Hillary's Whopper

Gary Bauer: We've focused a lot in the past week on Senator Barack Obama's credibility, but we haven't forgotten about Hillary. It's not breaking news to say that politicians often exaggerate, but here is an example of Hillary's disconnect from reality. For the past few weeks, she's told campaign audiences that she faced down death during a visit to Bosnia when she was First Lady. To hear Hillary tell it, her plane "landed under sniper fire," the formal greeting ceremony was scrubbed and "instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

This is all part of her attempt to portray herself as tough, "ready on day one" and experienced enough to be commander-in-chief. But now several folks who attended the trip with her are all saying that the scene Hillary has been describing didn't happen. According to the Washington Post, "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."

John Pomfret, a reporter who covered the trip, said, "As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened." In fact, pictures taken of the event on the tarmac show Hillary and Chelsea, surrounded by smiling dignitaries, bending over to kiss a small girl who had just finished reading a poem. The comedian Sinbad, who was on the trip with Mrs. Clinton, along with singer Sheryl Crow, told the Post, "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.' What kind of president [referring to then-President Bill Clinton] 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.'"

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