A Tailspin of Lies and Hillpocrisy

So Hillary has responded to the revelation (video evidence) that she had been lying through her teeth about her Bosnia trip since the campaign began by saying she misspoke, and even blamed sleep deprivation. Now excuse me, because I'm apparently just a gullible voter, but usually a misstatement is when you fudge a word once, not when you repeatedly fabricate a story that is at the heart of your "experience" argument which in turn is at the heart of your campaign and all of your attacks against your opponent. Also, I don't think you can call it a misstatement when people raised questions about it weeks ago, and then you disparage them and say they were wrong, and continue to repeat the lies even more brazenly. If it was simply "misspeaking" you probably would have stopped yourself and thought back really hard to recall if any of it was true, but you didn't, even though all of your statements were completely false, not even close to being accurate. Not to mention you made similar repeated "misstatements" concerning all of your other main examples of experience too, now that seems kind of odd doesn't it? And blaming it on sleep deprivation? Have you had sleep deprivation since this campaign began and you started lying about your "superior experience"? Did sleep deprivation lead you to write these lies into your speeches? Did you fall asleep at the keyboard and your fingers went sleepwalking and added lies to your speeches, in speech after speech? C'mon now Hillary, talk to us like we aren't gullible children for a change.

As if her lies on top of lies weren't enough, last night in an interview with Fox News Hillary added barefaced hillpocrisy to the mix:

"I'm a human being. I made a mistake and owned up to it," Hillary told Greta Van Susteren. "But that's not what people talk to me about. When I'm out campaigning ... people want to talk about the economy and health care, and they want to know what are you going to do to get fix our country and get it back on track, and help my family and me.

"And that what I'm really engaged in. Because, you know, when you've been on a campaign for 14 months there's all kinds of other distractions, but at the end of the day this is a hiring decision," she said.

Okay, so first, "owned up to it" apparently means repeatedly lying about it, and disparaging those who gave conflicting accounts, and then lying some more, until you are faced with video evidence of your lies and you can't lie anymore, so then you lie again by saying you simply "misspoke" and blame it on sleep deprivation. Yeah, that sure sounds like "owning up to it" to me!

Second, she does this thing she always loves to do, and it is starting to annoy the hell out of me. She uses "people" to say what she wants to say. She'll say "that's not what people want to talk to me about", because she can't come out and say that that isn't what SHE wants to talk about. Watch some of her videos, she does it over and over again, when she goes on the attack, it is "people want to her about Obama's (supposed) lack of experience", or "people want to hear about how wonderful I would be as Commander-in-Chief", and every time something comes up she doesn't want to talk about suddenly "people don't want to talk about my taxes, they want to talk about the issues." She uses "people" as a scapegoat for everything, so she can claim she didn't bring it up, it is just "the will of the people." And let's not forget the fact that she has no problem providing people with questions she wants to be asked.

So fine, let's pretend Hillary really wants to not get distracted by these "trivial matters" like her lying about her experience, the very foundation of her candidacy and her attacks against Obama. But wait...wasn't Hillary just yesterday trying to revive the Rev. Wright fiasco to get the heat off her recently exposed lies? What about when your campaign immediately called for the head of Samantha Power for her silly off the record opinion of you? Was that more important than the issues? More important than health care? What about how every time you are feeling the heat you scream "Rezko!" like that hyped up, debunked crap will save you. Is that more important than the war in Iraq or the economy? C'mon Hillary, how do you expect us to take you seriously when in the same day you desperately try to revive the Rev. Wright smears against Obama to cover your own ass you go on Fox News of all places and say you want to get back to the issues because that is what is important? Hillary, you are the most pathetic example of a hypocrite that I think I've ever seen. You are so lucky the media never connects your statements in one minute to your contradictory statements in the very next, or you'd be in a big pot of trouble.

Update: Breaking new video evidence out that shows Hillary was indeed deep in a war zone during her Bosnia trip, check it out below, it is a miracle she even survived, what a war hero, that Hillary Clinton:



The horror, the horror.

Mythbusting Hillary: Lies On Top Of Lies

Amazingly enough, the MSM is actually responding to a story about Hillary’s blatant, chronic resume revisionism. The one they picked up on was the Bosnia story, thanks to Sinbad, blogosphere buzz, and the Washington Post fact-check article I posted a few days ago. Will this lead to a closer look, a vetting if you will, at Hillary’s false claims of superior experience? Maybe, maybe not, I won’t hold my breath, but I’m a little more hopeful now than I was a few days ago. Here is a transcript (with links and emphasis added by me) from The Today Show courtesy of The Huffington Post:

MATT LAUER: I still remember winning a Little League championship singlehandedly when I was ten, probably didn't happen. But this isn't the little league. This is someone running for President. There were reporters on the trip and she's using her experience as a deciding factor. How could this happen?

CHUCK TODD: It's worse than that, Matt. there have been reporters questioning her story on this a few weeks ago. One even reached out to the comedian Sinbad, who was also on this trip to get his recollection of it and it differed the First Lady. So somebody didn't scrub that speech. It was in prepared remarks last week. Not only did she say it with certitude, but it was in her prepared text. So this was a real sort of bone-headed mistake on the campaign's part at a time when everybody is looking at everything so carefully.

LAUER: And does it make people go back and start to question everything she said?

TODD: Right. She's been talking about her role in the Irish Peace process, she's been talking about her role in children's health care. So I think all of this is going to invite some renewed scrutiny on some of her claims of experience. And it's at a time when she wants the focus to be on Barack Obama and questions about him.

Chuck Todd was right on the money this morning, it wasn't that she misspoke, she said it multiple times, with conviction, it was written into her speeches, and used it as solid evidence of experience as she attacked Obama for supposedly not having enough experience. On top of that, even after it was first questioned, and reporters got conflicting accounts from Sinbad, she didn't look back at the event and go "you know, perhaps I didn't remember that correctly, maybe I should stop saying those things.” No, instead she brushed off Sinbad's contradicting claims as ridiculous because they are coming from a comedian, while repeated her lies yet again (see video below). And THEN the irrefutable video evidence comes out, and oops, who was blatantly lying, over and over again while trying to support a false claim of superior experience? That isn’t a misstatement, that isn’t a gaffe, that is a purposeful attempt use a bogus story to misinform the public. It is also much harder to brush off as an accidental gaffe when she has made similar lies, time and time again, on her involvement with passing NAFTA, with passing the FMLA and SCHIP, with her experiences in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Rwanda, etc. This is a clear pattern of deception, and paired with her shameless attacks against Obama it is particularly disturbing and despicable.

Hopefully the media won’t buy into this “misstatement” Clinton Shuffle, hopefully they’ll pick up on the pattern, the other documented cases of her exaggerations and distortions, and hopefully they’ll connect the dots, and show the voters that her whole campaign is based on lies, and indeed she is the one who hasn’t been vetted. Maybe the media can redeem itself somewhat, maybe not, who knows. Here is a transcript from The Early Show this morning:

HARRY SMITH: This is so interesting because her campaign comes down and says this is a misstatement. Is this Pinocchio syndrome, an exaggeration, or a misstatement of fact?

JEFF GREENFIELD: Funny you mention that because The Washington Post which does fact checks based on how many Pinocchios a statement is worth gave this one four. And the reason really, it's the contrast between the vividness of her memory and the damning nature of the videotape. If she had said I visited the Balkans and I met with our troops, she did. Fine. No problem. But it's the nature -- it's like a fish story where the fish grows every time you tell the story. And in this case, she's so clear and vivid about what she remembers compared to the reality that it frankly reminds me of the old Groucho Marx line, who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes? It's an embarrassment.

Here is the video of her basically saying that Sinbad is full of crap, while going on to repeat the lie, yet again. Accidental misstatement? Not a chance:

Mythbusting Hillary: Experience (Bosnia Edition) --Updated

[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.

Mythbusting Hillary: Experience (Sinbad Speaks Out Edition)

[Nearly all of Hillary's argument that she has what it takes to be Commander-in-Chief rests on completely exaggerated accomplishments and events taken from her First Lady days. Check out the "Full Debunk Edition" of Mythbusting Hillary for more details, but for now here is an insider look at her Bosnia claim, from fellow Commander-in-Chief threshold-passer himself, Sinbad:]

Sinbad Unloads on Hillary Clinton
by Mary Ann Akers

Finally, the Barack Obama campaign has found a big gun to help shoot down Hillary Rodham Clinton's self-proclaimed foreign policy experience. And he may be the wackiest gun of all: Sinbad, the actor, who has come out from under a rock to defend Obama in the war over foreign policy credentials.

Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she's taking much grief on the campaign trail.

Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.

In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the "scariest" part of the trip was wondering where he'd eat next. "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'"

Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. "They said there might be sniper fire," Clinton said.

Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn't remember that, either.

"I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or 'Oh, God, I hope I'm going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.'"

In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady."

Say what? As Sinbad put it: "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.'"