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Clinton forced to admit she exaggerated tale of Bosnian sniper fire |
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Written by Ewen MacAskill
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 |
Hillary Clinton has been forced to admit she exaggerated claims of coming
under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia in the 1990s after video footage
showed the then first lady walking calmly from her plane.
The Clinton campaign played down the episode as a "misstatement" and a "minor
blip". But it was seized on by supporters of her rival for the Democratic
nomination, Barack Obama, as further evidence of Clinton inflating her foreign
policy experience during her time in the White House.
The row centres on a comment she made during a campaign stop in Washington DC
last week. Keen to talk up her experience, she spoke vividly about a harrowing
and dangerous trip she made in March 1996 to Tuzla airport, in 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 said.
However, reporters and others accompanying Clinton recalled the landing at Tuzla
as being routine. And on Monday night, after days of argument, CBS settled the
matter, unearthing film confirming there had been no sniper fire.
The outcome was a rare retreat by Clinton, the first time since she began
campaigning more than a year ago that she has publicly admitted making a
mistake.
Clinton, at a press conference in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, today said: "So I
made a mistake. That happens. It shows I'm human, which for some people is a
revelation."
The footage showed Clinton wearing a coat over a flak jacket, with daughter
Chelsea behind, stepping off a US transport plane from Germany. Far from ducking
and weaving to evade sniper fire, she walked upright at a stately pace across
the runway. She waved to US soldiers nearby. In contrast with her claim that a
greeting ceremony had been cancelled, she was met by a group that included an
eight-year-old girl, Emina Bicakcic, who read her a poem and kissed her.
Faced with the video evidence, Clinton acknowledged on Monday that she had made
a mistake.
The row is the latest in almost daily personal exchanges between the Clinton and
Obama camps. The Obama campaign team said her account of Tuzla was part of a
pattern in which she exaggerated her foreign and domestic policy experience. It
comes soon after questions were raised about her claim to have played a pivotal
part in the Northern Ireland peace process.
With the race slipping away from Clinton, her team has redoubled its efforts,
with its researchers scouring Obama's background. The Obama team, smarting from
his failure to finish Clinton off in the Ohio and Texas contests on March 3, has
pressed ahead with the negative campaigning it once claimed to abhor.
The row began on the eve of the Texas and Ohio primaries when Clinton broadcast
her "red phone" ad, asking the public who they would prefer to answer the White
House phone in a crisis at 3am. The implication was that she was the more
experienced from her eight years as first lady.
The comedian Sinbad took issue with her version of the Tuzla trip. He was with
her, along with the singer Sheryl Crow, to entertain US troops at the air base.
Sinbad, an Obama supporter, in an interview with the Washington Post, said the
biggest concern facing them in Tuzla was "do we eat here or at the next place?"
Clinton dismissed Sinbad's account, saying at George Washington University:
"He's a comedian." She told reporters she had often had to go to places deemed
"too dangerous' for president Bill Clinton. She visited Tuzla after the Dayton
peace agreement that ended the conflict but when there were still sporadic
outbreaks of violence. In contrast to her claim that she went to places regarded
as too dangerous for her husband, he had visited the same base two months
earlier.
Source: Guardian Unlimited (UK)
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