Just when they seemed to have Bill Clinton under control, he put his foot back into his mouth at a campaign rally in Boonville, Indiana, yesterday.
Referring to Hillary Clinton's embellished tale of her trip to Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996, Bill Clinton defended the tone of his wife's anecdote - that she was in danger - and sought to excuse her error. He also lashed out at her critics, saying "you would have thought she robbed a bank, the way they carried on about this."
"Let me just tell you," he said, according to CBS News, "the president of Bosnia and General Wesley Clark - who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way - both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony."
He continued: "Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would've thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 at night, too."
The problem with his retelling is, she didn't just use the Bosnia story as a throw-away line, she regaled audiences with it several times, and not just late at night.
