by TChris

In the days following 9/11, much of the rest of the world viewed the United States with sympathy and support. Five years later, thanks to the Bush administration, world opinion of the U.S. has flip-flopped.

Critics say Americans have squandered the goodwill that prompted France's Le Monde newspaper to proclaim ''We are all Americans'' that somber day after the attacks, and that the Iraq war and other U.S. policies have made the world less safe in the five years since. ...

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- an advocate of closer ties with Washington -- had veiled criticism of the United States, saying: ''The ends cannot justify the means.''

''In the fight against international terror ... respect for human rights, tolerance and respect for other cultures must be the maxim of our actions, along with decisiveness and international cooperation,'' she said.

She'll get no argument here.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Five years ago today, Al Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, perpetrated the most heinous attack against the United States on our territory since Pearl Harbor. As the CIA warned President Bush and his administration in its August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States using hijacked airplanes. As President Bush noted at the time, the CIA had "covered [its] ass." In December 2001, President Bush chose to let bin Laden, the person behind the murder of nearly 3,000 souls, go:

Well past midnight one morning in early December 2001, according to American intelligence officials, Osama bin Laden sat with a group of top aides - including members of his elite international 055 Brigade - in the mountainous redoubt of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Outside, it was blustery and bitterly cold; many of the passes of the White Mountains, of which Tora Bora forms a part, were already blocked by snow. . . .

. . . Now, as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign.

Meet Majid Khan, one of the 14 alleged terrorists held by the CIA in overseas secret prisons and recently transferred to Guantanamo.

Majid and his family came to the Baltimore area in 1996. He went to high school in Owings Mills, Md. where he was considered a serious student. From his English teacher:

This week's allegations stunned Sanford, who said the young man she taught in her English-as-a-second-language class could not, as alleged, have plotted to blow up gas stations or poison drinking water in U.S. reservoirs. "It doesn't make any sense to me," said Sanford, who taught many of the school's foreign students. "I can't imagine it.

Steve Gilliard of the News Blog writes at Firedoglake about his recollection of being in New York on 9/11. And the media aftermath:

The people rebroadcasting their 9/11 broadcasts are no better than vermin. Matt Lauer should be placed on a glue trap in the sun.

This doesn't belong to America. It isn't some grand national cause. It is a tragedy some get to live with forever. You can remember the dead, but because you became scared of brown people or of someone blowing up your mall or of airplanes, you can share in it. You cannot and if you were smart, you wouldn't want to. No one should want to carry the burdens of another because they feel they should.

As to our government officials, particularly Bush and Giuliani:

Following it's fictionalized version of The Path to 9/11, ABC's Nightline has a ten minute special on the Hunt for bin Laden, says it has new evidence on the hunt.

It reports that two months before the Africa Embassy bombings, there was a plan to arrest bin Laden, anesthetize him and take him to the U.S. George Tenet, according to ABC, pulled the plug on the operation. Richard Clarke says the plan wouldn't work.

I watched a half hour. I found it bathetic. The acting is miserable. It's disjointed and hard to follow. It's a GOP commercial for more wiretapping, racial profiling and xenophobia.

I'm changing the channel now. Did anyone else watch it?

Update: I tuned back in for the last half hour. They replayed the disclaimer that this is not a documentary and that it is based on several published reports in addition to the 9/11 Commission report, and some scenes are fictionalized. They also shamelessly played President Clinton's statement that he did not have sexual relations with "that woman" and showed a picture of Monica Lewinsky. Then they played scenes with Sandy Berger, basically alleging he made a decision not to kill bin Laden when he could have, which in turn resulted in the Embassy bombings.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Powerline's John Hinderaker says:

Just A Thought

First the Senate Democrats browbeat a television network into changing a program so it won't reflect badly on a Democratic administration. Then a Senate committee puts out a report that airbrushes history, leaving out the most important evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda, for the sole purpose of making a Republican administration look bad. I think it's really important to work hard to get a Republican majority in the Senate, so the Dems won't be able to pull stunts like these!

Geez, did ABC not run "Path to Truthiness" when I wasn't looking? And Bill Frist and Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, are Democrats now? No kidding. What, if anything, is Hinderaker up to? Some possibilities in extended.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Just remarkable:

I think what they're trying to do is to take the fact the specific scenes portrayed were fictional and to try to refute the underlying reality that the Clinton administration just didn't get it. And by the way, before 9/11 neither did the Bush administration," - 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman.

Believe it or not, Bill Bennett gets it right on the principle, if not the conclusion:

Look, "The Path to 9/11″ is strewn with a lot of problems and I think there were problems in the Clinton administration. But that's no reason to falsify the record, falsify conversations by either the president or his leading people and you know it just shouldn't happen.

The point is simple - if you believe Clinton was faulty in his approach to terrorism and Al Qaida, then cite the FACTS to argue your case. Frankly, I think the problem is the FACTS say otherwise. That is precisely why fiction (or more bluntly, lies) must be used to smear the Clinton Administration's work on terrorism.

Have any of you returned home from a trip to find this in your checked luggage? I did today when I went to unpack my suitcase after my trip to Omaha. My problem with it is that I don't believe it's random. Security searched my bag on my out-bound trip (details here) -- what are the chances that 24 hours later, a surreptitious search of the same bag, this time checked, is random? There must have been some kind of coding that flagged it after the outbound flight.

This is particularly odious for traveling lawyers, most of whom are probably like me. On the outbound flight, our client files are in our carry-on luggage. We either want to review them during the flight or know we will need them immediately upon our arrival and can't take a chance on them being delayed or lost by the airline. On the return, however, rather than lug them, we check them.

But those files contain notes we made while meeting with our clients or expert witnesses, print-outs of case-related emails or memos with defense strategy. They are protected by the attorney-client and work-product privileges. In a high-profile case, what's to prevent the TSA officer from scanning them and sending them on to the Justice Department?

Suffice it to say from hereon out I will probably use fedex to return the files rather than check them in my luggage. But for those occasions where there isn't time, I'm going to create a lawyer's version of the TalkLeft 4th Amendment Subway Tote which I will pack on top of the contents of my suitcase. It will contain a warning to TSA that should any of the material in my suitcase wind up in the hands of the Government, they will be responsible for my motion to suppress and the likelihood that someone the Government regards as a serious criminal is likely to walk free. The final line on the tote will be: "Go ahead, make my day."

While ABC airs a phony documentary labelled a dramatization, Al-Jazeera airs real, previously unreleased footage -- 90 minutes worth-- of Osama bin Laden meeting with the 9/11 hijackers in the days before the attacks.

The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafs Al-Masri, Al-Qaeda's then military leader, and Ramzi bin Al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9-11 attacks, meeting in Al-Qaeda's training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

The tape also says that a previous unknown Arab Islamist, Abu Al-Turab Al-Urduni, supervised the training for the attacks. The video said that the preparation for the attacks included not only flight training but also lessons in street-fighting and how to forge official documents.

The video shows Osama meeting with Ramzi Binalshibh, as well as footage of two of the hijackers, Hamza el-Ramdi and Wael el-Shemari.

The men said that their actions were inspired by an urge to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.

I haven't found the video online, if you have, let us know where.

Law Professor and blogger Michael Froomkin at Discourse. Net writes:

it seems to me that one aspect of ABC/Disney's position has been missed: if the public descriptions of the show are accurate, then the people who made it and those who plan to show it have some serious libel exposure.

Generally in the United States you can't libel a public figure. Plus, libel claims based on fiction are obviously much harder than claims based on assertions in supposed non-fiction. But neither of these bars is insurmountable. And on the facts as reported, they could be surmounted surprisingly easily.

If this isn't enough to make you sick then you're too ill for a cure.

The first -- the attention grab, involving the rough shaking of a prisoner.

Second -- the attention slap, an open-handed slap to the face.

Third -- belly slap, meant to cause temporary pain, but no internal injuries.

Fourth -- long-term standing and sleep deprivation, 40 hours at least, described as the most effective technique.

Fifth -- the cold room. Prisoners left naked in cells kept in the 50s and frequently doused with cold water.

The CIA sources say the sixth, and harshest, technique was called "water boarding," in which a prisoner's face was covered with cellophane, and water is poured over it (pictured above) -- meant to trigger an unbearable gag reflex.

It's been widely reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh were subjected to these techniques. Bush now wants to send them to Guantanamo for military trials. Under Bush's proposed rules, they could be excluded from being present at their own trials.

My interpretation and shorter version: Mohammed and Binalshibh are now vegetables but we'll never know because they will be tried without anyone ever seeing them.

Post-script: Why doesn't the mainstream media, in current reporting on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, write about what the U.S. did to his young sons?