The Clintonistas, including Bill himself, can dish it out, but they certainly can’t take it. Howls of outrage are continuing, and increasing hourly, from an ever-growing assortment of Clinton Administration officials, including the former friend of Monica’s himself.

The Washington Post reports virulent attacks on the ABC program from half the Clinton Administration.

Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV “docudrama,” slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.

Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her “false and defamatory.” Former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said the film “flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions.” And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: “It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known.”..

The fierceness of the debate reflects a recognition that a $40 million miniseries — whose cast includes Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Penny Johnson Jerald — can damage Clinton’s legacy in the anti-terrorism fight on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Among the scenes that the Clinton team said are fictional:

Berger is seen as refusing authorization for a proposed raid to capture bin Laden in spring 1998 to CIA operatives in Afghanistan who have the terrorist leader in their sights. A CIA operative sends a message: “We’re ready to load the package. Repeat, do we have clearance to load the package?” Berger responds: “I don’t have that authority.”

Berger said that neither he nor Clinton ever rejected a CIA or military request to conduct an operation against bin Laden. The Sept. 11 commission said no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan’s rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work.

Tenet is depicted as challenging Albright for having alerted Pakistan in advance of the August 1998 missile strike that unsuccessfully targeted bin Laden.
“Madame Secretary,” Tenet is seen saying, “the Pakistani security service, the ISI, has close ties with the Taliban.” Albright is seen shouting: “We had to inform the Pakistanis. There are regional factors involved.” Tenet then complains that “we’ve enhanced bin Laden’s stature.”

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.

“The Path to 9/11” uses news footage to suggest that Clinton was distracted by the Republican drive to impeach him. Veteran White House counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, who also disputes the film’s accuracy, is portrayed as telling FBI agent John P. O’Neill: “Republicans went all out for impeachment. I just don’t see the president in this climate willing to take chances.”

O’Neill responds: “So it’s okay if somebody kills bin Laden, so long as he didn’t give the order. . . . It’s pathetic.” 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.”

The New York Post even quotes the great man himself demanding that the network change the program:

BUBBA GOES BALLISTIC ON ABC ABOUT ITS DAMNING 9/11 MOVIE INSISTS NET PULL DRAMA

September 7, 2006 — WASHINGTON – 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…

The movie is set to air on Sunday and Monday nights. Monday is the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Of course, if the Clinton Administration didn’t do any of these things, why is it that Sandy Berger was arrested, and convicted, for removing and destroying top secret documents from the National Archives?

UPDATE

Senate Democrats threaten Disney with litigation and legislative reprisal.

And the Network censors the program under pressure.

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.”

Cable networks have broadcast more than one Michael Moore film (which really travestied the truth) without the Congressional Republican leadership twisting any arms, as I recall.

A second Qassam missile launched by Hamas militia from Gaza struck the Israeli city of Ashkelon Wednesday night, one day after the first rocket to hit a city in Israel landed on a high school. Another missile exploded harmlessly south of the city. Depkafile reports:

Eight people in shock, four of them children. The missile exploded on residential Efraim Tsur Street.

Jerusalem Post

WorldNetDaily

The really intriguing question of whether the Palestinians will make good their threat of using WMDs remains to be seen.

One Qassam rocket fired Tuesday evening by Hamas militia units struck a high school in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, 6 miles (10 km) over the border from the Gaza strip. No one was injured, and the rocket apparently did not carry a chemical warhead. This rocket strike represented the deepest penetration into Israel by a Qassam rocket so far, and was described as “a major escalation” by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Another Israel report says that an additional three Qasam rockets were fired Tuesday morning from Northern Gaza into Israel, all three landed in the Negev region and caused no injuries and no damages. One rocket landed near kibbutz Yad Mordechai and two other in open fields near kibbutz Nahal Oz.

The use of the Qassam rockets against Israel by Hamas militia units, though so far producing little in the way of results, is of international interest because al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades boasted in leaflets distributed in Gaza on June 25th of possessing both chemical and biological weapons capabilities.

Depkafile reports that, yes, Virginia, at least three Palestinian missiles were fired (presumably by al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) into Israel from Gaza.

So, tell us aready, did any of the three feature the chemical warhead, Palestinian sources said they had launched yesterday?

An unexploded Palestinian missile armed with two engines to extend its range was found in Ashkelon cemetery Friday.

It was the first to land inside the town and one of three missiles fired at Ashkelon from northern Gaza Thursday night. Two exploded in the Ashkelon industrial zone, another near the big power station. Israel’s air force went into action and for the second time in a week blasted Gaza’s transformer station, outing electricity in many parts of the Gaza Strip. Two more Qassam missiles blew up Friday outside Kibbutz Gevim and Sderot.

In leaflets distributed in Gaza on Sunday, reported in the Jerusalem Post, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were claiming to have “developed” 20 different types of chemical and biological weapons.

It is hardly likely that the simple and uneducated street fellahin making up the membership of Palestinian “Martyrs Brigades” have any such scientific capabilities, but the close ties between Hamas and Syria are only too well known.

Right now, the leadership of Hamas is hiding in Syria, while directing kidnappings, murders, and rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza.

There is a good deal of reason to believe that a very large portion of Saddam Husssein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were hastily evacuated to Syria at the time of the US Invasion in 2003. It is consequently not very difficult to connect the dots, if WMDs of any form really are established to have appeared in Palestinian hands in Gaza.

Reuters reported yesterday:

A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket.

“The al-Aqsa Brigades have fired one rocket with a chemical warhead” at southern Israel, Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the group, said in Gaza.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army had not detected that any such rocket was fired, nor was there any report of such a weapon hitting Israel.

In Gaza. In the hands of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia arm of Yasir Arafat’s al-Fatah.

The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday (but the New York Times and the rest of the US MSM are pretending they have not read it):

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced on Sunday that its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons.

In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party, said the weapons were the result of a three-year effort.

According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons.

The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip.

I’ve clarified the headline, since readers could not actually see my sardonic smile, and may have often read it as a completely literal statement.

Israel invaded Gaza today (attempting to recover the kidnapped Israeli soldier), so we may soon find out whether that Palestinian militia was really telling the truth about having WMDS.