Hillary Did Not Lie
- 03.25.2008 - 12:07 PMHillary Clinton needs no adversary. She is self-destructing while Barack Obama lounges poolside in St. Thomas. For some reason she thought that her crisis management credentials would be bolstered by an account of her running for cover. So she used an actual trip she made to Bosnia in 1996 as material and painted a scene out of a Bruce Willis movie:
“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia. 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.”
She left out the whooping chopper blades.
As it turns out this scene made it onto the small screen, in the form of a CBS News report. The footage of Hillary and daughter Chelsea engaged in a leisurely meet-and-greet on the tarmac is now up on youtube. There’s no sniper fire, but there is an 8-year-old girl with braids and Hillary does have to duck down a little to receive her hug and kiss.
Yes, we understand that people have bad memories. Yes, we are reconciled to the fact that politicians often have conveniently bad memories. But Hillary has an excellent memory, and furthermore she wasn’t lying. This kind of tall tale cut from whole cloth is the special realm of the Clintons, and it is an indication of a dangerously deluded mind. When Hillary recounted her great escape, she believed every word of it.
Just consider the mental hocus-pocus that goes into concocting a story such as this one. Hillary would never have made this story up if she realized that it could be so easily disproved. Given that her landing in Bosnia was attended by her teenage daughter, a few celebrities, and many members of the media, the only way for her to have gone through with this fabrication was to somehow believe it. Anything short of that full commitment would have allowed her to see that the narrative would be instantly discredited. Consider, too, how slight an impression the trip to this war-torn land must have made on Hillary in order for her to manipulate it so. Furthermore, this statement does not seem to have been an off-the-cuff comment. She calculatingly put it out there in order to achieve a desired effect. This was considered.
People talk a lot about “Hillary Derangement Syndrome”— a pathological hatred for all things Hillary. But I think HDS works better as a diagnosis for the condition from which the senator herself suffers.
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March 25th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Hillary’s war story is stunning mostly because it’s so provably false. But look at it this way — Al Gore claimed that he was instrumental in the development of the Internet and almost was elected President. Then Al moved on to making up things about global warming and won the Nobel Peace Prize. John Kerry had a pretty active imagination about his war service and came reasonably close to winning the Presidency.
Maybe Hillary has been warped by her years around Bill, who has redefined terms such as “sex” and the meaning of the word “is.” Instead of backing off the story, Hillary could have offered a new definition of “sniper fire.”
March 25th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
[…] Abe Greenwald at Commentary weighs in: Yes, we understand that people have bad memories. Yes, we are reconciled to the fact […]
March 25th, 2008 at 1:22 PM
The Clinton’s, both, are pathological liars. I would agree they believe every lie they have spun. which makes it even scarier that there are people considering her as Prez.
As for Obama.
The Dems have an abyssmal choice for their candidate.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:54 PM
I always felt kind of bad for the Al Gore/Internet thing. He really was involved in approving some of the early DARPA funding that ultimately became the internet. That really was more of a misspeaking than a fabrication.
Still, he made up plenty of stuff, too. Like clearing the land in Tennessee with an axe (yeah, we have things like tractors and chainsaws now, Al).
March 25th, 2008 at 5:43 PM
Let’s be fair to Hillary. I have no doubt that she believed the sniper story. But psychologists have long established that all of us have false memories. See for example “The Myth of Repressed Memory,” by Elizabeth Loftus (the world authority on false memories) and Katherine Ketcham (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), or the more recent “The Science of False Memory” by C.J. Brainerd and V.E. Reyna (Oxford University Press, 2005). We’re not all crazy! One could argue that Easter is the result of a false memory. I point out in my own book, “The Physics of Christianity,” (Doubleday, 2007), that if one rejects the claim that Jesus rose from the dead — I imagine that most readers of Contentions do — then one should believe false memories are the most likely explanation of why Jesus’s disciples were willing to face death in the belief that He did in fact rise from the dead.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:10 PM
Frank:
Place your hands where I can see them, and step away from the bong.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:31 PM
Come on I saw the Hildabeast low crawling clutching her M-60 as she fought off hoardes of screaming Serbian low life male pig types who were intent on ethnic cleansing. As the Hildabeast fired belt after belt into their ranks she threw herself in front of her daughter to protect her from the incomming RPG and AK fire. As the military cowered in their bunkers the Hildabeast poured a seemingly unending stream of fire into the enemy until the M-60 barrel melted. So she drew she Kbar and engaged in hand to hand combat with the foul enemy, who bore GOP buttons. Yes she proved to the entire world that you can’t keep a Rose law firm parnter down that day!
March 26th, 2008 at 3:13 AM
Has anyone asked her if these recollections are, ah, “seared, seared” into her mind?
It might be part of a Democratic candidate syndrome which affects all of them!
March 26th, 2008 at 8:25 AM
There has not been a clear demarcation between “lies” and “statements by Democrats” for some time.
March 26th, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Lighten up Hillary haters.Would you be as sanguine for Obamas’s or McCain’s missteps as you are for Hillary’s?