MESSAGE: EVERYTHING SUCKS! The teaser for my local news was “Concern over falling oil prices — what this could mean for you!”

Uh, cheaper gas? Yeah, I’m really concerned.

HERE’S MORE on the Khatami protests at Harvard.

And here’s a report from the Boston Herald.

UPDATE: Miss Kelly has still more on the Harvard protests.

More here.

I’M WATCHING “THE PATH TO 9/11” NOW: Ed Driscoll offers an interesting quote from a 2001 New Yorker article:

Soon after Freeh received these reports, he went to Berger’s West Wing office to tell him that they might finally have the evidence necessary to bring indictments. Freeh told Berger that he was looking into whether the United States could take testimony in Saudi Arabia for a grand jury in the States; it was a novel legal concept, and the Saudis had not yet agreed to it. Almost before Freeh could finish, Berger demanded, “Who else knows about this?” Did the press know? This was the last question that Freeh expected from a national-security adviser. Not many people knew, Freeh replied. The information was very closely held. Berger also questioned some of the statements linking the bombing to the Iranian government.

“That’s just hearsay,” Berger said.

“No, Sandy,” Freeh replied. “It’s testimony of a co-conspirator in furtherance of a conspiracy.” Berger, Freeh later thought, was not a national-security adviser; he was a public-relations hack, interested in how something would play in the press. After more than two years, Freeh had concluded that the Administration did not really want to resolve the Khobar bombing.

When I asked Berger about this, he seemed baffled by Freeh’s interpretation.

After the pants incident, its hard for me to respect Berger, and easy for me to see him as overly concerned with how things will play in the press. Read the whole thing and form your own opinions.

UPDATE: Austin Bay is watching it too: “I see why Clinton is afraid of it. The movie serves as a reminder of all of the terrorist attacks and attempted attacks. Clinton went eight years and Bush eight months playing cops and robbers while Al Qaeda was implementing unrestricted warfare.”

Yes, the Democrats have shown their usual instinct for the capillary. While worrying about minor bits, they’ve missed that the real harm is simply the reminder of the terrorist threat, which they’ve tried to downplay, but which they’ve magnified in people’s minds by making a stink. Going on the offensive like this just reminds people that they’ve been downplaying it for over a decade.

If they’d kept their mouths shut, this would be about the terrorists, which would be bad enough. Now it’s about the terrorists and the Democrats.

MORE: Best line so far: “War is about killing the enemy and destroying his property. It’s not about sitting around in a conference room and covering your own asses.” From 1998.

Clinton looks very bad. So does Sandy Berger.

Massoud: “Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?”

Madeleine Albright looks pretty bad, too, on the question of informing the Pakistanis that we were trying to kill bin Laden in time for him to get away. Easy to see why she’s unhappy. Is that bit true? I’m not sure.

Tenet looks like an ass-coverer. So, so far, I’d say it’s pretty accurate . . . .

Upside for Clinton: Osama’s jihadis emptying pistols into a TV screen showing him, and shouting “Clinton is Satan!”

FINALLY: I’ll try to roundup critiques tomorrow. But I think it was a big mistake for Democrats to draw attention to this film by attacking it and trying to block its broadcast. I wouldn’t have watched it without the hype, and I’ll be that’s true for a lot of people.

Meanwhile, Richard Clarke seems to be ass-covering in the after-show news segment. But George Tenet is getting hammered.

And Hot Air has a side-by-side comparison of edited and unedited scenes.

C.J. Burch emails:

I didn’t watch it, but let me make a bet with you. Over the next couple of weeks the networks will do so many stories “debunking” the show that I’ll feel like I have to see it just to get a fair look at all the facts. And I won’t be the only one. Look for this to be a huge seller on DVD for just that reason. Oh, and Sandy Berger will be on television alot over the next couple of weeks as well which will lead to booming business for the blogs willing to take another look at his pants stuffing incident. Becuase the networks sure won’t. The Democrats have a huge problem here. The problem is that people are beginning to wonder what the hell they’re hiding. With the AP thing and the Rueters photos thing and the Rathergate thing and the Eason Jordan thing and the Censorship for access thing and the staged photos thing the networks have the same problem. Look for some surprises come November.

You think?

ANTI-KHATAMI PROTESTS AT HARVARD: Robert Mayer has photos and video. “From the beginning, I noticed that there were two sides to this protest. The first is outrage that Khatami is in the United States and speaking about tolerance and a dialogue of civilizations when there is no dialogue of any kind within his own civilization. The other is that Harvard is giving him the venue to do so.” The turnout seems to have been rather large.

Teresa Hummel has a report with more photos, too.

AMAZON’S NEW UNBOX VIDEO SERVICE gets a bad review on Slashdot. I haven’t tried it myself, but services loaded with restrictions and spyware aren’t going to fly. That’s the Sony lesson, and others need to catch on.

WHAT HE SAID THEN:

MR. ROCKEFELLER: Mr. President, we are here today to debate one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my 18 years in the Senate. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator, a war criminal, a regional menace, and a real and growing threat to the United States. The difficulty of this decision is that while Saddam Hussein represents a threat, each of the options for dealing with him poses serious risks, to America’s servicemembers, to our citizens, and to our role in the world. . . .

As the attacks of September 11 demonstrated, the immense destructiveness of modern technology means we can no longer afford to wait around for a smoking gun. September 11 demonstrated that the fact that an attack on our homeland has not yet occurred cannot give us any false sense of security that one will not occur in the future. We no longer have that luxury.

September 11 changed America. It made us realize we must deal differently with the very real threat of terrorism, whether it comes from shadowy groups operating in the mountains of Afghanistan or in 70 other countries around the world, including our own.

There has been some debate over how “imminent” a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!

For some, the change brought about by September 11 was short-lived.

UPDATE: It’s the return of unfrozen caveman Senator!

DAILYPUNDIT’S WEEKEND COOKING THREAD IS UP, and I agree with this offhand remark: “There should also be a little nook in Hell reserved for the son of a bitch who invented those little stickers that get put on fruit and vegetables.”

SO I WENT TO THE SHOOTING RANGE but had to come home. It was too crowded, and I didn’t have time for the hour-plus wait. Business has been better since Guncraft Sports became Coal Creek Armory (slogan: “Automatics for the People”) but I was still surprised.

The explanation: “Tomorrow is September 11th.” Come to think of it, that’s how I observed the anniversary last year.

WOMEN NOT TO MESS WITH: This cluebat is actually even scarier than this one. I mean, that’s harsh.

UPDATE: Starting up a chapter of “Women Against Violence Against Men”?

TIGERHAWK: “The Left is virtually begging people to see ‘Path to 9/11’.”

I agree. I agree with this part, too: “This strikes me as an extremely unwise strategy on a number of levels.”

WHEN TINFOIL HATS ATTACK: Another positive review for the Popular Mechanics book, Debunking 9/11 Myths.

Judging from the Amazon reviews, though, the tinfoil crowd hasn’t given up. Oh well, who am I to complain?

A HARVARD protest against Khatami tonight. If you go, email me some pics!

CAIR’S CONGRESSMAN: Doing what the Star Tribune apparently can’t, Joel Mowbray reports on Minnesota Congressional candidate Keith Ellison here and here.

TECHNOBABBLE: That’s me!

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S mole in the Associated Press.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll: “After Eason Jordan’s ‘The News We Kept To Ourselves’ admission, and Reuters’ cozy relationship with assorted freedom fighters terrorists, I’m not at all surprised.”

READER DEANNA HEAVEN emails that she just watched The Path to 9/11 in New Zealand:

Seeing all the attacks of the 90s laid out and dramatized (with a couple of screwed-up attempts to get Bin Laden thrown in) was kind of shocking, even for someone who is already familiar with the facts. I understand why the Clinton people do not want this to air. About the two disputed scenes: Berger does not slam down the phone but he comes of very very badly anyway. The scene with Albright doesn’t look to have changed at all (from descriptions I heard earlier). I tend to share Lileks’ (and your) view about pre-9/11 actions getting a pass, but I must say, seeing one incompetent act after another does make me angry with the Clinton Administration. I imagine it might have the same effect on other viewers.

It is not the most exciting or well paced film, but it is nonetheless completely riveting. Watch it.

Well, we certainly could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we’d acted more vigorously in the 1990s. But hindsight is always 20/20.

UPDATE: Best take yet: ” It’s too late to decide to attack Bin Laden, so let’s attack this TV show.” Don’t miss the “prurient right-wing video.”

And Howard Mortman reminds us of this review by Richard Posner on the 9/11 Commission report.

MORE: I agree with this comment: “This firestorm is a lose-lose for Dems. Any rational voter can compare the Bush reaction to Farenheit 911 and the current Clinton reaction, and draw appriopriate conclusions.”

More on the film and the controversy, including another viewer report from Down Under, here.

CORY MAYE UPDATE: Radley Balko has been pursuing this story indefatigably, and he’s now identified the informant whose call led to the wrong-house no-knock raid:

After the guy realized the investigator was working for the defense team, he clammed up. When Bob Evans — Cory Maye’s lead attorney — called to tell him that if he didn’t talk, they’d compell his testimony with a subpeona, the informant flipped out. He called Evans, and left a rant on Evans’ answering machine that, when Evans played it for me the other night, blew my mind. It’s a 45-second clip of absolute fury, brimming with f-bombs, anger, hate, and — by my count — at least four utterances of the word “nigger.”

This is the “trustworthy” informant whose tip led to the raid on Cory Maye’s home. An unabashed bigot. Makes you wonder how many other black people have been raided, arrested, and imprisoned based on this guy’s tips.

Jeez. You have to have informants for some law enforcement tasks, of course, but the peculiar dynamics of the Drug War lead to much more reliance on these usually unsavory types, and drastically higher risks of tragic outcomes when, as here, they’re paired with no-knock raids on what turns out to be the wrong house.

Another reason, among many, for getting rid of the Drug War, of course.

MARTIN AMIS on The Age of Horrorism:

I will spell this out, because it has not been broadly assimilated. The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. And we now know what happens when Islamism gets its hands on an army (Algeria) or on something resembling a nation state (Sudan). In the first case, the result was fratricide, with 100,000 dead; in the second, following the Islamist coup in 1989, the result has been a kind of rolling genocide, and the figure is perhaps two million. And it all goes back to Greeley, Colorado, and to Sayyid Qutb.

Things started to go wrong for poor Sayyid during the Atlantic crossing from Alexandria, when, allegedly, ‘a drunken, semi-naked woman’ tried to storm his cabin.

Read the whole thing. (Via Amit Varma, who has some further thoughts.)

MURDERER IN THE CATHEDRAL: Andrew Marcus and Richard Miniter are reporting on Khatami at the National Cathedral. It’s some useful background you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. Plus, hot Iranian protest babes.

NED LAMONT DISCOVERS our superficial press corps.

But, really, this is pretty funny. He was against adultery before he was for it, or something . . . .

A TROUBLING FIND in a Knoxville used book store.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Why, oh why can’t we have a better left-wing blogging corps?”

A DEBATE ON PRISONER TREATMENT, at the Washington Post’s PostGlobal blog.

A BLOGGER fighting for his life.

TIM RUTTEN: “SURVEYING the smoking ruin that is ABC’s reputation after the ‘The Path to 9/11’ debacle, it’s hard to know whether you’re looking at the consequence of unadulterated folly or of a calculated strategy that turned out to be too clever by half.”

Meanwhile, Patterico sees the development of weird conspiracy theories.

UPDATE: The European trailer for the film, plus some useful comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Boldly standing up to censorship, RedState has posted clips from the unedited film.

MORE: Heh. “The world is now safe.”