Link <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/It6JN7ALF7Y&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/It6JN7ALF7Y&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> If you're Hillary Clinton and you've just been caught in a "whopper," the only thing to be grateful for is that it's Good Friday and people are distracted. How bad could this story be for her? When you tell the American public you faced gunfire, and it turns out all you really faced was a little girl with flowers -- well, that's as bad as it gets. When you dramatically say you made a journey that was too dangerous for the president, only to have it revealed that he made the same trip two months earlier -- and that your teenaged daughter was by your side -- that only makes it worse. And there's video. If they wanted to, the networks could juxtapose video of Sen. Clinton's dramatic recitation of the battle with this clip of that sweet eight-year-old on the tarmac with a bouquet. The question is: Will they want to? Just this week Sen. Clinton said that she landed in Bosnia under "sniper fire," adding: "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." Clinton used to tell Iowa audiences: ""We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady." And her 16-year-old kid? This latest deception isdocumented in detail in the Washington Post by a reporter who was there. The paper awards her statements "four Pinocchios," a rating they reserve for political misstatements they describe as "whoppers." "Whopper" (Merriam-Webster): "An extravagant or monstrous lie." Comedian Sinbad's now-famous response to Sen. Clinton's claims was to say, "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'" He added, "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'" As is often the case these days, the Clinton campaign responded to this observation by sticking to their story, and even embellishing it (in this case, with colorful details about running for cover under fire). That could turn out to have been a catastrophic mistake -- but that, as with so much in American politics, depends on the media and how they choose to handle it. They've saturated us for nearly two weeks with video of Rev. Wright, who as it turns out didn't say anything more extreme than what other candidates' spiritual advisors have said. Will this flap get the same attention? It remains to be seen. Sen. Clinton's other honesty problem this week came with revelations that, while she claims to have been an internal NAFTA critic in the administration, she actually gave several presentations in favor of NAFTA at the time it was passed. But, to be fair, this may not be a deception. People are often called upon to advocate for decisions in public that they opposed in private. The NAFTA controversy suggests other concerns, such as: If she were such a vehement critic, and the administration backed it anyway, how important was she? And, how can she claim credit for the good deeds of her husband's administration and yet take no responsibility for its problems? Still, Clinton's handling of the NAFTA question certainly raises concerns. Especially troubling is her campaign's work to spread rumors of Obama sending back-channel messages to the Canadians suggesting their anti-NAFTA rhetoric was all talk -- when, according to a high-level Canadian source, her campaign had done that. But it is the Bosnia whopper that remains the high-profile, easily documented embarrassment. Will the media run with it? It's hard to tell. Despite the Clinton campaign's PR-driven argument to the contrary, press coverage has tended to favor both candidates at different times. Right now Jim Vandenhei and Mike Allen at Politico are saying that the media's pushing a false narrative in favor of Clinton in order to promote the sense of an ongoing "horse race," arguing that her chances of taking the nomination are actually far less than has been reported. That makes sense -- not because the media's "in the tank" for Clinton or Obama, but because a protracted race serves its own interests. By that reasoning, it's very possible they'll downplay a story like this. Why? Because it could end her candidacy once and for all. That would give the media one less story to cover. In the end, maybe one lie shouldn't matter. Perhaps this doesn't reflect on how Sen. Clinton would govern. In our political system, however, it does matter ... but only if the media choose to make it matter. Had Obama been caught in a lie of this magnitude, his campaign might well be over. Had McCain been caught in a similar lie, however, the press would probably have hidden it (the same way they edited video of his recent Al Qaeda/Iran gaffe). For me, the real subject of this story isn't the candidate who told an outrageous lie. It's the fact that our media holds unprecedented power. They, and the decisions they make about this story, may well decide whether Sen. Clinton's candidacy will survive. UPDATE: Clinton supporters have noted an update to the WaPo piece with this statement from Lissa Muscatine: "I was on the plane with then First Lady Hillary Clinton for the trip from Germany into Bosnia in 1996. We were put on a C17-- a plane capable of steep ascents and descents -- precisely because we were flying into what was considered a combat zone. We were issued flak jackets for the final leg because of possible sniper fire near Tuzla. As an additional precaution, the First Lady and Chelsea were moved to the armored cockpit for the descent into Tuzla. We were told that a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac might be canceled because of sniper fire in the hills surrounding the air strip. From Tuzla, Hillary flew to two outposts in Bosnia with gunships escorting her helicopter." The last time I took a flight I was told what to do in "in the event of a water landing." But if I said I had survived a crash landing on water, would I be telling the truth? Hillary provided a vivid description of having to run from sniper fire. It was a complete falsehood. From Wikipedia: "Lissa Muscatine was a speechwriter and the communications director of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Currently, she is a speechwriter for Senator Clinton's campaign for the presidential nomination, and is one of her closest advisors ..." It requires enormous suspension of disbelief to accept the idea that Hillary brought her 16-year-old daughter too a place that was considered "too dangerous for the president" and exposed her to live sniper fire. Do those pro-Hillary commenters really believe she did that? If so, they should be concerned about her judgment. I continue to be astonished at the willingness of Clinton supporters to elide, obfuscate, tolerate, condone, and defend behavior from their candidate that would provoke their outrage if it came from anyone else. But that's not my central point. This is: For all the chatter about press bias for Obama, his career might be over had he been caught in this kind of misstatement. But the media wants a prolonged horse race, so Clinton will get a pass while we continue to be hammered with clips of Jeremiah Wright making statements Obama repudiated a week ago. The press is once again influencing the outcome of American elections -- and that's not democratic.
nice contrast with McCain. She is unelectable. And oh, by the way, sure, the media is really hard on Hillary these days.
It's hard for me to take an op/ed seriously when it quotes sinbad... Despite the Wright scandal, I think there are more reporters who want Obama to win than Hillary.
The reason Sinbad was quoted was that he came out and criticized the "danger" of the trip when she originally said it. He was on the trip (along with some singer) and said that it was ridiculous and perfectly safe. It does seem weird out of context though!
I have little doubt that Hillary Clinton has exagerated her role and shaded the truth to make herself look more important. Like it or not pretty much every politician does it, even Obama. That doesn't change the fact that she did go to Tuzla to address the refugee situation. While her role and the danger she faced might not have been what she made it out to be that is more than Obama's foreign policy experience.
I agree but I will give credit that I think the media is looking harder at Obama recently. Whether this is due to them being stung by the SNL skit, or that they want to prolong the horse race I don't know. Either way I won't blame them as it is to be expected they would take a harder look at Obama as he took on the mantle of front runner. As for whether Clinton should be called on this I totally agree that she should.
Modern media only has the attention span for one political story at a time, and currently that story is "the fall of Obama." Since news outlets only quote one another, or one original internet source, it makes for an ugly feedback mechanism. Maybe they will get on her case later.
There has to be a good reason. If she told a whopper this big and it's plainly documented, this story will puncture and injure her severely. Give it a few more days. This is the kind of ridiculous stuff I'd expect from Al Gore or Mitt Romney. I strongly dislike Hillary but this isn't the kind of mistake I'd expect her to make. Her entire credibility about her White House "experience" could go up in flames.
My understanding is that there was actually some danger as she stated, but the White House didn't want to show the first lady running and ducking for cover as the administration is stating how safe and under control everything is after our intervention and re-shot some of the scene and greetings. I read about this a long time ago and as I recall the situation was flipped where opponents were calling out the Clintons for staging the scene. It is a little odd that she would so blatantly lie about something easily disproved -- isn't it?
The 4 Gepettos Wapo article... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102989.html?sub=new Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Bill Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down." There are numerous problems with Clinton's version of events. THE FACTS As a reporter who visited Bosnia soon after the December 1995 Dayton peace agreement, I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, particularly at a heavily fortified U.S. air base, such as Tuzla. Contrary to the claims of Hillary Clinton and former Army secretary Togo West, Bosnia was not "too dangerous" a place for President Clinton to visit in early 1996. In fact, the first Clinton to visit the Tuzla Air Base was not Hillary, but Bill, on Jan. 13, 1996. Had Hillary Clinton's plane come "under sniper fire" in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including The Washington Post's John Pomfret, covered her trip. A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the first lady. "As a former AP wire-service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," Pomfret said. According to Pomfret, the Tuzla airport was "one of the safest places in Bosnia" in March 1996 and "firmly under the control" of the 1st Armored Division. Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An 8-year-old Muslim girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, below, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss. "There is peace now," Emina told Clinton, according to Pomfret's report in The Post the next day, "because Mr. Clinton signed it. All this peace. I love it." The first lady's schedule, released on Wednesday by the National Archives, confirms that she arrived in Tuzla at 8:45 a.m. and was greeted by various dignitaries, including Emina (whose name has mysteriously been redacted from the document). Footage from CBS shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Among the U.S. officials on hand to greet Clinton at the airport was Maj. Gen. William Nash, the commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia. Nash told me he was unaware of any security threat to Clinton during her eight-hour stay in Tuzla. He said, however, that Clinton had a "busy schedule" and may have got the impression that she was being hurried. Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with singer Sheryl Crow, said the "scariest" part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of washingtonpost.com, "I think the only 'red phone' moment was 'Do we eat here or at the next place?' " He questioned the premise behind the Clinton version of events. "What kind of president would say 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot, so I'm going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you'?" Replying to Sinbad earlier this week, Clinton dismissed him as "a comedian." Her campaign referred me to Togo West, who was also on the trip and is a staunch Clinton supporter. West could not remember "sniper fire" himself but said there was no reason to doubt the first lady's version of events. "Everybody's perceptions are different," he told me. Clinton made no mention of "sniper fire" in her autobiography "Living History," published in 2003, although she did say there were "reports of snipers" in the hills around the airport. THE PINOCCHIO TEST Clinton's tale of landing at the Tuzla airport "under sniper fire" and then running for cover is simply not credible. Photographs and video of the arrival ceremony, combined with contemporaneous news reports, tell a very different story. Four Pinocchios. ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts. TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions or exaggerations. THREE PINOCCHIOS: Significant factual errors. FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers. THE GEPPETTO CHECK MARK: Statements and claims contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/03/sinbad_unloads_on_hillary_clin.html As you may have guessed by now, Sinbad isn't supporting Clinton for president. He's an Obama guy. All because of Clinton. "What got me about Hillary was her attitude of entitlement, like he messed up her plan, like he had no reason to be there," Sinbad said. "I got angry. I actually got angry! I said, 'I will be for Obama like never before.'" But he's less ticked off with the Clinton campaign than he is with Saturday Night Live for its Hillary-loving sketches that portray Obama as an unqualified nervous Nelly. What really bothers him is SNL's choice of actor (Fred Armisen) to play Obama. "My problem is -- you couldn't just temporarily hire a black man to play Obama? You had to put a white man in a black face? You couldn't find a light-skinned brother to play Obama?" You're too fat and old to spoof Obama Sinbad.
if this was obama fox news would have this as the lead headline on there website.its proven she lied and they even have video why is this such a underground story? she also took credit for the release of the amercan p.o.w's doing that time also and we all know that jesse jackson was the one that brought thoes guys home. lie after lie after lie with this women and the meda is giving her a pass for there own political gain.no matter what a republican tell u thy don't want to see obma come election time...dealing ith hillary would be a cake lk because they really don't have dig for dirt to hard on here..nobody in the media is talking bout the dide who use to manage the clintons taxe that came up dead a few months either.
I'm curious why her one trip to Tuzla is more foreign policy experience than Obama's trips to numerous places in the middle east, Russia, The Ukraine, Africa, etc.?
I'm not saying Obama hasn't made official diplomatic trips but in number Clinton has made much more. Off the top of my head my guess would be they've made a similar number in their overlapping time in Senate but given that Clinton has served one more term and also made many trips in official capacity as First Lady.
She did a bit more than "shading the truth" or "exaggerating her role". She flat out lied - or she's losing her mind. Here are her quotes: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." "There was no greeting ceremony, and basically we were told to run to our cars." "Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes..." The video shows all of these statements to be outright false and simply made up - this was not shading the truth. This is ultimately my problem with Clinton. Whether she believes her own lies or just says them to benefit her, I have no idea - but honesty simply doesn't matter to her. This is simply one example in a long line of it.
I'm not sure why Hillary's Bosnian whopper is any worse than her Irish whopper -- or any of the other whoppers she has told during the course of her time in and around the political world. She is such as liar she should always be shone in a prone position -- you know, lying around. I'm sure Pecos Bill was her childhood hero.
A ridiculous story and perfectly emblematic of the fraud that is the Hillaroid Clinton foreign policy experience, although not quite as much of a story of the legendary crash and burn of Obama's campaign. Just think how sad Obama's foreign policy cred is when he loses the foreign policy experience battle to a lady who travels around and has tea with dignitaries. Like I've said on numerous occasions, this is just a sad sack lib field this year. Obama is naive, inexperienced, corrupt and he honors racists and bigots. Hillary is a lying, power hungry bitsch and the most divisive figure in politics today. Great work this year libs!
Exactly. Things like this are exactly why she's the only one of the three candidates I absolutely would never vote for. I don't see Obama or McCain slinging the kind of mud she slings... and I don't see them bending the truth to make themselves look important to the same extent she does. I know every politician does those things, but Hilary is really over-the-top with it.
...and McCain's spiritual adviser thinks it's America's holy mission to destroy Islam. How 'bout that separation of church and state, I tell ya...
