John Kerry Blasts ABC’s ‘Path to 9/11?

The heat is on ABC for their phony docudrama, "The Path to 9/11" which scheduled to air in 2 days. Max Blumenthal has the skinny on the "secret right-wing network behind ABC's 9/11 deception."

In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision.

Needless to say, Blumenthal exposes the truth, that not all of Hollywood is liberal, contrary to the popular right-wing claim. But, we already know that. As Ron reported earlier, film critics, historians and others have also been on the bandwagon criticizing the docudrama.

AP News reports that a "Democratic petition with nearly 200,000 signatures urged the network to scrap the five-hour drama," however, ABC had "no response to the calls to abandon it."

Taylor Marsh caught up with John Kerry today and got a statement from him on the docudrama, that as Taylor put it, "says it all":

What I find most stunning in all of this is that now five years after the real 9/11 – as if any fiction could somehow make more searing what each and every one of us lived with our own eyes and ears – is that we need less revisionism about the past and a hell of a lot more reality about what’s going on now. Right now.

Instead of the fiction written to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost that day -- they were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden – we need the truth.

Here’s a little truth: The President pretends Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. It is not now, and never has been. His disastrous decisions have made Iraq a fuel depot for terror – fanning the flames of conflict around the world.

The terrorists are not on the run. Worldwide, terrorist acts are at an all-time high, more than tripling between 2004 and 2005. Al Qaeda has spawned a vast and decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most of them joining since 9/11. The Taliban now controls entire portions of southern Afghanistan, and just across the border Pakistan is just one coup away from becoming a radical jihadist state with nuclear weapons. The Middle East is more unstable than it has been in decades. Hezbollah flags fly from rooftops in Shiia slums of Sadr City and Iran is rebuilding Southern Lebanon. We have an Iraqi Prime Minister sustained in power by our forces, who will not speak against the Hezbollah terrorists, who will not say that Israel has a right to exist, and who will not condemn the Iranian nuclear program, who will not even as a national leader support the national army over the Shiite militia. In other words, the Iraq government that the administration cites as the front-line force in the fight against terrorism won’t even take our side when we are fighting terrorists. No American soldier should be asked to stand up for an Iraqi government that won’t stand up for the values and interests that draw them into battle every day. Oh, and the 9/11 commission recently gave our government a failing grade on implementing intelligence reforms.

I love watching movies, but with the world looking the way it is right now I think this is a good time to stick with just the facts. After Iraq, we've all had enough fiction to last a lifetime. - Senator John Kerry

As Taylor points out in her post, this whole premise behind "The Path to 9/11" is yet "another attempt to swiftboat the Democratic Party on issues of national security in an election year." It's something that John Kerry knows all too well at this point.

John Kerry will be giving a speech tomorrow on National Security at Boston's Faneuil Hall and I have no doubt, he'll be ratcheting up the volume on a few notches as he ripws into the failures of the Bush administration and the Republican leadership. On Sunday, Kerry will be on CNN's "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer.

If you missed Kerry on Hardball last night you can watch it here and the transcript is available here. And on Wednesday during the debate on the "no confidence" vote on Rumsfeld, Kerry issued a serious slap down when he said, “I think it’s immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in conflict with a strategy that is failing, and a mission that has not weakened terrorism but strengthened it.”

Enough is enough. Sign the DNC petition to Disney, if you haven't yet.