Mar 25 2008
More on Hillary’s foreign policy “experience”
Well, it seems like the MSM picked up on Hillary’s Bosnian “embellishment”. Good. It’s apparently not an isolated incident. A few weeks ago, she also boasted to CNN that she “helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland”, as well as “drove out the snakes”. Well, I made that second part up, but she made up the first one. According to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province, who was directly involved in the negotiatons, Hillary’s claim is “a wee bit silly”, and, according to the Telegraph:
I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around,” he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely “the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets” during elections. “She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.“
Hmm. Cheerleader. She certainly does like to “enhance” her accomplishments, no? And once again, just like everything else in that clusterfuck of a campaign of hers, it doesn’t appear that they really thought these things out in the beginning. They were probably drunk on the “inevitability” narrative, figured they just had to throw out a few talking points on her so-called “experience” (which, in the realm of foreign policy is wafer-thin), and hope nobody would notice, instead of focusing on her real experiences and accomplishments, which aren’t nearly as broad as she’s making them out to be.
Seems like the Irish are not too thrilled about this. In the Irish version of the Independent, Kevin Myers has a satirical look at some of Hillary’s other “accomplishments” (h/t to Mike Eldred):
Before this interview formally began,” I said, after I had recovered, “you mentioned something about bringing down the Berlin Wall: what was that?”
She smiled again, and I leapt back 30 yards. She was well into her story by the time I had recovered my seat. “So, having told Mother Teresa just how to cope with the starving children of Calcutta, I returned to the Vatican, in my one-woman yacht. For the purposes of this trip, I was named Ellen MacArthur in honour of my mother, who took the Japanese surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri. In the Vatican, I could tell that the Pope was clearly worried. ‘What is it, Norman?’ I asked him. ‘You look kinda stressed.’
“The Pope shook his head sadly. He knew he could hide nothing from me. He often said I was J3 — a cross between Joan of Arc, Jane Austen, and Jane Fonda. The reason for his concern? World communism: it was about to triumph.
“Well, I’m the kind of woman who never ducks a challenge. So I told the Pope never to worry his little old head, and so I left Italy and set out for Europe. I went to the shipyard town of Denmark, where I spoke to the union leader, a tribal chief known to his people as ‘Luck Will Answer’, and told him that the Pope’s homeland of Hungary would light the fire of world freedom. I guess the Solubility Movement began there and then: I got the name from thinking how we should kind of dissolve communism, rather than confront it. The next year, I got the Nobel Prize for Peace: but for political reasons, I went by the name ‘Nelson Mandela.’”
Please,sombody, make her go away. Far away.
Posts
Read Christopher Hitchens 1999 book "No One Left to Lie To." Hillary and Chelsea made a trip to New Zealand in the mid-90s (I think) and Hillary told New Zealanders she was named after the guy who first summited Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. Except that Sir Edmund Hillary summitted Everest AFTER Hillary was already born. Snopes.com confirmed this incident and I’m surprised no one’s made a stink about it. Perhaps she was joking then. Then again, why would you make a joke like that. I don’t see the humor.
Glad to see someone’s spreading the word on this whopper. We, meaning my Irish wife and my in-laws, have been aghast at Clinton’s misrepresentation of her role in the Irish peace process from first time she floated the claim. I thought American skeptics had picked up on it too, but it wasn’t until recently I realized this one has gotten a pass in the MSM as well as less traditional media.
What I find most disturbing about the embellishments - this, the one about sniper fire in Bosnia, and another regarding her "long (nonexistent) friendship" with Benazir Bhutto - is that there’s no logical reason for them. She has a record, and it’s a respectable one. She doesn’t need to lie. It leads me to believe that she either believes what she’s saying and has some sort of memory problem, or she’s pathological.
How can we be convinced what she will tell us president will be accurate? We already have a president who can’t manage to tell the truth. Do we need another?
JD nothing like a Methodist claiming to bring peace to the Catholics and Protestants eh? If you’re gonna lie about being shot at, I mean come on. Make it a time when there weren’t witnesses and cameras rolling. Keep at it JD!!
Thanks for chiming in, everyone.
Mike, I have to say, though, that there’s not really much in her record to run on. Most of her public life has been as a First Lady, and although she can try to polish that turd as much as she can, there’s not a lot of meat and potatoes there. I think here putting "experience" as a central theme was a bad idea. It might work with those not really paying attention, but a lot of us know better. And thanks again, it was your comment over at GMD that inspired me to write this thread.