Shamelessly Lying

That would be Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and her attempts to spin her nonsensical lying over how she landed on a plane in Bosnia as the sniper fire was flying about when she was First Lady. She's been using versions of this story on the campaign trail as she hopes to gain the Democratic party nomination as a sign of her foreign policy experience.



No sniper fire, and not even the slightest hint of danger in that video whatsoever. They're out on the tarmac when this takes place, and yet everyone is going about the ritualized meetings without any hint of fear or even body armor.

Some folks use the term incredible liar to describe Hillary's performance. Some media types are spinning this as nothing more than a misstatement or somehow badly internalized.

Clinton did more than misspeak; she told a richly detailed anecdote as part of a major address on foreign policy. And it was not the first time she has mentioned the snipers. In fact, the seeds of the Bosnian peril myth may have been planted years ago.

Richly detailed anecdote? Nope, she spun a full on fabulist's tale that would make even Jayson Blair and Scott Thomas Beauchamp blush.

At the time, Clinton emphasized that her trip was the first time a First Lady had ventured into hostile territory to visit U.S. troops since Eleanor Roosevelt had done so during World War II. "To be here on the ground is something I wanted to do so that maybe people back home would see it—not through the eyes of the secretary of the army or someone in a position in the military—but like Eleanor Roosevelt … to visit the troops to say thank you," she told U.S. troops in Bosnia. As the London Times reported, the trip was seen as an effort by Clinton to "improve her tarnished image" and deflect attention from the persistent inquiry into Whitewater, the Clintons' land deal. But while the White House noted the historic nature of a First Lady venturing into a country beset by warfare, there are no contemporaneous reports of Hillary Clinton recounting sniper fire, truncated ceremonies, or running for cover.

The snipers appear in Clinton's 2003 biography "Living History," but they hardly seem to present much danger: "Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with the local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers … One eight-year-old girl gave me a copy of a poem she had written entitled 'Peace.' Chelsea and I presented the school supplies we had brought, along with letters from seventh-grade children … whose parents and teachers had initiated a pen pal program." The biography also emphasizes that her plane made a "near perpendicular" landing to avoid possible enemy fire.

On the campaign trail the Bosnian tarmac anecdote has grown more dramatic. In Dubuque, Iowa, in December, Clinton reportedly asserted that the area was considered too dangerous for her husband to visit. "I was the first high-profile American to go," Clinton told Iowan voters, according to a Wall Street Journal account. Clinton added even more oomph during a late-February foreign policy address in Waco, Texas. Attempting to draw a contrast with Senator Obama's inexperience with foreign policy matters, the New York senator boasted of having traveled to more than 80 countries and recounted the trip to Bosnia, recalling that a welcoming ceremony "had to be moved inside because of sniper fire."

None of it happened as Clinton claims, especially as the videos show just how ordinary and peaceful the ceremony was.

This is just yet another manifestation of a bad liar getting caught and refusing to own up to their own lies. In fact, Hillary was busy compounding the lies by repeating them ad nauseum, until they got exposed as pure unadulterated lies this week. A few people, including the entertainer Sinbad who happened to be accompanying Clinton on her trip to Bosnia, had raised red flags about Hillary's comments, but it took a video showing the tarmac ceremony to get the media interested.

I'd like to know how a trip overseas is indicative of foreign policy experience? Does that provide any insight into foreign policy experience?

Ace wonder how the hell did everyone miss the Clinton quip that "When It's Too Dangerous For the President, Send the First Lady."

Good question. Where was the media to question such assertions? You'd think that one of the reporters following the Clinton campaign around the country would have perked up just a bit when hearing that statement.

Oh, and Hillary's now claiming that she was sleep deprived when she made the Tuzla comments. Right, which is how you have been repeating the same story for months, and a similar version made it into her autobiography.