Note to ABC's "9/11" Hacks: Read the Graphic Novel Version

Huffington Post
Art Levine
Note to ABC's "9/11" Hacks: Read the Graphic Novel Version

The creative team and ABC executives behind the fabrication-filled Path to 9/11 film insist they only rewrote the historical record in order to make it an "effective dramatization." But in doing so, as summarized by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, they not only created a slanderous, totally fictionalized scene of Northern Allliance and CIA teams surrounding Bin Laden's hideout while being blocked by a dithering Sandy Berger, they omitted all the many ways that Bush and his team didn't respond to the mounting threats and urgent warnings of intelligence experts and Richard Clarke, the White House's counter-terrorism czar.

The filmmakers didn't bother to dramatize the way the Bush team ignored the famed early August, 2001 memo of "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" (Condi Rice didn't convene any meeting to flog a follow-up and Bush's supposed "swatting flies" comment was passed along in May but no action was taken) ; how Dick Cheney formed a counter-terrorism task force that didn't have its first meeting until Sept. 4; how Bush and Rice ignored warnings from Sandy Berger and Clinton to focus on Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda; and all the proposed military and diplomatic proposals by Clarke to go after Bin Laden that were ignored until it was too late -- as Clarke's influence was diminished.

If ABC executives or the public want a model of how to dramatically convey the essence of the 9/11 Commission Report, they should take a look at the superb The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. It may seem blasphemous to address such a major crisis with a graphic novel, but if Art Spiegelman can look at the Holocaust in Maus, this artistic team can do so with 9/11, condensing and highlighting the key points, but never dumbing-down or distorting.
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You can read an excerpt at Slate, but it's best read as a book in your hands. Every home and library should have a copy so the sorry record of U.S. government failures and rising Islamic terrorism that led to 9/11 will be accessible to all, especially for people who respond to a visual presentation and will never bother to wade through the full report.

It's a work of art that is dramatic, enlightening and, above all, faithful to the facts in the original report (conspiracy theories, of course, excepted), everything the bogus Path to 9/11 film wasn't.