Hillary Clinton calls Bosnia sniper story a mistake

[DRoseDARs]

Sen Hillary Clinton, in an effort to win back the confidence of potential supporters on the left, has released her war journals on Daily Kos. It's a harrowing tale of tragic loss and determined survival. America's First Lady as American Badass It'll bring tears to your eyes...

...as you laugh uncontrollably at how mercilessly this DKos poster pokes fun at the senator's warzone fantasy.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/26/213123/601/105/485014

The War Journals of Hillary Clinton, Vol. 1
by tripletee
Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 08:54:51 PM PDT

(From the diaries. kos)

As bullets clawed the air around us and screams echoed down the rubble-strewn tarmac, I felt almost peaceful.

It was a simple mission, they had told me - get in, shake a few hands and mouth a few platitudes, get out. Simple. Yeah.

Things had started going wrong while we were still in the air and only gotten worse from there. So here we were, pinned down, choking on the acrid tang of cordite and the heady scent of human blood. The mission was even simpler now: survive. Whatever the cost, survive.

There was a grunt and a clatter of equipment as Sinbad threw himself down at my side. Sweat glistened on his bare arms, and I could see tendons contracting and relaxing as he squeezed off bursts from his M14. The motion was hypnotic, like a snake about to strike. Perhaps, when all this was over-

No. Concentrate. Focus on the mission. Survive.

A shout from my left drew my head around. Sheryl Crow, guitar still strapped to her back, had taken cover behind a haphazard pile of decaying corpses. Her hair, once lustrous, now lank and greasy, was held back from her eyes by a dirty red headband. Her slim nostrils flared in the dirt-smeared oval of her face, seeking air free of the funeral taint shrouding the airfield. Still, I saw a fierce exultation in her expression that I knew mirrored my own.

Her lithe, nimble fingers stroked the top of an M67 frag grenade, strumming a chord of impending doom. With one quick, economical movement, she plucked the pin free and sent the deadly payload sailing toward the ridge concealing our enemies. My eyes traced the arc, willing it to fly true, to rain death on-

"There!" Sinbad shouted. "The convoy!"

I wrenched my gaze in the direction he was pointing. The boom of the grenade registered only faintly, suddenly unimportant. Thirty yards dead ahead was the real target: the armored convoy, offering safety, shelter, survival. If we could reach it.

"Follow me!" Sinbad roared, levering himself to his feet. As I prepared to follow, a high-pitched whine arrowed across my eardrums and warm, sticky rain splashed my face.

I forced myself to look, already knowing what I would see. The big man lay there, crumpled, the left side of his head a nightmare maze of blood, brains and tight curls of yellowish-orange hair.

Time to mourn later. Survive.

I juked to my left, darting and weaving, somehow making it to Sheryl's position. Her eyes were wide, shock and fear clouding their emerald depths. "Is he-"

"Gone," I snapped. "We have to move. Now."

For a moment I wondered if I would have to leave her behind, but then her jaw tightened and she nodded sharply. "Stay behind me," she said with a brief squeeze of my hand, then she was up and running, moving like a deer.

I followed, matching her as best I could with the mindless insect hum of lead bees filling my ears and the cracked tarmac clutching at my heels. We ran, time stretching, flattening, the convoy impossibly distant, a cruel mirage, too far, too far . . .

And then, somehow, we were almost there. We had made it, we were going to -

A flat crack and the mournful twang of a guitar string. Sheryl fell, scarlet-splashed splinters from the shattered guitar seeming to hang in the air.

I stopped. Men were flooding out of the brush and streaming around the cars. One approached me, smirking, rifle held casually across his body, smoke still rising from the barrel.

"Every day a winding road," he said in heavily accented English, shrugging a shoulder toward Sheryl's body. He stepped closer, almost close enough to touch. "End of road for her today. And you."

Still smirking, he began to raise the rifle. I lunged forward, freed the ka-bar concealed under my pantsuit, and buried it to the hilt in his chest. He grunted, stiffened, and then slid backwards, the knife making a greedy slurping sound as it pulled free.

The other rebels froze, momentarily stunned. There were a lot of them - too many, surely - but it didn't matter. One day, I knew, I would be telling this story to rapt audiences as I made my inevitable march to the Presidency. Would this ragged group of smelly goat****ers be the ones to stop me? Would they?

I raised the blade to my lips, licked it clean, and began to laugh.

Survive. Whatever the cost, survive.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Let's face facts here. Hillary has decided that if she can't win then she'll take the whole party down with her. What a selfish *****.

How is she doing that exactly?

[-Jrabbit]

When you get pwned by Sinbad, it's not a good sign.

Trying to minimize this with the "I just misspoke" defense is sheer idiocy. She's used the Bosnia trip to illustrate her alleged experience going all the way back to her Iowa stump speech. (I haven't confirmed Bosh's post, but if it also makes an appearance in her book, that's even more incredible.)

If Clinton wins the nomination, the Dems are toast. This will hang around her neck like an albatross vs. McCain's military record.

[asleepathewheel]

Oh- I thought he was referring to winning the primary-either she wins it or she takes down the party with her.

If he was referring to the general election, then I agree that she is facing an inevitable defeat.

Of course, I think Obama's defeat is inevitable as well, but not because of any democrat inflicted wounds.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
How is she doing that exactly?

Yeah, if Obama can't finish her off, why is that Hillary's fault? Everyone know Hillary was a fighter.

[Kidlicious]

I kinda get the idea that there's a 50/50 chance that she actually believed her lie, and that's even scarier.

[asleepathewheel]

The vast majority of harm caused to the democratic party is attributable to its leadership and not the 2 candidates:

These are the decisions that are killing the party's chances:

1. Proportional voting-even the loser picks up delegates in states, keeping the race close
2. Fla/mich fiasco-only two of the largest states in the country, and we know how important those fla electoral votes are in Nov.
3. Superdelegates: Because obviously the dem leadership is smarter than its party voters even though they claim they are they party of equality.

Unfortunately the Dems have had pathetic national leadership for the past lifetime, excluding Bill, and have set up a system designed for protracted conflict.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Yeah, if Obama can't finish her off, why is that Hillary's fault? Everyone know Hillary was a fighter.

Basically she has no chance to win the delegate count and since Texas she's gone extremely negative. So she can't win but she's trying to tear down the guy who will win. Yes, that is her fault.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Basically she has no chance to win the delegate count and since Texas she's gone extremely negative. So she can't win but she's trying to tear down the guy who will win. Yes, that is her fault.

If Obama can't get rid of her than his campaign needs to stop *****ing. K.O. her in Pennsylvania. Couldn't do it in Ohio, so it let her stay in the race.

This is like blaming Nader for Gore losing in 2000. Like Gore was entitled to those votes.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Last night, Greta van Susteren interviewed Hillary Clinton on Fox News. This was the most interesting exchange:

VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won't do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out?
CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another.

VAN SUSTEREN: How?

CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let's have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months before the general election? I don't think that will happen. I think they will be seated. So that is where we are headed if we don't get this worked out.

Dem the party of drama queens.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


If Obama can't get rid of her than his campaign needs to stop *****ing. K.O. her in Pennsylvania. Couldn't do it in Ohio, so it let her stay in the race.

This is like blaming Nader for Gore losing in 2000. Like Gore was entitled to those votes.

No, Nader was not in the same party as Gore. Jesus, why does everyone keep acting as though he was?!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Meanwhile quietly and without fanfare or drama was Pat Nixon in 1969.

Pat Nixon’s biographer, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, wrote as follows in Pat Nixon: The Untold Story (1986):

The [July 1969 South Vietnam] visit marked the first time that a First Lady had been in a combat zone, although another First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, had also visited troops on her numerous travels to England and throughout the South Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand during World War II. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger later described how the President and his party were “whisked from the airport to the Presidential Palace in a helicopter that seemed to go straight up out of range of possible sniper fire and then plummeted between the trees of [President] Thieu’s offices. I never learned how often the pilots had rehearsed this maneuver or,” he added ruefully, “how its risk compared with that of sniper fire.” While my father met with President Thieu, Madame Thieu hosted a formal tea for Mother in the Presidential Palace. The palace was an armed fortress, with sandbags in every entrance to douse fires from shelling and bombing attacks. Mrs. Thieu told Mother she had sent her children to the country, out of danger of the war zone, and how much she missed them.

Precautions for Mrs. Nixon’s security made her contacts with the Vietnamese during the one-day visit very difficult. At the Thuduc orphanage, where 774 children were housed, the hordes of Secret Service agents, reporters, military guards, and the din of the army helicopters whirring overhead all but drowned out any words spoken inside the buildings constructed years before by the French. As Mother emerged from the hospital, she saw fighter jets above the thick shield of circling helicopters. Their shrill whine added to the overpowering noise.

Soon she was in an open-door military helicopter flying 18 miles north of Saigon to visit the 24th Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh. Occasionally she caught glimpses of scattered U.S. troops on the ground below. The agents who traveled with her were armed with machine guns and bandoliers loaded with cartridges slung across their shoulders. In the news dispatches filed from Saigon on July 30, one correspondent wrote:

“Mrs. Richard Nixon risked her safety and possibly her good relations with some diplomats, brass and bureaucrats in Vietnam today. In trips to an orphanage, to a GI field hospital, and her exchanges with high-ranking officials, she made it clear she had little time for high-level formalities and wanted to see more of the men who were hurt and the children who had suffered….At the hospital, officials tried to tell her all about what they do. She brushed them aside. ‘I don’t really want to learn about the hospital. I came to see the boys,’ Mrs. Nixon said.”

She spent more than two hours there, visiting personally with each man, sometimes jotting down names and addresses so that she could let families at home know their sons were all right. [White House press aide] Pat Gates remembers how Mother several times got down on her knees next to the wounded men in order to talk privately with them.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


If Obama can't get rid of her than his campaign needs to stop *****ing. K.O. her in Pennsylvania. Couldn't do it in Ohio, so it let her stay in the race.

This is like blaming Nader for Gore losing in 2000. Like Gore was entitled to those votes.

She can't be KOed at this point. And when even Nacy Pelosi has said she needs to get out for the good of the party then she needs to get out. Instead she wants to drag everyone down and cause as much fuss as possible. I'm not sure if she's hoping to insure McCain wins so she can take him on in 2012 or if she's just a poor loser.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Basically she has no chance to win the delegate count and since Texas she's gone extremely negative. So she can't win but she's trying to tear down the guy who will win. Yes, that is her fault.

You are giving her way too much credit. How is Hillary responsible for Rezco and Wright-the two major scandals that have befallen Obama? You think those wouldn't have come up before the general?

Further, Obama can't win the required delegate count before the convention either (or the pre convention superdelegate meeting), barring a hillary drop out.


What we have here is yet another double standard. Obama-lies about his racist church-a-ok. Clinton lies about a trip to bosnia years ago-throw the witch out.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Of course she can be KOed... beat her bad enough in Penn, and she'll be out. If she lost Ohio, she'd have to be out.

The only reason people are listening to her is because she hangs on barely enough.

It'll take a massive defeat to get her out. Her tenaciousness is one of her most obvious (and some say, good) traits. Everyone knows this. There is a reason one of her nicknames is the "Terminator".