Letters to the Editor
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@billcap
billcap: "Thanks for the citations. It seems to me the direct fire is still clearly a simple misstatement."
I hate to psychoanalyze Hillary Clinton's motives for each of her statements, but what I see is the "sniper fire" claim evolving over time, based on Clinton's desire to make the story sound impressive. I also think that she was emboldened by nobody calling her on it the first time. Perhaps she slipped into a comfort zone where she allowed herself to think that nobody would break out the video or otherwise check her story. But since there is no way of knowing what was going through her mind, I prefer to stick to the facts of what she said and what actually happened.
I don't personally think the "sniper fire" claim was so much a direct lie so much as a gradually exaggerated claim, which is almost as bad, but more in a "tall tale" way than a "lying to your face while wagging a finger" way. That is my personal take on it. I do think the overall story was a lie in the "tall tale" sense, where you start out with an essentially true story and then keep adding embellishments until the impression left by the story is quite false.
It's like if you went out in a boat and there were some clouds on the horizon and you caught a medium sized fish after a brief struggle. On the news that morning, you heard there might be a major rainstorm, and indeed it does start to sprinkle as you're rowing back to shore. Okay, so you start out with a bunch of facts. But you come home and you tell the story and you say "there was a rainstorm." Well, that's not a lie. Then a few days later you tell the story to some friends, and you say you caught a big fish after a tough struggle during a rainstorm. Now the story is getting misleading. Then, a few weeks later, your story is that you had an epic struggle with an immense fish that you caught during severe weather conditions.
Then it turns out some people in a nearby boat were videotaping it all, and you were just sitting there catching a fish with some clouds in the background.
So you say "I misspoke." And people say you're lying, and you say, "Well, I *did* struggle with the fish, and it *was* a large fish (I got a whole meal out of it!), and the weather *was* scary (I was afraid that morning when I read the report), and it *did* rain (it sprinkled as I was rowing to shore!)." And you use all that to prove that you weren't lying.
I think that's kind of parallel. Just my opinion.
billcap: "As the Washington Post article says, other passengers recall a "steeper than usual" approach. I give her a bye for "evasive", guessing she didn't know the "steeper than usual" approach was normal for that area and I think it's fair to call that "evasive"
You can give her a pass on that, but I don't think it's realistic to expect or demand that other people do. The detail makes it SOUND like an action-movie scenario, and I believe that is the reason Clinton provided that detail. To me, "evasive" implies that there's something tangible being evaded. But that's just me.
billcap: "I give her lying for "corkscrew" as I don't think she'd honestly forget or blend or muddy that memory."
Fair enough.
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@billcap part 2
billcap: "on wearing a flak jacket--no exaggeration or lie. Agreed to be true."
Sure. But let's face it, nobody is saying Clinton's entire story is a completely fabricated thing, and I don't think anybody here has said the wearing-a-flak-jacket detail is a lie. It is agreed that Clinton really did land in an area of Bosnia that was not too far from war zones and that various protective precautions were taken. Nobody contests that. What is being contested is the totality of details (some of them true, some of them stretched, and some of them outright false) that, accumulated, paint an entirely different picture than the reality of the situation.
If I say, "I went shopping for groceries today, then I went to the post office and bought stamps, and then I drove by a burning building and saved a family!" and then it turns out that the part about the burning building is a lie, what purpose does it serve to say, "Yeah but look -- I have bags of groceries and a packet of stamps! That proves that key parts of my story are true!" ?
Similarly, everybody agrees that key parts of Clinton's story are true. But the untrue parts remain problematic.
billcap: "On the ceremony, I give her I don't know."
Really? Clinton says "the ceremony was canceled, we ran out with our heads down, we rushed to our vehicles." Then video shows a ceremony. So why do you give an "I don't know"? Maybe she misremembered, but that is a hell of a detail to misremember. I will tell you that personally, if I were ever in a situation where I had to run from a plane with my head ducked down, because of the possibility of being shot at, I would never ever forget it.
You also have to remember that this stuff was written down in Clinton's speech. It was put down on paper and double-checked by her campaign staff. It was part of a calculated, crafted plan to tout Clinton's foreign-policy experience. This is more than just some random, fallibly sketchy memories.
billcap: "I can also see how someone would reasonably think she's lying about it."
That's a fair compromise from you, thanks.
billcap: "In the end, I stand by the argument that the jumping up and down on the actual sniper fire is unwarranted."
I'll grant you that. Her initial statements show that she wasn't trying to say there was actual sniper fire. Her later statements do not so much claim there was sniper fire, as imply it while leaving open the interpretation that it was just a possibility. Still, as accurate storytelling goes, I'd call it irresponsible or misleading.
billcap: "closure?"
I'm fine with having closure on this as long as Clinton supporters aren't trying to claim the whole thing amounts to nothing at all, or trying to claim equivalence between Clinton's Bosnia story and the vastly more minor inaccuracy of a campaign mailer that refers to Obama as having been a professor when he war really only just an esteemed teacher, or whatever.
Ultimately I don't put Clinton's Bosnia story in anywhere near the same category as what's being said by Bush about Iraq, or Mukasey about waterboarding, or by anybody else about anything else that really matters. The Bosnia thing was in 1996, it's part of Clinton's campaign strategy, it's just a weekly blip on the big political radar. But by the same token, I sure as heck don't want to let people get away with dismissing it entirely in the same breath that they make a big deal out of Obama not having a "These Colors Do Not Run" T-shirt or Michelle Obama saying that she loves America "a lot" instead of "a whole heckuva lot" which is what she would have said if she were a True American Patriot. Etc.
Anyway......time to exercise. It's a really nice day out.