Hillary "misspoke"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear; it seems that Hilary Clinton has over-egged the pudding again. This time she was speaking about Iraq and was again trying to show how experienced she was. She described a visit to Bosnia in 1996, when husband Bill was still in the White House and probably glad she was on a different continent - well it probably gave him a chance to get to grips with exciting new areas of policy (or maybe just an exciting area of an intern). These are her words: "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."

The truth is somewhat different, here's CBS's report on her speech and what actually happened on the visit...






So let's examine that extract from Hilary Clinton's speech:

"I remember landing under sniper fire." - No sniper fire - so either a lie or a delusion
"There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport" - True there was meant to be a greeting ceremony - and indeed there was one
"we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." - No, you shook hands with at least one girl, received a card from her, chatted to her and received a kiss on both cheeks from her. All the while, you, Chelsea and several others were like you, smiling and looking completely unconcerned about the possibility of sniper fire.


So did Hilary Clinton know she was lying but hoped to get away with it, or just like Tony Blair is she convinced that if she says it it must have happened that way or is her memory so faulty that she truly cannot remember if she came under sniper fire or not? All of these are possible explanations and none are ideal characteristics of a potential President of the US.


Hilary Clinton has insisted that she had simply misspoken, characterising the false claim as a “minor blip” among the “millions of words” she spoke every day. Asked about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News’ editorial board, she said: “I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book...You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement”


You may be wondering about my use of the phrase "over-egged the pudding again", well she has previously tried to claim a key role in the bringing of peace to Northern Ireland and in opening Macedonia’s borders to Kosovo refugees.

Then there is the named after Sir Edmund Hillary story, which you can read all about at the ever wonderful Snopes.com.