Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
There are lies that are so blatant and so blindingly obvious that even attempting to rationalize them makes a liar look like an even bigger fool.
Apparently no one has clued Hillary Clinton in on that little piece of information.
Fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has attacked the former first lady for exaggerating her foreign policy experience. Clinton has been getting voters' attention with this gripping yarn: During a 1996 trip to Bosnia, she landed under sniper fire at the airport and had to be rushed to safety.
Wow! So you have to throw your support behind the candidate who was willing to take a bullet for her country, right?
But CBS News decided to dust off the footage they shot of Clinton's March 1996 Bosnia trip and compare it side by side with her accounting of events.
Here's Clinton's account in her own words: "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."
Now, let's go to the tape: The CBS footage shows a smiling Hillary casually striding with her entourage across the tarmac -- on her way to a greeting ceremony at the airport .
She visited two U.S. Army outposts, posed for photos with the troops and flitted back to the base to sing in a U.S.O. show featuring comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crowe. Not one single bullet came within miles of hitting her.
From an entertainment perspective, it's almost a shame her lie was exposed so swiftly. Had it not, we might have been treated to even more lavishly embellished stories -- of Clinton diving into enemy foxholes, machine gun blazing, with a knife clenched in her teeth. Maybe she could've made the cover of Combat magazine!
Listening to her recount these brushes with enemy gunfire is reminiscent of Tom Hank's character and his storytelling in the movie Forrest Gump . Of course, the problem with that comparison is that, at least within the context of the movie, Forrest's account of events actually happened .
Clinton has the absolute nerve to say that her stark untruths merely mark a "minor blip" among the "millions of words" she utters every day.
What poppycock. A minor blip would be, say, coming up a bit fuzzy when describing the clothes she was wearing that day. But sniper fire? Ask anyone who has really been on the receiving end of sniper fire. That wouldn't be something you just kind of misremember.
What Clinton uttered is a clear-cut, willful lie, and everybody knows it -- though many diehard Democrats are loath to admit it.
Surprisingly, one spot-on assessment of Clinton's occasional works of fiction comes from journalist Carl Bernstein, not exactly a conservative himself. He correctly cites Clinton's "difficult relationship with the truth."
And if she can't stick to the truth when describing just one trip abroad 12 years ago, how can Americans expect to believe anything else that comes out of her mouth?