Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in 2008 — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Michael Dobbs' Fact Checker site is helpful in discerning fact from fiction, and he's been pointing out plenty of fiction when it comes to Hillary's story about her trip to Bosnia. Here's what Hillary originally said:

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.

Video from CBS News made clear that there was no sniper fire, there was a greeting ceremony on the airport tarmac, and none of the American dignitaries ran or had their heads down. Here's how Dobbs' relayed Sinbad's account:

According to Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with the singer Sheryl Crow, the "scariest" part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of The Post, "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'" Sinbad 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."

More below the fold...

Granted, Sinbad is an Obama supporter, but I have to go with the comedian on this one (Dobbs' original post here). When it became all too apparent that Hillary lied, here was her blubbering response:

Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I made a -- I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my memory of it...No, I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a mistatement.

As Dobbs helpfully notes, this wasn't the first time Hillary "misspoke" about her visit, and she's still maintaining that the air force base was a dangerous place at that time. It wasn't. All I can say is, no wonder she's losing to a freshman Senator who's more liberal than she is.