Hillary's Walter Mitty trip to Bosnia

[AngryAmish]

<http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/21/the-walter-mitty-candidate.aspx#comments>

Hillary Clinton, March 17:

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.

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, March 21:

Numerous reporters, including the Washington Post's John Pomfret, covered her <1996 Bosnia> trip. A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the First Lady. "As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," said Pomfret. According to Pomfret, the Tuzla airport was "one of the safest places in Bosnia" in March 1996, and "firmly under the control" of the 1st Armored Division.

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss....

The First Lady's schedule, released on Wednesday and available here, confirms that she arrived in Tuzla at 8.45 a.m. and was greeted by various dignitaries, including Emina Bicakcic, (whose name has mysteriously been redacted from the document.) You can see CBS News footage of the arrival ceremony here. The footage shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.(hyperlinks at the jump)

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Did Hillary also raise the flag at Iwo Jima? If this campaign goes on long enough, she will claim she did.

[TheZug]

1. One could only expect such heroism from someone named for Edmund Hillary . . .

or . . . maybe not.

http://www.slate.com/id/2182065/

Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that?

[krkaufman]

17. Wow. It's starting to look like Hillary is the serial prevaricator the media was looking for in 2000

[madaboutharry]

2. Why would she say this?

I don't get it. One thing about Hillary that I always believed was that she wasn't given to this type BS.

[MH1]

7. Maybe she didn't think it would be quickly debunked?

Not used to information at internet speed?

Or was she referring to a different incident? - if that, she'd better get this cleared up quickly.

[C_U_L8R]

3. Baroness Munchausen?

or Hillary Izuzu?

Or Mrs Tommy Flanagan?

Yeah, that's the ticket!

[Vinca]

5. Hillary Izuzu . . . ROFLMAO.

:rofl:

[mopinko]

9. hillary izuzu

pssst- pass it on.

[TheZug]

6. I like Baroness Munchausen.

[VolcanoJen]

21. Hillary Isuzu!!!

Oh, that's good! ;-)

[MethuenProgressive]

4. Why is there no link to her original remark? Was she talking about Tulla, or some other incident?

Looks like the Obama followers are grasping at straws.

[roguevalley]

11. looks like you need to take a hard look at the FACTS. pictures

and witnesses galore. good luck.

[MethuenProgressive]

14. Still no proof her "quote" is real, or if real, about Tulza?

Good luck with this.

[tabasco]

19. Here's a link from Hillary's website.

Good luck with that.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=6553

"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."

[VolcanoJen]

20. Here's a link. With video. CBS News report about her Tuzla travels.

This link is the CBS news report:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxVsdS887HA

This link is the CBS news report, plus the second half of the video is Hillary herself recounting the sniper fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOsGo_HWP-c

She says, in the video, that the plane landing in Bosnia was in evasive maneuver to avoid incoming fire. That there was no greeting ceremony. That the First Lady's traveling party was told to run to their cars.

You'll see clearly in the video that nobody ran to their cars, that there was no tarmac sniper fire, and that there was, in fact, quite the ceremonial welcoming/greeting ceremony.

What do you think about Clinton's comments to the contrary, after watching that video?

[NorthernSpy]

12. The town is Tuzla...

And you were right about Richardson -- he's a great guy!


:hi:

[tabasco]

18. Link:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=6553

"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."

Hillary Clinton is a liar. Not exactly breaking news.

[Bonobo]

8. Here is some information that might shed light on the situation.

Happy to pass on to those that don't really understand what this all means yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

[Muttocracy]

10. Where's Hillary? 1997 photo trip to Bosnia

[NorthernSpy]

13. Hillary went to Tuzla March 25th, 1996...

Not 1997.

[David Zephyr]

15. Walter Mitty!

I guess there are a few of us who know Walter Mitty. Thanks for your post! :hi:

[krkaufman]

16. Ouch. Now that's ridicule. "Walter Mitty"... hitting right at her base of older voters ...

... who might actually get the reference. (Kinda like her earlier "Xerox" slam.)