC was, as the 9/11 Commission showed, an unnecessary exercise and served only to marginalize a few Clinton holdovers like Clark.
Clark himself comes off the hero which I’m sure pleases him to no end. But he was one of the only Executive Branch employees who realized what al Qaeda was and what we were up against.
I would give this film 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. Less for accuracy. More for the production values. It was entertaining and not preachy while hitting the nail on the head more than once. Universally good acting, good directing, less than stellar writing, but the editing, music, and FX were all first class.
This film is good enough to buy for your DVD library and I plan on doing so.
11:00 pm
We should never forget this …
http://www.slate.com/id/2098861/
Bush Slept And 3,000 Died
5:28 am
An illustrated history of pre-9/11 terror attacks
The Democrats’ talking points these day are that “Al Qaeda” is the enemy — as if a laminated Al Qaeda card is necessary to be viewed as a terrorist. The fallacy of that assertion is illustrated by this list. Extremism takes many forms and has many …
8:36 am
And after all that, “Road To 9/11″ is a ratings bomb.
http://www.ibcnews.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=64184
11:00 am
As usual, you lefties fail to hold the terrorists acountable for anything. The Clinton bashing on this issue on the right side of the ’sphere is bad enough, but the bile spewed forth by the moonbats is absolutely disgusting.
Rick makes a good point about how most of America thought of al Qaeda prior to 9/11…as being capable of little more than truck bombs and the few killings of Americans in far-off lands…
I don’t blame Bush for 9/11. I don’t blame Bill Clinton either.
I blame the Ismalmofascist bastards who actually did this.
12:03 pm
I don’t think the real issue here is “liberals,” Hurley. The issue is the wretched leadership provided by the Bush administration. After the spending of nearly half a trillion dollars, the involvement of hundreds of thousands of our military people (with 2,700 dead and 20,000 wounded), two disastrous land wars and the 5 years since the 9-11 attacks, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are still at large and still killing Americans. And neither war shows any sign of coming to a successful conclusion.
Sometimes failure really is failure. We need new and effective leadership, not rehashed Karl Rove smear campaigns designed to prop up incompetents who have had their chance and failed miserably.
12:07 pm
In order to “get” al Qaeda, we’d need regime change in about a half dozen countries.
Glad to have you aboard the neo con war wagon.
1:09 pm
Sounds positively Apocalyptic, Rick.
5:09 pm
The production values were good–for TV. But it suffered from all the things made for TV movies suffer from: incessesant jabber of plot information we already know, tight frames and a good dose of melodrama and spotty acting.
United 93 was better; the source material is of course dramatic in itself, but Paul Greengrass showed what a great filmmaker he is. At this point of the movie year, the Best Director honors go to him.
By the way, rent Greengrass’ ‘Bloody Sunday’ sometime. It’s a great documentary.
On a side note, he was set to film Alan Moore’s Watchmen but backed out when United 93 got the greenlight.
6:24 pm
Part 2 was better I thought and I was amazed it wasn’t solid Bush bashing, will wonders never cease.
Mr, Kaplan, I didn’t catch that piece you mentioned, my birdage needed more paper and my Parakeet took a crap on that article as did much of the sane Americans, non moonbats, did as well.
It should have been titled ” While Bubba diddled Monica more stuff gets blown up in the World by way of grand jury distraction or better yet “Errors made in the attempt to get BinLaden”, but we will learn from our errors, but hey, that’d be too fair I guss.
7:52 pm
Shorter Fred Kaplan - if Bush had taken a meeting in August 2001 9/11 would have been prevented. Who’s Bill Clinton?
9:34 pm
Drewsman: Actually the article you put on the bottom of your budgie’s cage was only available on the internet. Neat trick on your part. Obviously the bird droppings on your computer screen have made reading difficult for you.
But here’s something I would be interested in knowing: Why is it you continue to support this vastly incompetent president despite his many failures? This is hardly a right versus left issue you know, it is more about the military and fiscal health of the United States.
Here’s an article that details the desire of some rather prominent conservatives to see the GOP defeated this November. Maybe you can get your budgie to read it to you. Judging by your inability to write, you obviously need the help.
Time For us To Go
Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.forum.html
5:35 pm
No mr. kaplan, no trick, , I meant that all the slate crap and the nation crap gets mentioned constantly on hardball lies, olbermann heil hitlers and all the other left leaning talk shows. I am sorry if you thought I printed if off the internet like most liberals do so they can keep a scarpbook of Bush bashing but if I had it would have been in the bottom of my birdcage.
Can’t someone from the left simply say clinton messed up, I can sure say our side made mistakes but yall had 8 longs years, we had 8 short months.
9:30 am
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