It's always good to have friendly, constructive dialogue about things like this. About Hillary... where do I begin? I should point out that whether Conservative or Liberal, these writers have well documented their articles. Here's part one:
Clinton Lie Kills Her Credibility on Trade Policy
posted by JOHN NICHOLS on 03/20/2008 @ 1:59pm
What is the proper word for the claim by Hillary Clinton and the more factually disinclined supporters of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination -- made in speeches, briefings and interviews (including one by this reporter with the candidate) -- that she has always been a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement?
Now that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents released this week that former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; now that we know she held at least five meetings to strategize about how to win congressional approval of the deal; now that we know she was in the thick of the manuevering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement. Now that we know all of this, how should we assess the claim that Hillary's heart has always beaten to a fair-trade rhythm?
Now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that "her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA" and that "there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time;" now that we have these details confirmed, what should we make of Clinton's campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs, that has idled entire industries, that has saddled this country with record trade deficits, undermined the security of working families in the US and abroad, and has forced Mexican farmers off their land into an economic refugee status that ultimately forces them to cross the Rio Grande River in search of work?
As she campaigns now, Clinton says, "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."
But the White House records confirm that this is not true.
Her statement is, to be precise, a lie.
When it comes to the essential test of the trade debate, Clinton has been identified as a liar -- a put-in-boldface-type "L-I-A-R" liar.
Those of us who covered the 1993 NAFTA debate have frequently expressed doubts about the former First Lady's recent statements. We never heard anything at the time about her dissenting from the Clinton Administration line on trade policy. And we knew that she had defended NAFTA in the years following its enactment. But fairness required that we at least entertain that notion--promoted by the lamentable David Gergen, himself a champion of free-trade policies while working in the Clinton White House--that Hillary Clinton had been a behind-the-scenes critic. We had to at least consider the possibility that, at the very least, Clinton had been worried that advancing NAFTA would trip up her advocacy for health care reform, that she had made her concerns known and that she had absented herself from pro-NAFTA lobbying.
This was certainly the impression that Clinton and her supporters sought to create as she campaigned in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana--states where worried workers want to know exactly where the candidates have stood and currently stand with regard to trade issues.
But that impression was a deliberate deception.
And we must all now recognize that when Hillary Clinton speaks about trade policy, she begins with a lie so blatant--that she's been "a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning"--that everything else she says must be viewed as suspect.

Sniper Fire, and Holes In Clinton's Recollection
Saturday, March 22, 2008; A05
Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Bill Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down."
There are numerous problems with Clinton's version of events.
THE FACTS
As a reporter who visited Bosnia soon after the December 1995 Dayton peace agreement, I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, particularly at a heavily fortified U.S. air base, such as Tuzla. Contrary to the claims of Hillary Clinton and former Army secretary Togo West, Bosnia was not "too dangerous" a place for President Clinton to visit in early 1996. In fact, the first Clinton to visit the Tuzla Air Base was not Hillary, but Bill, on Jan. 13, 1996.
Had Hillary Clinton's plane come "under sniper fire" in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including The Washington Post's John Pomfret, covered her trip. A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the first lady. "As a former AP wire-service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," Pomfret said.
According to Pomfret, the Tuzla airport was "one of the safest places in Bosnia" in March 1996 and "firmly under the control" of the 1st Armored Division.
Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An 8-year-old Muslim girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, below, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss.
"There is peace now," Emina told Clinton, according to Pomfret's report in The Post the next day, "because Mr. Clinton signed it. All this peace. I love it."
The first lady's schedule, released on Wednesday by the National Archives, confirms that she arrived in Tuzla at 8:45 a.m. and was greeted by various dignitaries, including Emina (whose name has mysteriously been redacted from the document). Footage from CBS shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Among the U.S. officials on hand to greet Clinton at the airport was Maj. Gen. William Nash, the commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia. Nash told me he was unaware of any security threat to Clinton during her eight-hour stay in Tuzla. He said, however, that Clinton had a "busy schedule" and may have got the impression that she was being hurried.
Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with singer Sheryl Crow, said the "scariest" part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of washingtonpost.com, "I think the only 'red phone' moment was 'Do we eat here or at the next place?' " He questioned the premise behind the Clinton version of events. "What kind of president would say 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot, so I'm going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you'?"
Replying to Sinbad earlier this week, Clinton dismissed him as "a comedian." Her campaign referred me to Togo West, who was also on the trip and is a staunch Clinton supporter. West could not remember "sniper fire" himself but said there was no reason to doubt the first lady's version of events. "Everybody's perceptions are different," he told me.
Clinton made no mention of "sniper fire" in her autobiography "Living History," published in 2003, although she did say there were "reports of snipers" in the hills around the airport.
THE PINOCCHIO TEST
Clinton's tale of landing at the Tuzla airport "under sniper fire" and then running for cover is simply not credible. Photographs and video of the arrival ceremony, combined with contemporaneous news reports, tell a very different story. Four Pinocchios.
ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts. TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions or exaggerations. THREE PINOCCHIOS: Significant factual errors. FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers. THE GEPPETTO CHECK MARK: Statements and claims contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Hillary Clinton Ex-Boss Says He Fired Her from Her Work on the Watergate Investigation for Being a "Liar" and "Unethical"-Truth!
truthorfiction.com
Summary of the eRumor:**
The eRumor says that as a 27-year old working on the Watergate Investigation in the 1970s,* Hillary Clinton was "fired" from her position for being a "liar" and "unethical."
The Truth:**
This email is the text of a column published on March 31, 2008 by Dan Calabrese, founder of Northstar Writers Group (
www.northstarwriters.com).
The story is based on statements by Jerry Zeifman, a Democrat, who was a counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee.* He said that he supervised then Hillary Rodham who got a job working on the investigation of the Watergate scandal, which eventually brought Richard Nixon's presidency to an end through resignation.
Zeifman published a book in 2006 titled Hillary's Pursuit of Power.* On his website (
www.jzeifman.com) he said "Hillary Clinton is ethically unfit to be either a Senator or** President--and if she were to become President, the last vestiges of the traditional moral authority of the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson will be destroyed."
Zeifman said that during her work on the investigation of the Watergate scandal, Hillary Rodham "...engaged in a variety of self-serving unethical practices in violation of House rules."
In 1998 Zeifman was a consultant to a member of the Judiciary Committee that impeached President Bill Clinton and said he "gained extensive personal insights into the unethical practices of Hillary Clinton in her White House 'West Wing' office."
Specifically, Zeifman believes that Hillary Rodham Clinton and others wanted Richard Nixon to remain in office to enhance the chances of Senator Ted Kennedy or another Democrat being elected president.* Zeifman contends that in 1974 a young lawyer who shared an office with Clinton came to him to apologize that he and Clinton had lied to him.* The lawyer, John Labovitz, is quoted as saying that he was dismayed with "...her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel -- as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon."*
Zeifman charges that Clinton regularly consulted with Ted Kennedy's chief political strategist, which was a violation of House rules.
Another reason for Clinton's conduct, according to Zeifman, was that Democrats did not want Nixon to face an impeachment trial because they feared that as a part of his defense Nixon might want to bring up abuses of office by President John Kennedy.
Zeifman said he regrets that when he terminated Clinton from the Nixon impeachment staff he did not report her unethical practices to the appropriate bar association.
There has not been any response that we have found from Clinton to the book or to Zeifman's accusations.
March 26, 2008
Hillary's List of Lies
By Dick Morris
The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were "honest and trustworthy," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only 44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in the poll.
Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here's her scorecard:
Admitted Lies
• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)
• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)
• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)
• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn't cover the market back then.)
Whoppers She Won't Confess To
• She didn't know about the FALN pardons.
• She didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.
• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.
• She didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.
• She didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.
• She opposed NAFTA at the time.
• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.
• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.
• She played a role in the '90s economic recovery.
• The billing records showed up on their own.
• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.
• She was always a Yankees fan.
• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).
• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).
With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?
Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll? OK, Obama has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and the denouement of her latest lie -- that she endured sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.
McCain's virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others. Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one another apart.
It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter's simple honesty. It took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush's personal character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us to give John McCain his due.
When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when) the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama's patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right stuff (pardon the pun).
The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was a "strong, decisive leader," 69 percent felt that the description fit McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama. (61 percent said it of Hillary.) Obama has looked weak handling the Rev. Wright controversy. His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time, feeble. Obama's reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. We have no doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us well, but about Obama we are not so sure.
Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.”