Foot shooting time in Indiana (or how to reopen a self-inflicted wound in one easy lesson) Posted by: McQ
on Friday, April 11, 2008
For a guy who is considered by many to be the best politician of a generation, Bill Clinton is sure trying to find ways to make them eat their words.
With the dust finally settling over the Tuzla sniper story, who brings it up again, gets it all wrong and looks like a complete idiot doing so?
Uh, yeah - Bill Clinton:
She took a terrible beating in the press for a few days," he said, per ABC News' Sarah Amos, "because she was exhausted at 11 o'clock at night (1) and she started talking about Bosnia and she misstated the circumstances under which she landed in Bosnia. (2)
"Did you all see all that? And oh, they acted like she was practically Mata Hari," he said — referring to the Dutch exotic dancer accused by the French of spying for the Germans and executed by a firing squad during World War I — "like she was making up all this stuff.
"And then the president of Bosnia said, 'Well, it was quite dangerous when she came, there were snipers in the hills all around,' (3) And then Gen. Wes Clarke, who was there trying to make the peace among the Bosnians, said 'Yeah, it was dangerous, let me remind you three of the Americans who were on my peace-keeping team were killed because they had to take a dangerous road 'cause they couldn't go the regular way.'
"And she had to go up into the cockpit with our daughter, in a bullet-proof area, and all the other people had to sit on their bullet-proof flak jackets (4) because it was dangerous. So she immediately (5) said 'OK, I misremembered that, they didn't cancel the welcoming ceremony, but it was pretty dangerous.' "
In Boonville, Ind., also today, he told a different version, saying his wife, "one time late at night (1) when she was exhausted, she misstated and immediately (5) apologized (6) for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. (7) Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up. Let me just tell you.
"The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark — who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat (4) in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters.
"So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony. Now I say that because what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. (8) And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this."
Now, it's always nice when you can quote a piece which has numbered the lies and exaggerations for you. So here it is, by the numbers:
(1) Her most glaringly wrong telling of the tale, on March 17, 2008, was in the morning.
(2) She actually told versions of the story several times. (And none was at night.)
(3) In an e-mail to journalist Eric Jansson, former acting Bosnian president Ejup Ganic said "we didn't expect snipers," though, "we still believed that some positions on the hills were occupied by radical Serbs, so I was worried about the overall safety."
(4) Not according to the pilot Colonel William "Goose" Changose (Ret.), who said, "nobody under my watch has ever directed anyone to sit on their flak jackets. ... We do not direct people to sit on their flak jackets."
(5) It wasn't immediate at all — it was 11 days later, first in an editorial board meeting with the Philadelphia Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News, then later in a press availability.
(6) She never apologized.
(7) It was 1996, not 1995.
(8) He qualified it with "I think," but then-first lady Pat Nixon went to a combat zone in Saigon, Vietnam, in July 1969.
You know, I do have to admit I'm enjoying the Clintons (yes both of them) getting precisely what they've had coming to them for soooooo long. And I'm also gratified that much of the left is discovering, seemingly for the first time, that they're both a pair of, well put your own expletive here - we're trying to keep this work safe. But more than anything, I'm taking perverse pleasure in watching the "Clinton is the consummate politician" meme going down in flames. If this is an indication of his political instinct and acumen, I'm surprised his political head isn't mounted, metaphorically speaking, on some wall somewhere.
The notorious imbecile Andrew Sullivan wrote, "Man, has that old pol lost his touch."
What’s hilarious is watching various delusionaries waking up and rubbing their eyeballs at what they’re finally seeing, especially when what they used to see was never there to begin with. They were just making it up in their own heads.
I think Bill was happy being the first Black President. I don’t think Bill wants to be the first male First Lady.
I half believe that Clinton was sabotaged from within. More from a phoned-in effort by the members of the notorious Clinton Machine than conscious sabotage.
Even the worst hack could have seeded those Rev. Wright clips on Youtube and they would have done it months ago when it still could have mattered for the Primary.
Bill was always overrated. He was good at pandering and pumping up his popularity, but he failed to turn it into an agenda.
His first two years he wasted on Hillary Care, and his popularity took a beating. After that, he simply signed off on the popular parts of the Republican agenda in order to get good polls. Not that that was bad, the last Democrat who showed leadership was LBJ, and he pushed his agenda through.
