With it being the start of the NFL football season, NBC got in first here on the West Coast by virtue of the game being at the NY Giants stadium, with kickoff at 5:30pm. The singing of the national anthem—“does that star-spangled banner yet wave”—just before kickoff was accompanied by images of the firemen hoisting the flag Iwo Jima-style over the ruins at the WTC.

Over on ABC at 5:30, World News was presented from Ground Zero and the usual music was replaced by more sombre beats. George and Laura Bush were shown putting their hands to the wreaths that were placed in the reflecting pools where the towers once stood, and Bush said, “I vow that I’m never gonna forget the lessons of that day.”

CBS News took pains to point out that the White House has declared the next 24-36 hours a politics-free zone, in which the president will adopt a sombre yet optimistic tone. And former NY Fire Commissioner van Essen was shown saying “We thought it was a small plane up to that point.” The “point” he was referring to was the hit on the second tower.

Hang about! Doesn’t the documentary footage fortuitously taken by those French documentarians who were out that morning with the fire crew from Ladder 1 feature a large shadow going overhead and the unmistakable sound of jet engines? How can a fire crew called to the scene when the first tower was hit, having seen and heard what we see and hear in the documentary footage, NOT have known it wasn’t a small plane? Later in the evening, CBS airs that very documentary including that very scene. (Minus the fortuitous pan towards the tower being hit.)

But I must digress some more. Silly of me to think that Katie Couric’s move from NBC to CBS is part of a continuing plot to destroy the credibility of CBS, I know, but she just aids and abets my conspiracy theory at every turn. Tonight on 60 Minutes, which follows the local news, she interviewed the woman who was head of the EPA at the time of the Ground Zero clean-up. It’s part of a story about the health problems experienced by the people working there.

Here’s what Couric says: “But with all due respect, your job as the head of the EPA—the Environmental Protection Agency—is to protect people from the environment.”

Excuse me? According to its own website, the Environmental Protection Agency exists to protect the environment from people, not the other way around: “From regulating auto emissions to banning the use of DDT; from cleaning up toxic waste to protecting the ozone layer; from increasing recycling to revitalizing inner-city brownfields, EPA's achievements have resulted in cleaner air, purer water, and better protected land.”

Anyways, at 8pm ABC airs the first part of The Path to 9/11. The program is both preceded and followed by a statement about it being a dramatization containing fictional scenes. The same statement was displayed at the end of Harvey Keitel’s character’s conversation with Richard Clarke, in which he says “We’re at war.” Cut to Afghanistan, 1998.

The most disturbing things about this docudrama are Keitel’s obsession with testicles and feminine powers of observation, and the way in which every criticism ever made about successive administrations’ handling of the terrorism threat comes out of the mouths of those nasty jihadists.

When the CIA’s helper in Afghanistan—whose trustworthiness is always in doubt—asks, “Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?”, it effectively castrates any hope of someone in DC coming out and making a stand against all the political BS that surrounds the war on terror. Hey, let’s leave that up to the ladies! Then we’ll get Katie Couric to interview them!

Following The Path to 9/11, ABC’s Nightline featured a report by Brian Ross of ABC News which showed the real Richard Clarke—now an ABC News Consultant—blaming CIA head George Tenet for stopping the launch of Cruise missiles on three occasions when bin Laden was within their range. Ross’s report was followed by one from Terry Moran in Afghanistan. Both reports were live, Eastern Standard Time.

Tomorrow’s episode of the Path to 9/11 will be interrupted part-way through by the President’s address to the nation at 9pm EST. Just which 16-18 minute segment of the docudrama comes at an hour into the docudrama you, Down Under, will know before I do.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE--

Deaf Ears: Speaker On Support For Mojo Mathers

Scoop Audio: In a press conference this afternoon Speaker Lockwood Smith defended his handling of requests for support for profoundly deaf MP Mojo Mathers' participation in Parliament, and said he was "deeply concerned" by the way the issue had been portrayed.

Earlier today the Greens said they had been told they would have to fund support Mathers requires out of their own budget. More>>