First the history:
Bush-backed feature film of 9/11 casts him as scourge of 'tinhorn terrorists'
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
According to one version of history, President George Bush was so slow to react to the momentous attacks of 11 September 2001 that he continued reading to a group of primary school children in Florida even after being informed of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Centre.
Then, after making an anodyne remark about finding "the folks who committed this act", he was whisked off in Air Force One, first to Shreveport, Louisiana and thence to an underground bunker in Nebraska, where he was hastily coached in the art of responding to the crisis in an appropriately presidential manner.
Now the revisionist history:
That, however, is not the George Bush who emerges from a new television docudrama due to air on cable in time for the second anniversary of the attacks this September.
In this version, the President is all swagger and seize-the-moment bravado. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me," he says. "I'll be at home. Waiting for the bastard." "But Mr President ..." stammers his Secret Service chief. "Try 'Commander-in-Chief'," Mr Bush corrects him, "whose present command is, 'Take the President home!'"
If this scenario sounds like wishful thinking cooked up by the Republican National Committee, it probably is, given that the film, entitled DC 9/11, was produced and written by a direct associate of the President's, Lionel Chetwynd, in close co-operation with Mr Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove.
Apparently, Timothy Bottoms, and I am not making this up, plays aWol.
Too bad it's going straight to cable (Showtime). Movie theatres would have been a good place to do a little leafletting and education. Wonder if the cable company will sell ads for this one to, well, anyone? Or will they censor them?
UPDATE: Alert readers raise the question: Which will be released first: the 911 report, or the 911 movie? I say the movie. Any takers?