NYT Surprise: TV Critic Lauds "Path to 9-11," Suggests Clinton AWOL in War on Terror

The New York Times' reliably liberal television-beat reporter Alessandra Stanley offered up a surprising assessment in her mostly favorable review of “The Path to 9-11," a review which ran on Friday when there was still some doubt as to whether or not ABC would cave in to the Clintonistas and various left-wing bloggers furious at the network. The first part of the miniseries ran last night with some selective edits but with the essence of the story intact, further infuriating the left with its picture of a Clinton administration unwilling to take terrorism seriously.

Even more heartening was Stanley's assessment. She also takes a long view of the history of terror attacks, one that admits that America-hatred didn’t begin with the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001:

“The first bombing of the World Trade Center happened on Bill Clinton’s watch. So did the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. The president’s staff -- and the civil servants who worked for them -- witnessed the danger of Al Qaeda close up and personally. Some even lost their lives.

“In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,’ and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal. It’s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student’s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better. (It’s safe to assume that any future mini-series about American foreign policy will not delve flatteringly into Mr. Bush’s march to war in Iraq.)”

For examples of New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.