[Here is some further mythbusting of Hillary's hyped up Bosnia war zone claims. In response to Sinbad's mythbusting of her past comments she repeated the lies (in true Bush, or Bill, fashion, when caught in a lie, repeat lie again and again), saying they were taking sniper fire and that she was rushed into a vehicle to retreat to a safer location. See the picture of her apparently running for cover with her head down below:]
Hillary's Balkan Adventures, Part II
by Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post
Greeting ceremony, Tuzla military airport, Bosnia, March 25, 1996.
"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, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.
Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down."
There are numerous problems with Clinton's version of events.
The Facts
As a reporter who visited Bosnia soon after the December 1995 Dayton Peace agreement, I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, particularly at a heavily fortified U.S. Air Force base, such as Tuzla. Contrary to the claims of Hillary Clinton and former Army secretary Togo West, Bosnia was not "too dangerous" a place for President Clinton to visit in early 1996. In fact, the first Clinton to visit the Tuzla Air Force base was not Hillary, but Bill, on January 13, 1996.
Had Hillary Clinton's plane come "under sniper fire" in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including the Washington Post's John Pomfret, covered her 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.
"There is peace now," Emina told Clinton, according to Pomfret's report in the Washington Post the following day, "because Mr. Clinton signed it. All this peace. I love it."
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.
Among the U.S. officials on hand to greet Clinton at the airport was Maj. Gen. William Nash, the commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia. Nash told me that he was unaware of any security threat to Clinton during her eight-hour stay in Tuzla. He said, however, that Clinton had a "busy schedule" and may have got the impression that she was being hurried on her way.
According to Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with the singer Sheryl Crow, the "scariest" part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of The Post, "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'" Sinbad questioned the premise behind the Clinton version of events. "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."
Replying to Sinbad earlier this week, Clinton dismissed him as "a comedian." Her campaign referred me to Togo West, who was also on the trip and is a staunch Hillary supporter. West could not remember "sniper fire" himself, but said there was no reason to doubt the First Lady's version of events. "Everybody's perceptions are different," he told me.
Clinton made no mention of "sniper fire" in her autobiography "Living History," published in 2003, although she did say there were "reports of snipers" in the hills around the airport.
The Pinocchio Test
Clinton's tale of landing at Tuzla airport "under sniper fire" and then running for cover is simply not credible. Photographs and video of the arrival ceremony, combined with contemporaneous news reports, tell a very different story. Four Pinocchios.
Update (TPIP): Here is a video, showing the greeting ceremony, and then showing her repeating the lie of how there was no ceremony because she military transport had to come in fast to avoid the sniper fire and after they hit the ground she had to run straight to the cars for cover:
You'd think that would be a pretty devastating lie for a campaign built on purportedly superior "experience", akin to Al Gore claiming to invent the internet, if only Gore had actually made that claim, and if Gore had actually had no hand in creating the internet, and if Gore had based his entire presidential campaign on his superior computer programming skills. But alas, the media will be completely silent on it, as usual. Gosh, poor Hillary the media just hates her SO much! Totally out to get her..
Update (3/26): Here is an audio clip of an interview with the pilot and commander of the flight crew on Hillary's Bosnia trip. Turns out, there was no sniper fire, the base was completely safe and secure, they did not do any special evasive landing, his crew never told her or anyone to sit on their flak jackets, and in case I missed this before, he also pointed out that contrary to her repeated comments that she was the first high profile American to go to Bosnia after the peace accord, the President and the Secretary of Defense actually went before her.
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