At the risk of beating a dead horse (and enraging TalkBacker pcostello), let me add another thought on Hillary's Walter Mitty moment. Her explanation for why she "misspoke"--given yesterday during a session with the Philadelphia Daily News's editorial board--is nearly as bad as her original "misstatement":
Now
let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we
had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper
fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if I
said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not
what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our
bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that
the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was
this 8-year-old girl and, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least
greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my
memory of it. [Emphasis added.]
It seems like most people would interpret the presence of a child on the tarmac as evidence that the situation wasn't so dangerous after all. But not Hillary. Instead, the eight-year-old becomes the scapegoat for the fact that she had to dawdle and expose herelf to even greater risk: If it hadn't been for that damn kid, she would have been running with her head down.
--Jason Zengerle