Colonel Hunt Adds Context to Tuzla

Last night on the factor, Bill had Colonel David Hunt on to debate Lanny Davis about the Tuzla fiasco. Colonel Hunt was in charge of security operations for Hillary Clinton's visit to Tuzla that day. He made the point that claiming that she was shot at when it didn't happen is an insult to every one of the nearly 4000 soldiers who's job it was to protect her. O'Reilly countered that it wasn't Hillary's intention to insult the soldiers, but that is really beside the point.

The reality is that the story is insulting to those soldiers that were given the assignment of protecting her. What Clinton was essentially claiming was that Hunt is an incompetent. If a first lady is shot at during a scheduled visit, the person in charge of security is an incompetent. Of course, I actually agree that Hillary wasn't trying to insult the soldiers, but in some ways that is even worse. That's because she is so oblivious to what is going on around her that she doesn't even realize what her stories conclude.

It takes a great deal of narcissism to tell a story and not realize that telling it would insult the very security detail that was set up to protect you. Hunt's genuine outrage really put some perpective on this for me.

This gaffe may turn out to be quite damaging. I have already heard other military folks say the same thing. Here is how Maj. Gen. Walter Stewart put it...

She has no sense of what a statement like that does to soldiers...She is insulting the command in its entirety,"

Insulting the military is quite possibly the worst thing you can do in a campaign. Here is the irony. If Obama wasn't dealing with the Wright issue, this could likely end her campaign. Only compared to sitting by while your pastor spews anti American hate for twenty years and doing nothing, this is actually rather mild. This sort of gaffe would prove fatal however when matched up against the record of John McCain.