There has been quite a buzz about the speech made by Hillary Clinton last week. She was talking about her trip as first lady to Bosnia. She remembered 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," she said. Was Hillary under sniper fire?
She gave a vivid account that stirs the imagination with a touch of heroism. The problem is this was not what happened. She and her party arrived peacefully at the airport and there was a greeting ceremony conducted in a leisurely pace.
What she said was false - it was a lie. Did she lie intentionally, or did she, as she later said, simply misspeak? Misspeaking (what a funny word) means speaking incorrectly or inaccurately, but is neutral as to whether dishonesty is involved.
But if it was not a lie, it cannot be that she was giving an account of events, while remembering the true facts were different. She was not making two or three misspoken words or phrases. She was recounting an event.
So if it was not a lie, then her description was a fantasy. She thought it really happened when it did not. It's also not mixing up simple events, but re-creating in her own mind a dramatic and life-threatening incident which in fact never took place.
Perhaps she did it in all innocence, and it would be amusing if as a grandmother she was telling the story to her grandkids, but it's pretty scary to have a president (or should one say another president) at the White House who can be so easily possessed by false memories, fantasies and delusion.
Clinton's Experience in Bosnia
She gave a vivid account that stirs the imagination with a touch of heroism. The problem is this was not what happened. She and her party arrived peacefully at the airport and there was a greeting ceremony conducted in a leisurely pace.
What she said was false - it was a lie. Did she lie intentionally, or did she, as she later said, simply misspeak? Misspeaking (what a funny word) means speaking incorrectly or inaccurately, but is neutral as to whether dishonesty is involved.
But if it was not a lie, it cannot be that she was giving an account of events, while remembering the true facts were different. She was not making two or three misspoken words or phrases. She was recounting an event.
So if it was not a lie, then her description was a fantasy. She thought it really happened when it did not. It's also not mixing up simple events, but re-creating in her own mind a dramatic and life-threatening incident which in fact never took place.
Perhaps she did it in all innocence, and it would be amusing if as a grandmother she was telling the story to her grandkids, but it's pretty scary to have a president (or should one say another president) at the White House who can be so easily possessed by false memories, fantasies and delusion.
Clinton's Experience in Bosnia
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