When Real Snipers Fire
Published April 08, 2008
But the sniper tale was neither a mistake nor misspeaking. Dodging snipers in Bosnia was a part of her speeches prepared with her staff in advance.
It seems that her campaign decided to pick some remote place that Hillary visited in the past, exaggerate the story, and use it to boost her “leadership” experience.
Of course, war-torn Bosnia was a great choice. Most people in America remember Bosnia for nothing else but news reports about a brutal war, bombings, and sniper fire that killed 100,000 people in the early 1990s.
Blinded by their own ignorance and willing to do anything to boost Hillary’s image, Clinton’s team completely forgot that the American media, a comedian, and a musician accompanied Hillary on that trip. They did not care that the war in Bosnia was already over when she arrived, or that Tuzla, the city that Hillary visited, was one of the most peaceful and safe places in Bosnia during the war.
“Incredible as it seems,” writes Frank Rich, “the professionals around Clinton — though surely knowing her story was false — thought she could tough it out.”
When Sinbad, the comedian on the trip to Bosnia, said that Hillary was lying about snipers, she said that Sinbad is just “a comedian.”
Charles Krauthammer calls Hillary’s “snipergate… a confabulation on a pathological scale.” By the way, “confabulation” is probably the best term for Hillary’s Bosnia lies. Encarta defines it as “giving fictitious accounts of past events, believing they are true, in order to cover a gap in the memory caused by a medical condition.”
Christopher Hitchen thinks that Hillary lied about her Bosnia trip either “a) without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above.”
When we expected that Hillary would try to forget her sniper lies as soon as possible, she used a recent appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to joke about her Bosnia sniper controversy.
“I was so worried I wasn’t going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire,” Hillary said.
Writing about Hillary’s deliberate sniper lies, Christopher Hitchens asked in Slate, “is there no such thing as shame? Is there no decency at last?”
Hillary proved yet again that she has no shame or decency. Why would she care if her lies, comments, and jokes are insulting millions of real victims of sniper fire in conflict zones around the world?
She is just a tired and sleep-deprived human being. Please forgive her.
- When Real Snipers Fire
- Published: April 08, 2008
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Politics: Elections and Candidates, Politics: International, Politics: U.S., Politics: War and Terrorism
- Writer: Savo Heleta
- Savo Heleta's BC Writer page
- Savo Heleta's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
You are absolutely and totally right about the experience of being the subject of hostile fire.
You never, ever forget it.
Ever.
And, unless you're a congenital liar, you won't "misspeak" about it, either.
Globalization has its fruits for democracy: had Mrs Clinton run in 1992 and misspoke similarly about a foreign venture into a country unknown to most of her electorate, maybe a few letters to the editors would have appeared but it would not have questioned her credibility. In 2008 you have a great chance that you have an eyewitness of any public event all over the world who can write in English and finds access to the internet. I have seen many comments in the blogosphere coming from Bosnia on this issue. I guess that the next American government as a global power will have to take into account the global public opinion more than every before. It may be better for the whole world.
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Synthesized memory, or confabulation, is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. We've all done it. We tell a story - true or made-up - about something that happened to us, it gets a reaction, so the next time we tell it we embellish it, and so on down the road, adding more and more details until time and distance make it hard to distinguish fact from fiction even to ourselves.
I have a very clear memory of playing 'doctor' at age 6 with a girl in my class which, for very good anatomical reasons which I won't go into but which you can probably guess at, cannot possibly be true.
The difference in Hillary's case, which she should have known, is that every public appearance she's made since, oh, probably at least 1991, is well-documented and easily checkable.
Perhaps she really believed that her 'memory' of the Tuzla trip was real. Whatever the truth of the matter, I would expect her to be more careful when making public statements about her past from now on.