This whole business of Hillary Clinton trying to persuade the public that her trip to Bosnia in 1996 somehow certifies her as crisis-tested and therefore qualified to be commander-in-chief is such pure baloney that it makes the head spin.

We may as well start with Sinbad, who went along on the trip, and who decided he wasn’t going to sit back and let the Clinton campaign spin it out of all recognizable resemblance to reality:

Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she’s taking much grief on the campaign trail.

Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.

In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the “scariest” part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’”

Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. “They said there might be sniper fire,” Clinton said.

Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn’t remember that, either.

Lady, if you really think that the threat of sniper fire (a non-materialized threat, let me hasten to add) constitutes a character-building experience — and presidential character at that — I really don’t think I want you to be my president. That’s too close to Bush-speak, for my liking.

In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, “We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.”

Say what? As Sinbad put it: “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.’”

The Clinton campaign, of course, doesn’t let this kind of stuff go unanswered:

Defending Clinton’s characterization of her Bosnia mission, campaign spokesman Phil Singer kindly provided experts from news stories written about the trip at the time, including a Washington Post story from May 26, 1996, that said, “This trip to Bosnia marks the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to a potential combat zone.”

So voyaging to a potential combat zone is character-building crisis-testing? Pretty thin, what? And that seems to be the best they can do, after thinking it over for a really long time. The immediate response, of course, had been a major embarrassment (when Slate’s John Dickerson asked the Clinton campaign: “What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary’s career where she’s been tested by crisis?”)

McClatchy put this whole business of the Clinton campaign’s hollow claims in perspective. It’s not a very flattering perspective for Hillary:

Sen. Hillary Clinton claims that her experience in dealing with foreign affairs qualifies her to handle a crisis call at 3 a.m. and be commander in chief.

Sen. Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign accuses Clinton of exaggerating her foreign affairs experience. It says that nothing in her background shows that she’s more prepared to handle an international crisis than he is.
[...]
To bolster the claim, she’s trumpeted her role as first lady in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, helping to open Macedonia’s borders to Kosovo refugees and challenging China on women’s rights, all as proof that she has what it takes to manage a foreign crisis.

… public records and interviews with former Clinton administration officials and others strongly suggest that Clinton overstates her role.
[...]
On the stump, Clinton takes credit for helping to bring peace between warring Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. George Mitchell, the former Maine senator who helped negotiate the peace agreements, has said that Clinton’s visits to the region and meetings with female activists there were “very helpful” in the peace efforts.

But one of the key Irish negotiators last week called Clinton’s description of her role in the process a “wee bit silly.”

“I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill (Clinton) going around,” David Trimble told Belfast’s Daily Telegraph.

Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, and John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party, shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for their roles in the peace process. “I don’t want to rain on the thing for her, but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player,” Trimble said.
[...]
Clinton also claims that she was a difference-maker in the Balkans. She said that she negotiated opening Macedonia’s borders in 1999 to let in refugees fleeing violence in Kosovo.
[...]
Ivo Daalder, a former NSC official under President Clinton who was responsible for the Balkans, said that “there’s the inconvenient fact that the agreement to open the borders happened the day before she got there.”

“I have no doubt that the diplomats used the prospect of her visiting Macedonia to open the Macedonian borders. The question is, was she instrumental in negotiating the opening of the borders to all tens of thousands of refugees to pass? The answer is no,” said Daalder, author of “Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to save Kosovo.” He supports Obama.
[...]
Clinton’s supporters also tout her 1995 speech in Beijing as perhaps her most visible foreign policy success. Resisting calls by some within the Clinton administration that she not go, Hillary Clinton attended the Fourth World Conference on Women. There she declared: “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”

The speech was the then-strongest criticism of China by a Clinton administration official. It drew cheers from the women’s movement and human-rights communities.

Obama’s campaign credits it as “a good speech,” but nevertheless contends that it hardly constituted a “3 a.m. crisis.”

“It is strange that Senator Clinton would base her own foreign policy experience on a speech that she gave over a decade ago, since she so frequently belittles Barack Obama’s speech opposing the Iraq war six years ago,” wrote Greg Craig, a former State Department policy planning director, in a Tuesday Obama campaign memo.

She made a lot of claims. And none of them stands up to scrutiny. That’s not very reassuring. I, for one, am looking for something better from my next president.