Free Republic

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the "Arab Army of Liberation."...

Here’s a nice dilemma for Lefties. What if UN peacekeepers in the Congo turn out to have been encouraging elephant poaching? Would they continue to give the organisation their unconditional support? Elephant poaching in Africa: sanctioned by the UN? The UN gets away with an extraordinary amount. Because it is thought to embody a lofty ideal, many liberal-minded people are prepared to overlook what it actually does. Never mind that it betrayed the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Never mind that its officials were illicitly running oil-for-food scams with Saddam. Never mind that it ordered its local commander not to seize...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina's state Court in Sarajevo on Wednesday sentenced Bosnian Muslim Zijad Kurtovic to 11 years jail for war crimes against Bosnian Croats during the 1992-1995 war. Kurtovic, 41, was found guilty of having acted against Croat civilians and prisoners of war as a member of Bosnia's Muslim- dominated army. The court found his crimes in the vicinity of the southern city of Mostar in 1993 to have directly violated the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. As commander of military police of the 4th Corps of the army in October 1993, during the 1992-1994 Muslim - Croat conflict within...

SARAJEVO -- Richard Holbrooke maintains that he "never made a deal with Hague fugitive Radovan Karadžić". The American diplomat, who helped create the Dayton peace deal that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, yesterday in Sarajevo denied allegations that he reached an agreement with the former Bosnian Serb president. The long-standing claim, recently repeated by the Hague Prosecution's former spokeswoman Florence Hartmann, says that Karadžić received guaranties he would never be arrested if he withdrew from Bosnia's political life. “I did not make any kind of deal with Karadžić, he is a war criminal. He is the Osama Bin Laden of...

YOU TUBE - THE HILLARY PINOCCHIO SING-ALONG

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago. In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts. The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a...

Bill Clinton Retells Hillary's 1996 Bosnia Story April 10, 2008 7:10 PM ABC News' Sarah Amos and Eloise Harper Report: After a trip to Puerto Rico and two days entirely off the campaign trail, former President Bill Clinton eagerly discussed myriad topics with the crowd that awaited him in Boonville, Ind., and what he said of a trip his wife made to Bosnia in 1996 seemed a bit misleading. "I am so glad to be here. And I'm glad that Indiana is gonna have a say in who the nominee of the Democratic Party is and the next president of...

Hillary Clinton met her Waterloo at Tuzla. She’d been regaling audiences with tales of a dangerous landing under sniper fire in Tuzla 12 years ago and then running for cover. None of this occurred. When CBS provided the tape, she was forced to admit to “a misstatement.” Now, confabulation is a fairly common psychological phenomenon. We all have internalized childhood stories so oft repeated by elders that we come to falsely “remember” the actual experience. Adult memories are less susceptible to such unconscious inventions, but past experiences embellished over time by repeated recounting can reach the point where we actually...

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group. COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound...

YOUTUBE - DEFENDING HILLARY FOR BOSNIA SNIPER STORY I have been very critical of Hillary for many years. Here is a fair and balanced piece.

Barack Obama - To Hell and Back -

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the...

March 31, 2008 -- SARAJEVO, Bosnia - The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked - and her countrymen infuriated - that the former first lady claimed to have dodged sniper fire that day. Emina Bicakcic, now 20 and studying to become a doctor, told The Post she stood on the tarmac at the air base in Tuzla, greeted Clinton and even had time to share the lines of verse she'd written - all without fear of attack from an unseen enemy. "I was surprised when...

The Religion Ministry dismissed the remarks of the "subjective, irresponsible and politically biased Bosnian Islamic Community." The leadership, or Riyaset, of the Sarajevo-based Islamic organization was reacting to the latest unrest in Serbia's southwestern Sandžak region and the "situation of Muslims in Serbia". The ministry said in a statement issued in Belgrade late on Thursday the call made to international organizations "to react to flagrant human rights violations of Muslims" was "cynical, irresponsible and politically ill-intentioned". The statement, sent to Tanjug, also pointed out that police efforts, following developments in Tutin on March 7 and 9, to keep peace and...

In this series, exclusive to FreeRepublic, we will examine the military resume of Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. She did much more than dodge sniper fire in Bosnia with her daughter because Bill was too afraid to go, and the voters are entitled to know about her exploits before they decide whom they want for commander in chief. No. 1 - THE ENOLA GAY No. 2 - CROSSING THE DELAWARE ======================================================================= The charge up an obscure Cuban hill on July, 1 1898 was a pivotal point in Theodore Roosevelt's political career. When war broke with Spain in April of that...

...Which brings us back to our question: Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded? Sometimes only a shrink can decipher why some politicians persist in flagrantly taking giant risks, all but daring others to catch them in the act (see: Spitzer, Eliot). Carl Bernstein, a sometimes admiring Hillary Clinton biographer, has called the Bosnia debacle “a watershed event” for her campaign because it revives her long history of balancing good works with “ ‘misstatements’ and elisions,” from the health-care task force fiasco onward. But this event may be a watershed...

Imagine what it must be like now for Serbian-Americans and American Serbs. I can and have often in the past 10 years. Now, with the issue forced for real on American soil, the Serbian issue takes on even deeper meaning. I love this country, America. I love it more now, and appreciate it more now, than ever before. I've grown less and less tolerant of Anti-Americanism over the years, despite my education and some of those around me teaching and preaching at me that America is flawed and that she does not deserve the blind faith and allegiance she has...

St. Louis — A violent encounter outside a bar ended the dream for two fathers who immigrated to the United States years ago in hopes to build a better life. While one died a violent death the night of July 2, 2006, the other's plans crumbled Friday as a St. Louis Circuit Court judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Bekir Ademovic, 31, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a Sejfudin Suljic, 42, who was found dead in a alley next to the Kemix Bar, at 4701 Morganford Road.

As has become painfully normative, Hillary, the major media ask you all the wrong questions. The current controversy centers on whether you and your daughter Chelsea actually had to dodge sniper fire upon your landing at the airport in Tuzla in Bosnia on March 25,1996. The photographic evidence seems to suggest otherwise. But sniper fire or not, as you and I both know, this really was risky business. As testament to how dangerous trips in and out of Bosnia could be, just nine days later, another U.S. Air Force plane carrying American officials took off from that same Tuzla airport...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

(video link)

The dots begin to connect in a radical network that reaches from Bosnia across Western Europe as police in Bosnia arrest five suspected of plotting to attack Catholic and EUFOR objects, Anes Alic and Damir Kaletovic report for ISN Security Watch. In the second major anti-terrorism operation in Bosnia in three years, Bosnian police have arrested five men and seized anti-tank mines, laser sights, electronic equipment, topographic maps and bomb-making manuals. The ongoing investigation shows so far that the group involved in the alleged plot is connected with earlier terrorism-related arrests in the country, and that the network extends to...

I'm indebted to Hillary Clinton for the revelation that my global wanderings when my dad was president qualify me to run for the presidency myself. Mrs. Clinton has been insisting that her global junkets as first lady, and her meetings with foreign leaders, qualify her to be president of these United States. I never thought of it that way, but if she is correct then I am eminently qualified to follow my father's footsteps and take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., not merely as a member of the president's family, but as president in my own right. Hillary, who...

New video of Hillary's dangerous spiral into sniper-infested Bosnia!

Hillary Clinton's wartime fairy tale of landing in Bosnia under heavy sniper fire just begged to be parodied in song. And who better to write that parody than our own Charles Henrickson so without further adieu: LANDING ON A JET PLANETune: "Leaving on a Jet Plane" Original All the odds are stacked, I'm ready to runI'm standin' here, holdin' my gunI hate to call you up to say goodbyeBut the battle's ragin', I hear the soundsThe tank is waitin', he's shootin' some roundsI know there's so much danger I could die So send me to BosniaTell me they'll be...

Hillary Clinton has a solu tion to her Tuzla problem - let's talk about Rev. Je remiah Wright some more. On the day after the CBS News aired video making a hash of Sen. Clinton's claim to have landed "under sniper fire" in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996, she raised for the first time the issue of Barack Obama's relationship to Rev. Wright. In this, she followed a Clinton family pattern so well-established it's almost boring: Misrepresent the truth as convenient - then, when caught, go on the offensive.

HILLARY HIRES HITMAN UPee (Washington, DC) - Do-or-die US Presidential candidate New York Senator Hillary Clinton has hired a Bosnian sniper to shoot Senator Barack Obama's minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Senator Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, denied the story trying to snuff out rumors that Senator Clinton had hired a Bosnian sniper, but undercover FBI agents leaked the story to the news media in hopes Senator Clinton's campaign might get back on track. The Bosnian sniper, Gunman Ammoshoot, was arrested when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York City. He was carrying two high-powered squirt guns capable...

PALE, Bosnia (Reuters) - European Union peacekeepers raided the homes on Thursday of relatives of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the U.N. war crimes court. Some 20 vehicles of the EUFOR peacekeeping force surrounded the house where Karadzic's wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic lives in Pale, his stronghold in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, lying about 16 km (10 miles) southeast of the capital Sarajevo. Italian carabinieri also searched the homes of Karadzic's daughter Sonja and suspected Karadzic supporter Smiljka Popov in the centre of the mountain town, said EUFOR spokesman Philip Treloar. "The aim...

Hillary, why did you go to Bosnia? Posted: March 27, 2008 1:00 am Eastern As has become painfully normative, Hillary, the major media ask you all the wrong questions. The current controversy centers on whether you and your daughter, Chelsea, actually had to dodge sniper fire upon your landing at the airport in Tuzla in Bosnia on March 25, 1996. The photographic evidence seems to suggest otherwise. But sniper fire or not, as you and I both know, this really was risky business. As testament to how dangerous trips in and out of Bosnia could be, just nine days later,...

We have all known people who felt the need to embellish their own lives’ stories, figuring that no one would be all that impressed with the genuine article. “Would you like to go out with me? What do I do? I work for the police. In fact, I’m the chief of police!” What Jon Lovitz introduced into pop culture as pathological liar Tommy Flanagan on Saturday Night Live, Hillary Clinton now brings to our presidential politics. She went to Bosnia and was greeted by a little girl – no, scratch that, was greeted by sniper fire! Yeah, that’s it. And...

You'll recall Hillary Clinton's recent speech in which she attempted to play up her foreign policy experience by recounting her "harrowing" 1996 trip to Bosnia. "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." Well, mainstream media has discounted that account, and such luminaries as comedian Sinbad have chimed in as well. It appears, however, that Clinton caved in too soon when she admitted overstating the dangers, as Barely Political...

The Clinton campaign has cited newspaper accounts, including one in The Washington Post, to bolster the senator's claim that her now-famous March 1996 trip to Bosnia was the first visit to a "war zone" by a first lady since World War II. She is overlooking a trip to Saigon by Pat Nixon at the height of the Vietnam War as well as a trip by Barbara Bush to Saudi Arabia two months before the Persian Gulf War began. THE FACTS Just because something has appeared in a newspaper does not mean that is entirely accurate. The Clinton camp has circulated...

Not only is CBS not giving up on this story, but they've brought out a few other videos of Hillary "misspeaking."

MIDI - LITTLE LIES

The USAF Aircraft Commander of Hillary's C-17 that landed in Bosnia speaks about what all Hillary has said.

Hillary's house of cards is falling all around her with her claims of having had to duck enemy sniper fire during debarkation at her Tulza, Bosnia trip in 1996. She made all sorts of claims that her trip was a harrowing one that placed her in danger and that this fact should lend credence to her claims of somehow having foreign policy experience. But, she also doled out another line that is turning out to be just another lie and it is a line that it seems most MSM outlets are giving her a pass on thus far. To further...

...This is the woman who insisted for more than a decade that she was named after the late, great mountain.... This is the woman who told "Dateline NBC" that daughter Chelsea was on a jog in New York City when the jihadists struck on 9/11- never mind that Chelsea later wrote a magazine essay revealing that she watched the attacks on TV from a friend's apartment. This is the woman who claimed to have "helped start" the federal Children's Health Insurance Program- never mind that the program's original sponsors noted that Sen. Clinton fought against the initial bill and had...

March 26, 2008 -- WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's lies about risking her life under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia as first lady have infuriated the US military brass and troops. "She has no sense of what a statement like that does to soldiers," fumed retired Maj. Gen. Walter Stewart, the former head of the Pennsylvania National Guard. "She is insulting the command in its entirety," he said yesterday. VOTE: Has Hillary's credibility been "shot to pieces?" Clinton came under fire after saying she "misspoke" about what happened during the trip and claimed it was the first time...

John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" yarn ignited the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Whatever your memory of the 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry's sudden silence about a wartime Christmas "seared" in his memory was a rare example of a citizens group (the Swifties) publicly backing down a powerful U.S. senator and a major-party presidential candidate. Kerry's full quote, delivered in the midst of a 1986 Senate debate about aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, is rhetorically powerful: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer...

Seinfeld’s George Costanza famously quipped: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” This is how a Clinton—take your pick, Hillary, Bill or Chelsea—makes it through the day. Better living through self-delusion. Seeking to burnish her foreign policy leadership credentials, Sen. Clinton has repeatedly peddled a harrowing anecdote about dodging sniper fire during a trip to Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996. She brought her then-teenage daughter Chelsea on the dangerous mission. And entertainer Sinbad. And singer Sheryl Crow. And, oh, yeah, there was 8-year-old Emina Bicakcic, a Bosnian girl who calmly embraced the intrepid first lady and read her a poem...

Hillary Clinton has conceded that she "did misspeak" about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire, blaming tiredness for a dramatic description that was shown to have been significantly exaggerated. How Obama is related to Brad Pitt Tim Shipman: Barack Obama heads for a holiday Toby Harnden: Hillary's porky pie on Bosnia sniper fire The Democratic candidate is engaged in a frantic damage-limitation exercise amid widespread derision of her comments about a visit to Tuzla in 1996. Watch: Hillary Clinton 'misspeaking' "I remember landing under sniper fire," she said in Washington on Monday. "There was supposed to be some kind of...

Something to consider and a question to raise into the media discussion circles. Did Hillary break the law under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 signed into law by President Bush? The meme at a minimum, is that there can be no denying she at a minimum violated the spirit of the law attempting to claim combat "heroism" "we ran across the tarmac with our heads down to avoid sniper fire" not once but multiple times and recently as well. Meanwhile our real hero's take fire daily. Might be worth some smart Freepers digging into this to see what kinds...

Hardball had some fun at Hillary's expense this evening over the mystery of The Sniper Who Didn't Fire. Credit Politico's Roger Simon with making the panel's most devastating remark. Hillary's Heminwayesque claim has been that "we used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady." Chatting with host Chris Matthews, Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson, and Perry Bacon of WaPo, Simon observed what in retrospect might be obvious but something I hadn't previously heard anyone else remark. ROGER SIMON: She says I was there because it was too...

In general I've little interest in the Hillary Clinton-bashing pervasive in the men's and fathers' movement. One example of Hillary's alleged misdeeds which is often cited by men's activists is the "No woman is illegal" incident. It occurred while Clinton was campaigning in Nevada in January and is based on the following from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Clinton and her busload of traveling press moved from there to the popular local Mexican restaurant Lindo Michoacan, where a 'roundtable' that was actually square passed a microphone around to tell her people's concerns about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures. She took notes...

Hillary Defends Against 'Swiftboating' on Bosnia by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · No Comments (2008-03-25) — After a CBS News video appeared on YouTube contradicting former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s account of her 1996 landing in Bosnia “under sniper fire”, a spokesman for Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign said unnamed critics were trying to “swiftboat” her “in a fashion reminiscent of what they did to John Kerry in 2004.” [Click to View CBS Video] Sen. Kerry, a professional Vietnam war veteran, faced relentless questions during his own White House bid that were sparked by fellow swiftboat crewman who alleged that his...

Chelsea was confronted at a townhall meeting, and spun it like a pro. Her father would be proud.

Yesterday, CBS finally ran the Hillary "I dodged sniper fire in Bosnia" story. Yes, this is the same network which tried to throw a presidential election with the Dan Rather "fake but accurate" report. Although the story has been kicking around the blogosphere for the past two weeks, what does the entire incident tell us about, Hillary, her campaign and the mainstream media? Once again, the mainstream media, in this case CBS, followed rather than broke the story. Various blogs had already pointed out the latest whopper on the part of Hillary, yet CBS just aired the damning videotape. In...