Morning News Roundup (08 September)

The Gathering Storm

• The Rumor: Entertainment industry trade mag Variety reports that “a bombshell decision” is being considered at ABC: “Sources close to the project say the network, which has been in a media maelstrom over the pic, is mulling the idea of yanking [The Path to 9/11] altogether.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• The CYA: ABC plans to make minor changes to its docudrama on the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in response to heated complaints from former Clinton administration officials that a number of scenes are fabricated. An ABC executive said the "adjustments and refinements" are "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" by federal officials that left the country vulnerable to terrorist attacks, "not any one individual." The executive, who requested anonymity because the network is making only written comments, said small revisions have been underway for weeks. [WaPo]
  
  
• The Backtracking: Educational media giant Scholastic, Inc. announced it's dropping its original classroom companion guides to a controversial new docudrama about the events preceding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- and replacing them with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy.
  
  “After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues,” said Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic, in a press release. [TPM Muckraker]
  
  
• The Big Dog Bites Back: Former President Bill Clinton's lawyer Bruce Lindsey wrote a 4-page letter to ABC, and TPM Cafe has the full text. Here's a highlight:

  By ABC’s own standard, ABC has gotten it terribly wrong. The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely. It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known.

Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe

• President Bush's acknowledgment Wednesday of the CIA prisons' existence -- and his refusal to say where they were -- touched off new demands in Europe for a full accounting of the locations. Poland and Romania, called likely locations by European investigators, issued new denials Thursday that such prisons were on their soil.
  [...]
  U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, visiting Spain, took an opposing view. "I cannot believe that there can be a trade between the effective fight against terrorism and protection of civil liberties," he said. "If as individuals we are asked to give up our freedom, our liberties, our human rights, as protection against terrorism, do we in the end have protection?" [WaPo]
  
  
• The head of Europe's human rights watchdog yesterday called for monitoring of CIA agents operating in Britain and other European countries, after President George Bush's admission that the US had detained terrorist suspects in secret prisons. Terry Davis, secretary general of the Council of Europe, said CIA agents operating in Europe should be subject to the same rules as British agents working for MI5 and MI6.
  [...]
  The former British Labour MP was scathing about President Bush. "Why does the US need to keep people in secret prisons? I thought that was settled by Magna Carta. But King John is alive and well and running the USA. [The Guardian]

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• A suicide car bombing in Kabul has killed at least 16 people, as Nato military chiefs prepared to discuss a plea for more troops for Afghanistan. The attack on a US military convoy occurred near the American embassy, killing two US soldiers and injuring two others. [BBC]
  
  
• Juan Cole notes that the Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan:
  
  

  The resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan have begun actually taking and holding territory from time to time in the south.
  
  On Monday, Taliban had deployed a bomb that killed 17 in an attempt to kill the local police chief.
  
  Just a few days ago, they killed 4 Canadian troops and injured 9.
  
  Afghanistan's poppy crop is up 40% this year over 2005, posing severe problems of narco-terrorism on the Colombian model.

• The Health Ministry confirms it is building new morgue branches around Baghdad in order to handle the influx of dead. Krauthammer: Iraq may be in the midst of a civil war, but that's no reason we can't still help establish a functioning, self-sustaining government. Others aren't so optimistic. [Foreign Policy's Passport]
  
  
• Roadside bombs this summer in Iraq targetting US troops were four times as numerous as they had been last January. There has been a substantial fall-off of tips from Iraqis. The main reason for this is apparently that it has become, since the Samarra shrine bombing of last February, difficult for Iraqis to circulate much, so even sympathetic Iraqis just don't see the bombs. (It seems also possible that as sectarian hatreds have increased, they cannot be sure if the roadside bomb is aimed at the other side, and so figure it is best to leave it where it is.) [Juan Cole's Informed Comment]
  

Moustache Ride

• Republican efforts to formally confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations hit an unexpected snag yesterday when Republican Senator Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) said he could not support the diplomat until the Bush administration answers his questions on Middle East policy. While previously supporting the nomination, Chafee informed Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) of his change of heart yesterday, forcing Lugar to call off the confirmation vote or face the possibility of a 9 to 9 deadlock in the 18-member panel. [WaPo]
  
  
• Sources tell the New America Foundation’s Steve Clemons that John Bolton’s confirmation process “is now dead.” “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is ‘highly unlikely‘ to reconsider Bolton’s confirmation again as things now stand.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]