Has the Clinton Campaign Now Become Bosnian Toast? If Memory Serves Me…

By Si Dunn

Can you accurately remember what you did 12 years ago or longer? How about things you did last week? Or last night?

CBS News recently has been pounding on Hillary Clinton for claiming to have been under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996, when their old videos seem to show her mainly receiving incoming flowers and handshakes after arriving in a very dangerous area.

Memories can, as the old saying goes, play unfortunate tricks on you. One case in point: A close Hillary Clinton ally, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, and I were friends in junior high school. (I am briefly mentioned in one of his books.) For years after he became a famous military leader and presidential candidate, I enjoyed telling people how he and I also had been close friends in elementary school and how he, on more than one occasion, interceded with the principal and saved me from being paddled for misbehaving.

The only problem is, when I met up with Gen. Clark again last year at a Dallas political fundraiser and brought this memory up, he assured me that he and I had attended different elementary schools and didn’t even know each other until the 7th grade. (I have to believe Wesley on this, because 50 years after he edited the school newspaper at Pulaski Heights Junior High School, he still can recite my best times in the 440-yard dash.)

Somebody helped me get off that hook with my elementary school principal, and, obviously, I can’t recall who did it. But it was easy, years later, to conveniently insert Wesley Clark into that scenario, then let the combination meld into a warm memory that I honestly came to believe.

I think Hillary Clinton fell into a similar memory trap, one that snares us all at times. To her credit, she now has admitted that she “made a mistake" and added: "That happens. It proves I'm human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation."

If CBS News and other media outlets tried hard enough, they could search back through past videos of all candidates and come up with numerous snippets where memories or claims do not mesh with reality.

Meanwhile, if you asked me at this moment to tell you something I did 12 years ago, I could state with complete accuracy that I had some meals and brushed my teeth. And I probably did not do these things while under sniper fire. But who knows? Maybe a celery stick or my toothbrush was blown out of my hand, and I simply forgot?

I really was in some combat during the Vietnam War. But I didn’t shoot anybody, and only one bullet (sniper fire!) came within 50 feet of me. Still, if I were running for high (or low) office, my campaign staff could intone with complete accuracy: “He saw combat in Vietnam.” My eager supporters then might imagine me dashing into a Viet Cong stronghold with automatic weapons blazing in each hand.

Yet the truth would be this: I watched planes drop bombs nearby. I saw ships fire their guns. I observed Marines hitting the beach. And I was scrutinzing a nearby hillside--gawking like a tourist, actually--when the sniper’s bullet thudded into a metal armor plate.

I did fire some weapons a couple of times during the Vietnam War. My booming bullets made puny little splashes in the Tonkin Gulf and hit absolutely nothing except maybe a poor fish or two. Yet it’s possible two evil North Vietnamese frogmen might have been right under the waves and I got them both with my shots.

I think a heroic new memory may be taking shape.

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