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Clinton Bosnia Account Comes Under Fire
March 24, 2008 3:14 PM
ABC News' Eloise Harper and Nitya Venkataraman Report: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has been receiving heat for her account of a trip she took to Bosnia as First Lady, most recently in a clip that splices her account with CBS footage of the 1996 visit being circulated by the Obama campaign.
It has been disputed whether Clinton was embellishing the risk she faced during the landing in Tuzla and the trip overall. Most recently, Clinton said they landed in an "evasive maneuver" "under sniper fire".
At an event in Washington last Monday, Sen. Clinton said, "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."
After CBS video surfaced of the 1996 visit to Bosnia showing no visible threat and a calm greeting ceremony on the tarmac in Tuzla - Clinton's account was again called into question.
Today on a conference call with reporters, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson, defended Clinton but said that she may have "misspoke" in her most recent description of the trip.
In Clinton's account of the same visit in her autobiography "Living History" she describes a near-perpendicular landing to evade possible ground fire" but talks about the greeting ceremony on the tarmac in Tuzla with local schoolchildren though says it was cut short "due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip".
During the event on the tarmac, Clinton writes in her autobiography "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….We were then hustled off to the fortified American base at Tuzla, where over two thousand American, Russian, Canadian, British, and Polish soldiers were encamped in a large tent city."
UPDATE
In an editorial board meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer, Clinton revised her Bosnia story, admitting there was a "misstatement" in her account describing running with her head down to get into the vehicles. Today, she said that she "had to meet this 8-year-old girl," so, "I took her stuff and left."
When Clinton was challenged by a reporter that this revised account calls into question her foreign policy credentials, Clinton then said, "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 misstatement."
March 24, 2008 in Bush, George W. | Permalink | User Comments (308)
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gossssh why she has to lie
Posted by: joules | Mar 24, 2008 3:30:41 PM
Good job, Obama! You gotta do the work FOR the journalists these days.
Posted by: Cat | Mar 24, 2008 3:31:01 PM
Oh please. Can we just talk about our country for once, instead of arguing about whether somebody said EXACTLY the same thing today as they did yesterday, or 12 years ago? Or whether we approve of the church they go to?
Posted by: jock59801 | Mar 24, 2008 3:32:20 PM
It's not really just the lies, its the hypocrisy. Or the combination of lies and hypocrisy. The American people just can't get past those two issues with Hillary.
Fundamentally, you can't believe a word she says because she would say and do anything just to get elected. That's not what I call a "fighter." It's what I call a spineless politician.
Posted by: mg | Mar 24, 2008 3:33:15 PM
So Hill lied. So what else is new.
Posted by: JENNY | Mar 24, 2008 3:33:28 PM
Wow. All that extra Obama money is SURE being well spent digging up this stupid dirt. She embellished if she was under fire on a trip to Bosnia 12 years ago???????
This is it? The big DIRT????? lol.......
Tim burton and Michelle Plouffe are digging themselves deeper. LOL.
Man they are trying hard to get the press negative on Clinton to take the heat off Obama.
This is again, very poor journalism.
Posted by: tomdavie | Mar 24, 2008 3:33:30 PM
This is a big MISSPOKE. You'd think she'd verify these things first. It just shows, she'd do anything to win. She'd mislead us all instead of checking things out.She lied about NAFTA. She lied about her role in Ireland. These are not small exaggerations. This calls character into question.
Posted by: Right on Day1 | Mar 24, 2008 3:34:05 PM
Are we still on about this???
At least she's been to Bosnia.
Obama can say anything he wants to nit pick her foreign trips but at least she had them.
In his capacity as a US representative Obama has been to London once on a stop over.
How and why is it important what Sinbad the comedian says with regards to the first lady's visit to a foreign country.
This is so absurd.
He has no I mean Zero foreign policy experience. He could have had some but he is yet to convene the committee.
He's too busy with his ego to bother with NATO.
Posted by: s.b. | Mar 24, 2008 3:35:12 PM
i thought obama said he will not run a negative campaign and that he is not like the clinton .i remember him saying that the clinton are playing dirty polictics and they are old polictic but what make him different. you cannot even trust his words. who is he to point at anybody ?did he forgot his pastor story ?w e did'nt;;;;
Posted by: shelia | Mar 24, 2008 3:37:07 PM
she is all lies, and will never tell the american people the truth. It runs in the family
Posted by: wycliffe | Mar 24, 2008 3:37:23 PM
It was a bad blunder on her part. I'll warrent that. As a Hillary supporter, I wish she would have used more caution and better judgment, since each misstep like this makes her uphill battle to win even harder.
That being said, I still prefer her over Obama. Both of them have shown some poor judgment and hypocrisy throughout this campaign. I still find her more stable and better prepaired.
Posted by: Ryan from Indiana | Mar 24, 2008 3:37:30 PM
Obama is allowed to associate with Anti-Americans & criminals, his wife is allowed to say she has never been able to be proud of the US until her husband decided to run for president, but Hillary can't have one little blunder? Come on, pull your heads out of the sand and see Obama for what he really is...an unqualified wanna-be.
Posted by: Cheryl | Mar 24, 2008 3:38:09 PM
And why doesn't anyone examine Obama's foreign policy experience?
Oh I know, he doesn't have any to examine and he wont release his records from 14 years ago.
When is he going to release his schedules from the Illinois senate and earmarks and tax returns, so we can see what he did for the Trinity United Church and when.
Posted by: s.b. | Mar 24, 2008 3:38:18 PM
Quite interesting. First she claimed she was involved in peace-making in N. Ireland which turned out not true. Now its Bosnia issue. Her experience she claims seems to be questionable!
Posted by: Peace | Mar 24, 2008 3:38:45 PM
She didnt say she had to dodge bullets. She said they had to run because they were warned of sniper fire.
Warned of sniper fire is different than dodging bullets.
She said the plane landed with evasive maneuvers because of reported fire.
None of this has been disproven.
Posted by: s.b. | Mar 24, 2008 3:40:25 PM
It just goes to show that she will say anything or do anything to get the nomination! And if she is in fact an abused woman - why would we want a mentally unstable person answering the phone at 3 am in the morning?
Posted by: jozy | Mar 24, 2008 3:40:50 PM
so now its going to be old news
Posted by: Bishop | Mar 24, 2008 3:41:17 PM
Supporter dollars hard at work. You dah man.
Posted by: Jarid | Mar 24, 2008 3:41:32 PM
The people involved in N. Ireland have backed up her claims by the way.
Posted by: s.b. | Mar 24, 2008 3:41:47 PM
jock59801, We are talking about our country and someone that wants to be its leader who consistently gets caught telling lies. Is this the type of person you want to be our president?
Posted by: wolfeye | Mar 24, 2008 3:43:34 PM
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