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Title: Hillary's Balkan Adventures, Part II
Source:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com
URL Source: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact ... rys_balkan_adventures_par.html
Published: Mar 22, 2008
Author: http://blog.washingtonpost.com
Post Date: 2008-03-22 13:15:20 by robin
Keywords: None
Views: 344
Comments: 9
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. (Updated below) 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. See clarification below. 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. UPDATE Friday 6:45 p.m. Lissa Muscatine, who served as Hilary Clinton's chief speechwriter in 1996 and accompanied her on the Bosnia trip, feels that I have failed to provide a full picture of what took place. She gave me her "vivid recollections" of the arrival in Tuzla, which I quote below: UPDATE Saturday 8:45 a.m. Gen. Nash says that I misquoted him in saying he was unaware of any "security threat" to the First Lady. While he was unaware of any "sniper threat," he now tells me there were a couple of "security concerns" that day, which he found out about after returning to his headquarters after greeting Clinton at the airport. There was a "non-specific report" of a possible truck bomb in the area. The military also had information that "some of the communications associated with the First Lady's visit were being monitored." "In both cases, we took appropriate security action," said Nash, adding that Clinton's visit was not disrupted. Anybody else with first-hand memories of Clinton's Tuzla trip, please send them along. 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. Poster Comment: Hillary Clinton has cited her experiences as First Lady as preparation for those 3 a.m. phone calls that she expects to receive as commander-in-chief. It is true that she traveled to some eighty foreign countries, including troublespots like Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Rwanda. But did she play a "major role" in the foreign policy decision-making of the Clinton administration, as she has been claiming on the campaign trail? The Obama campaign has accused the New York senator of "gross overstatements." The Clinton camp has responded with "fact sheets" defending her record on northern Ireland and Kosovo. I dealt with Clinton's claim to have been "intimately involved" in the northern Ireland peace process a few weeks ago in this posting. The former northern Ireland peace negotiator, George Mitchell, told me that Clinton was "not involved directly" in the diplomatic negotiations that led to the landmark April 1998 Good Friday agreement on power-sharing. On the other hand, Mitchell credited Clinton with taking an intelligent interest in the issues and getting acquainted with many of the key players. A former northern Ireland chief minister, David Trimble, described Clinton as a "cheerleader" for the peace process rather than a "principal player." I think that is accurate. During her six trips to northern Ireland as First Lady, Clinton gave speeches and met with women from both sides of the ethnic divide. Her time in northern Ireland certainly gave her first-hand insights into the complexity of ethnic disputes that will come in useful if she is elected president, but she was hardly a "major" player in the peace process. The issue of Macedonia and Kosovo is slightly more complicated. During a televised debate in January, Clinton claimed that she had "negotiated" with the Macedonian government to persuade it to re-open its border with Kosovo during the NAT0 air war against Yugoslavia in May 1999. The Macedonian had effectively sealed off the border at the beginning of May to curb a massive influx of Albanian refugees who were being driven out of Kosovo by Serb militiamen. A detailed look at the chronology shows that Clinton misspoke when she talked about getting the Macedonian authorities to "open their border again." Contemporary news accounts show that the border was re-opened on May 13, the day before Clinton arrived in Macedonia, but only a handful of refugees crossed over. As news spread of the border re-opening following Clinton's visit, thousands more refugees crossed over into Macedonia In her most recent remarks on the subject, to NPR, Clinton backed away from the border "negotiation" claim. Instead she said that she had met with Macedonian leaders and "helped to persuade them - there were other factors at work - that it would be in their interest and it would be the right thing to do to let more refugees in." This is a more accurate statement of what took place. During her one-day trip to Macedonia on May 14, Clinton toured a refugee camp and held discussions with Macedonian leaders, at which she encouraged them to maintain an open-door policy toward Albanian refugees. Other governments, notably the European Union, were exerting similar pressure on the Macedonians. Clinton's former chief of staff, Melanne Verveer, told me that the Clinton party flew into the Macedonian capital Skoplje from Naples aboard a military C-130. For security reasons, they had to be back in Naples by sundown. Verveer sat in on the talks with Macedonian president Kiro Gligorov. She says Clinton pressed Gligorov "to keep the borders open" and brought along a "package of economic assistance" for Macedonia. Verveer described Clinton's role in foreign affairs as "unprecedented" for a First Lady, particularly on human rights issues. I also spoke to the former Macedonian ambassador to the United States, Ljubica Acevska, who encouraged Clinton to visit the refugee camps. Acevska recalled "a very, very chaotic" situation on the border with Kosovo. She said the border had been "closed temporarily" because of the chaos, but "reopened" shortly before Clinton's arrival in Macedonia on May 14. "Once we got the refugee situation under control, the border was re-opened," she told me. Acevska said that Clinton's offer of economic assistance "encouraged" the Macedonian government to keep the border open. As is often the case, this dispute boils down to a question of semantics. Hillary Clinton certainly did play a "role" in U.S. foreign policy during the 90s that went somewhat beyond the role traditionally assumed by First Ladies. She can fairly claim to have picked up a lot of knowledge about the world that will help to inform her decisions as president. On the other hand, she was hardly a "major" player in the foreign policy of her husband's administration. In contrast to the health care issue, her influence on foreign policy was largely peripheral. Candidate Watch
Hillary's Balkan Adventures, Part II
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. The Facts
I was on the plane with then First Lady Hillary Clinton for the trip from Germany into Bosnia in 1996. We were put on a C17-- a plane capable of steep ascents and descents -- precisely because we were flying into what was considered a combat zone. We were issued flak jackets for the final leg because of possible sniper fire near Tuzla. As an additional precaution, the First Lady and Chelsea were moved to the armored cockpit for the descent into Tuzla. We were told that a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac might be canceled because of sniper fire in the hills surrounding the air strip. From Tuzla, Hillary flew to two outposts in Bosnia with gunships escorting her helicopter.
The Pinocchio Test
Candidate Watch
Hillary's Balkan Adventures
Visiting refugee camp in Macedonia, May 1999. ."There is no doubt that I played a major role in many of the foreign policy decisions."
--Hillary Clinton, interview with NPR, March 13, 2008. The Facts
The Pinocchio Test
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#1. To: aristeides, Brian S, iconoclast, Elliott Jackalope, vast right wing conspirator (#0)
Remember when Hillary was called a "congenital liar"?
All zionists are congenital liars.
#3. To: nobody (#2)
She must have realized someone would check the facts, especially these days with the internet. She's a stupid, congenital liar. What kind of president would she make? Such poor judgment.
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#2. To: robin (#1)
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