-
Posted
Monday, March 24, 2008 11:46 AM
| By
Christopher Beam
Yesterday marked possibly our favorite chapter in possibly our favorite subplot of the 2008 election—the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s 1996 trip to Bosnia. Clinton’s story, in which she describes being hustled off the tarmac because of warnings of sniper fire, had already been pecked to death. The Washington Post’s indispensable “Fact Checker” ripped her version apart, as did Sinbad, who was along for the ride. (I love how news stories identify him as “the comedian Sinbad,” as if to differentiate him from all the other Sinbads out there.)
But yesterday the Jed Report issued the coup de grace, with a mashed-together faux trailer of the hypothetical film “Hillary in Tuzla.” The juxtaposition of Clinton saying "we were basically told to run to our cars" with video of an unhurried greeting ceremony on the runway is fairly withering. If that’s not enough to get Clinton to stop telling her now-thoroughly debunked version of the story, I’m not sure what will.
Update 1:14 p.m.: In a noontime conference call, Howard Wolfson read from "contemporaneous accounts" of Clinton's trip, which confirmed the gist of her story, that Bosnia was a dangerous place at the time. But he doesn't dispute the challenge to her specific anecdote about running off the tarmac: "It is possible in
most recent instance she discussed this that she misspoke with regard to the exit from the plane," he said.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?