Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Snipers of the mind
By popular demand (meaning regular commenter DEC, who writes the bizarrely riveting blog Jungle Trader), herewith the CBS News report that tags Hillary with having fabricated "sniper fire" during her trip to Bosnia back in the 1990s. It rather graphically shows that Hillary made the story up out of whole cloth. Hillary's campaign now says that she "misspoke," whatever that means.
This is a perplexing gaffe, because it is so easily revealed as wrong. There were many reporters with rolling cameras following Hillary around Bosnia, and the absence of actual snipers or even sounds that might have been confused with snipers is demonstrable fact. So while it is true that many politicians are unreconstructed embellishers, it is strange that such an experienced one would be caught "exaggerating" to reporters about something many of those same reporters witnessed only a bit more than a decade before.
The other explanation is that Hillary had a brain fart. Perhaps she had heard sniper fire somewhere else and been hustled back into some other helicopter, and now she has the time and place confused. I'm fifteen years younger than Hillary and am starting to make that sort of mistake in my own memory (OK, not about dodging sniper fire while I zig and zag to a helicopter, but I've not led such a dramatic life), so if she can cough up another sniper fire experience and admit she was confused that would be fine with me.
Of course, confessing to a faulty memory about having been shot at would make it difficult for an average person to stand on the same stage as John McCain, but I think we learned a long time ago that Clintons do not have normal shame impulses.
Both explanations are incomplete, though, because neither discharges the underlying question raised by the sniper gaffe. If Hillary thought she could get away with a wild embellishment of a public moment that was recorded by the flower and chivalry of the White House press corps, is she completely delusional? If not, and if there is no other "sniper fire" incident in some other war-torn place that she may be remembering instead, what was Lady McHillary seeing when she imagined her snipers of the mind?
14 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Mar 25, 09:03:00 AM:
Perhaps she is realizing a bit late that the days when the press regularly swallowed her baloney and dummied up appear to be over.
Nowadays, the press prefers Obamaloney.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Mar 25, 09:18:00 AM:
Jim beat me to it. *sigh*
You must remember, the Clintons have "gotten away" with so many big lies, that they do not expect anybody to glance at the small ones. Hm, then again, I didn't see this on the front page of the New York Times. Or the WaPost. Or USA Today. Or....
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Mar 25, 09:19:00 AM:
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 10:01:00 AM:
Which is why Obama and Hillary remind us so often of the proverbial- or clichéd -choices between a rock and a hard place, or the devil and the deep blue sea.
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 11:12:00 AM:
cBS This Morning,cBS Eavning News cBS sunday Morning as usuial they lie and fabricate
By Counter Trey, at
Tue Mar 25, 12:11:00 PM:
Given the role that adrenaline plays in etching memories, it is doubtful that she confused this event with another.
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 04:38:00 PM:
But hey, the reporters to a large extent were silent for 12 years; the video was in the vault also until CBS released it yesterday. So do we now revisit all of those other stories where witnesses also contradicted Mrs. Clinton. I doubt it. The media has no shame either.
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 04:54:00 PM:
The sniping, the hostility, the mad dash with her head down, the uncertainty: Senator Clinton confused the Bosnia trip with the day the Starr Report was made public. A simple error.
Zhombre
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 07:08:00 PM:
My bet is that the annual bribe check to CBS from the Clintons bounced and they opted to back Hussein.
It appears that the checks to most of the other MSM were OK.
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 08:06:00 PM:
My gut feeling is that she made it up on the spur of the moment when she felt she needed some credibility. Didn't she say this particular lie during one of the Democratic debates when challenged to talk about her vaunted 'experience?'
By , at
Wed Mar 26, 12:14:00 AM:
Just for the record: it ought to be remembered that it was the much-beloved great communicator, RR himself, who introduced to our national discourse the idea of "misspeaking." Let's give credit where credit is due.
By , at
Wed Mar 26, 12:42:00 AM:
You cant trust anything from BS NEWS
By davod, at
Wed Mar 26, 08:03:00 AM:
I thought Hillary was reading prepared remarks when she talked about the snipee incident. Just maybe an overzealous aide wrote it into the notes.
By , at
Wed Mar 26, 12:08:00 PM:
"Just for the record: it ought to be remembered that it was the much-beloved great communicator, RR himself, who introduced to our national discourse the idea of "misspeaking." Let's give credit where credit is due."
Really? So no politician in the history of the United States ever claimed to have 'mis-spoke' before the 1970s?
Fascinating.
