Turns out, they’re planning on making it look even more like a documentary by running it without commercials, and Scholastic is even providing a teacher’s study guide to accompany the film so that schoolchildren can discuss this pack of lies in the classroom as though it were a definitive historical account. Gotta start that indoctrination early!

Seriously, this thing is fucked. Richard Clarke — who knows a thing or two about terrorism, bin Laden, and what’s actually been done — points out what bullshit is in this film. Scenes like that are clear fabrications (the refutation is in the public record!) designed to lay the blame for this not at Bush’s administration — which pointedly ignored a daily briefing called “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within US” — but instead at the Right’s favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton. This, of course, despite the briefing the Bush folks got from Clinton’s antiterror squad (including Clarke) as well as Clinton’s own strikes against Bin Laden during his administration (for which he was lambasted by the Right, natch). We quote:

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

ABC, obviously feeling the heat, is seriously stonewalling the folks raising questions about this piece of tripe. In response, Firedog Lake has a list of questions they’d like answers to, though we’re sure ABC will remain silent. We do wonder, however, whether this clearly political film will trigger any sort of equal time claims.

ThinkProgress has a page up to help you tell ABC what you think about their blatantly political film, and the harm it can do to our sadly undereducated nation. Use it.