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.

In the anti-climactic news of the day, Richard Armitage received Patrick Fitzgerald's blessing Tuesday to disclose what we all knew -- that he was one of those who told Robert Novak and Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

Armitage was rueful nonetheless, and disclosed that he had written a letter of resignation as the State Department's No. 2 official and closest adviser to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't feel that I let down the president, the secretary of state, the Department of State, my family and friends and for that matter, the Wilsons," he said. "I consider myself someone who's valued the ability to keep state secrets," he said. "This was bad."

But, he did not tell Novak she was an "operative" or what she did there -- or even that Wilson's wife had been responsible for the CIA sending Wilson to Niger.

by TChris

Three presidential claims, three probable lies. It was just another day at the Bush White House.

In defending the Central Intelligence Agency's secret network of prisons on Wednesday, President Bush said the detention system had used lawful interrogation techniques, was fully described to select members of Congress and led directly to the capture of a string of terrorists over the past four years. A review of public documents and interviews with American officials raises questions about Mr. Bush's claims on all three fronts.

TalkLeft wrote about torture in the secret prisons here and here. As to briefing Congress:

A North Carolina appeals court has reversed the denial of a suppression motion which had yielded 130-165 months to the defendant. The text of the opinion is here.
The money quote is on page 9:

"We conclude that Officer Correa exceeded the scope of defendant's consent when he inspected defendant's genitals."

[Hat tip Scribe.]

The Path to 9/11, which tries to shift the blame for 9/11 will be viewed by tens of millions on ABC Sunday and Monday without commercial. It is pure Republican propoganda and packed with lies, aimed at influencing the upcoming November elections. As a friend e-mailed me earlier today:

"Path to 9/11" is a docudrama written by a little know arch-conservative, Cyrus Nowrasteh. The main advisor to the film was former Republican Governor Tom Kean. There were no Democratic advisers. In the run up to the showing, several media personalities and political officials have been sent copies of the film to review. This includes Rush Limbaugh and several rightwing bloggers. Requests from progressive media has been denied. Formal requests from high level Clinton administration officials have been denied.

Bill Clinton is justifiably outraged:

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. ....[Madeline]Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also dashed off letters to Iger, accusing the network of lying in the miniseries and demanding changes.

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

About the "fictionalized" scene where the Clinton Administration refused to kill or apprehend Osama bin Ladin even though The New Kids on the Block had "The Tall One" in their sights, Tom Kean has said:

The incident was a fictionalized composite. It was "representative of a series of events compacted into one," he replied to Ben-Veniste at the time. In a phone interview a few days later, he added, "It's reasonably accurate."

When I write my "dramatizations" of actual events I like to stick to plausible events that I can distort and mislead about. I know President Bush likes to too. Think about the "yellowcake" dramatization. Apparently there is uranium in Niger. Uranium is used to make nuclear weapons. Iraq is a country. Saddam was the brutal leader. See? At least we can be "faithful" to "events."

So the 9/11 Commission has a million page report that takes too long to read and who can really be bothered with actually knowing the facts, so I figured the "spirirt of the essence" of the 9/11Report could be found in the Cliff Notes, um, I mean Execuitive Summary of the Report. I'm sure we can find the spirit of the essence the the New Kids capturing Osama and then having to let him go because Clinton was, um, "distracted." Let's go see.

Via Think Progress:

Over 50,000 ThinkProgress readers have written ABC in the last 48 hours about "The Path to 9/11." We're going to keep the pressure on ABC, but we're also broadening our focus today to the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.

Disney's Chairman of the Board is former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME). Senator Mitchell has a long and distinguished career both inside and outside government and he knows how important it is to accurately represent historical events.

We need to remind him that 9/11 was a national tragedy, and that politicizing and flagrantly misrepresenting the facts about 9/11 is wrong.

Senator George J. Mitchell
T: (212) 335-4600
T: (212) 335-4500
F: (212) 335-4605

(Remember to be polite, and please copy us so we can keep track your comments.)

ABC is feeling the pressure. Let's keep it up.

ABC is running Path to 9/11 without commercials. But it's also worth contacting the advertisers of Good Morning America and ABC News. Ask them to pull their ads from ABC for 7 days if ABC doesn't cancel plans to air The Path to 9/11. One law firm advertiser, Elk and Elk law Offices, has already agreed to this.

Here's a list of some big corporate ABC advertisers, thanks to Gator at Daily Kos. Contact them and voice your outrage:

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.

by TChris

If you want to make sure a political candidate is happy with poll results, why not make up the data?

The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results. ... According to a federal indictment, Costin told employees to alter poll data, and managers at the company told employees to ''talk to cats and dogs'' when instructing them to fabricate the surveys.

How the cats and dogs felt about Bush and Lieberman is unknown.

by TChris

You'll have a year to bid farewell to Tony Blair, whose popularity plummeted because of his cozy relationship with President Bush and his support for the war in Iraq.

He became a close ally of President Bush first in Afghanistan then in Iraq -- a war that was deeply unpopular among many Britons, including Muslims who argued that the vision of British troops fighting in Islamic countries as allies of the United States exposed the country to terrorist attack. His handling of the Iraq invasion, moreover, cost him the trust of many Britons.

Blair will cede his position as prime minister to his finance minister, Gordon Brown, "some time around or before next summer."

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?