I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went.
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.— Sen. Hillary Clinton, March 17, 2008
"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 said well, I, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my memory of it.
"... Good grief, 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 misstatement."— Sen. Hillary Clinton, March 25, 2008
The story was a bit too incredible to begin with. An American first lady would be asked to duck her head down and run under sniper fire? Why? Did the enemy not know how to lower their weapons? I know, the heroes on TV never get shot in those situations either.
Sinbad, who also went on the mission nailed it.
"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.'"
However, faced with a differing recollection than Sinbad, the Clinton camp just chose to dismiss and belittle him.
Defending Clinton's characterization of her Bosnia mission, campaign spokesman Phil Singer kindly provided experts from news stories written about the trip at the time, including a Washington Post story from May 26, 1996, that said, "This trip to Bosnia marks the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to a potential combat zone."
Singer also cited a Kansas City Star article from September 2000 that quoted Sinbad as describing the situation in Bosnia as "so tense. It was Crips and Bloods." (And that's how Sinbad continued to characterize the situation in our interview Monday. He said, "At the time, we didn't realize how crazy it was between the Bosnians and the Serbs. I didn't realize how much hate was going on.")
Still, defending Clinton against Sinbad the refuter, Singer said, "The sad reality of what was going on in Bosnia at the time Senator Clinton traveled there as first lady has been well documented. It appears that Sinbad's experience in Bosnia goes back further than Senator Obama's does. In fact, has Senator Obama ever been to Bosnia?"
No. And he never tried to tell us he had been there either. By the way, none of those news reports cited by Singer said anything about the first lady running in under sniper fire. I'm not sure what exactly they were supposed to prove.
The word is out now about the war story that wasn't. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to convince us that repeating this story three times, two of which were in prepared remarks, was an absent minded mistake.
The way I see it, you make a mistake when you forget details. To create an entire scene that didn't exist is not the kind of thing that happens naturally. The mind forgets details, it doesn't create them.
Hillary Clinton sorta reminds me of the old Commander McBragg cartoons I watched as a lad.
I'm not saying Commander McBragg is lying either, but I'm sure even the good commander wouldn't accept a mission to convince me that he misspoke.
