'Path to 9/11' Deleted Scenes
by Bill Shein

"AN ABC spokeswoman said yesterday that changes are being made to a number of scenes in the film." -- From a Washington Post story about the ABC/Disney docudrama, "The Path to 9/11," widely criticized for its portrayal of Bill Clinton's anti-terrorism policies.

Memo to: "Path to 9/11" film editors
From: ABC/Disney PR Dept.
Date: Sept. 8

Due to public outcry over the use of composite characters and misleading dialogue and lots of entirely made-up stuff in "The Path to 9/11," please delete the following scenes and erroneous references before Sunday's premiere:

-- On August 14, 1999, during President Bill Clinton's second term in office, Osama bin Laden did not spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

-- During a summer vacation, President Clinton was never shown a memo titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States," after which he told his CIA briefer, "All right. You've covered your [backside]," and then went outside to clear some brush.

-- In 1998, President Clinton did not order missile strikes targeting al Qaida training camps while he was in a hot tub with three female "aides."

-- Though portrayed together in an elaborate flashback scene, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were not college roommates.

-- During the period of time that a young George W. Bush went missing from his Texas Air National Guard unit in 1972, he was not in Vietnam leading a top-secret attempt on the life of Ho Chi Minh. Nor was Dick Cheney by his side. Nor was Karl Rove providing close-air support in a stolen Soviet MiG fighter jet.

-- Lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta never said, "If only my parents had taken me to Disney World when I was a child, I would never have become a cold-blooded terrorist. Because Disney World is a place where storybook fantasy comes to life for children of all ages! And for a limited time, kids under five get in free!"

-- Only hours after becoming vice president in January 2001, Dick Cheney did not parachute into Afghanistan to personally bring American-style justice to the throats of terrorist evildoers.

-- On September 11, 2001, just moments after he learned that a second jetliner had crashed into the World Trade Center, President Bush was not secretly replaced with a look-alike who continued to read "The Pet Goat" to Florida schoolchildren while the real President Bush immediately — and without an inexplicable and still unexplained seven-minute wait — took action.

-- As he watched CNN on the terrible morning of 9/11, former President Clinton did not say aloud, "Boy, I guess I should have focused more on terrorism, eh?" Moments later, Monica Lewinsky did not emerge from his bathroom, clad only in a monogrammed White House towel, and say, "What's that, Big Guy? I was in the shower."

-- A few days after 9/11, a senior Disney/ABC executive did not say, "We should make a terrible, fact-twisting, made-for-TV docudrama about this tragedy that will air just weeks before a future election in which our company's favored political party — one that has gleefully done the bidding of corporate America for some time — might lose control of Congress. Who knows, it might help them out."

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Several years ago, Bill Shein destroyed his TV with a sledgehammer. It felt good.

(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper on September 13, 2006. Join a discussion about this column in Bill's blog. And read Bill's previous column, "So Long for Now, Berkshires" ).