Hillary Clinton Admits She Misspoke About Bosnia Trip While Asking Philadelphia Daily News for Endorsement

Related Post: Was Hillary Clinton Under Sniper Fire? Statements in Iraq Speech Disputed by Many Sources

Hillary Clinton Admits She Misspoke While Asking Philadelphia Daily News for Endorsement

• In her Iraq War speech last week Clinton said upon arrival in Bosnia in 1996 that "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."
• CBS Nightly News said "Those of us on that trip recall it differently. Instead of running for cover, Clinton was greeted by a school girl, who read her a poem of welcome" and the Washington Post published a photo of the greeting.
• The following is the CBS video of Hillary arriving in Bosnia on March 25, 1996:

• On March 24, 2008 Clinton met with the editorial boards of the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer seeking an endorsement by the Daily News editorial board.
• Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News writes that in his blog that "This afternoon, in the session with Daily News editorial writers and reporters (and some Inquirer staffers as well) in a conference room at the Daily News and Inquirer Building, I asked the presidential candidate about these discrepancies and also showed her a copy of the photo -- at the top of this post -- of her on the tarmac that day.

She was quick to answer, jumping in before I was fully finished with the
question. Here's here response in its entirety:

"Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not what I was told. I was
told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my memory of it.

I followed-up, noting that the episode has raised questions about her credibility on foreign policy. She responded:

"No, 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."

Sources:

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080325_Hillarys_Bosnia_misstatement.html http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080325.htm

Related Post: Was Hillary Clinton Under Sniper Fire? Statements in Iraq Speech Disputed by Many Sources