Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

The following video tape is rather humiliating to Hillary. She is so anxious to claim "foreign policy" experience that she exaggerates. Remember the first class bull she was spreading about her role in the Northern Ireland peace process? She claims she was instrumental in it and the record shows she did nothing. Now CBS unpacks Hillary's claim about being Bosnia and having to run for cover due to snipers. CBS was there and still had the film. Hillary's story was pure rubbish. Her handlers tried to cover up by claiming that what she really meant was that there were snipers off in the hills somewhere. Right!

Given my choice between Obama and Hillary I'd take Hillary, though neither one appeals to me. But Hillary is such a nasty character that I can't help but enjoy it when she is shown up this way. Watch the video for yourself.



Update: It appears the more Clinton's campaign tries to justify this the worse it gets. Her campaign staff claimed she really meant there snipers in the hills nearby. But Hillary herself had a different excuse. She claimed "we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire." So first we had sniper fire taking place and running for cover. Then we had sniper fire but somewhere else while moving quickly. But Major General William Nash, who welcomed Hillary that day said there wasn't even the threat of sniper fire. And the video of the event didn't show a hurried event as they moved indoors for safety. The reality is that the vist came five months after the conflict ended.

Elsewhere Clinton claimed she merely "misspoke" and to prove it she said that in previous descriptions of the event she said nothing about running from sniper fire or the threat of it. And in her overprice biography that was the case. But on the campaign trail, in two other incidents, she did describe it this way. In Texas she told a crowd the welcoming ceremony had to be moved inside due to snipers -- that wasn't true. It appears she has made the sniper claim before so this hardly qualifies as misspeaking. I think she trotted out the calmer version of the story first to see if she got any flak. When it didn't happen she ratcheted it up a notch or two to be more dramatic thinking it was safe. Only she got caught. The first lie was a problem but the lies used to cover up the original lie only makes it worse.

Hillary's problem, when it comes to image, is that she doesn't have a good reputation when it comes to her character. She is too easily portrayed as a power-hungry politician who will do anything to get what she wants. And incidents like this only feed that image.

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