President Biden recently revived an old claim and told a group of Washington State Department diplomatic aides that he was “shot at” overseas. “You have great personal courage. When we shot us, I was with some of you,” he said. The claim stirred quite a bit of controversy, walking back from something similar he’d said ten years ago. Democrats are notoriously known for stretching the truth over extended periods of time – even when it’s not the truth.
President Biden first talked about being “shot” inside Baghdad’s green zone during a 2007 Democratic presidential debate. “We’re starting to tell the truth. Number one, you take out all the troops. Fortunately, the helicopters are ready to take the 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I’ve fired seven times. Make sure you protect them, or they’ll die.” let go “, number one,” he said.
Biden talked about visiting Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone in 2005 when his apartment was shaken by a nearby explosion. He told others he was “near where a shot landed” and talked about a bullet firing outside of the building where he and other senators were standing.
Biden added that the vehicle he was traveling in the day before might have also been hit, but later clarified that the situation had not been threatening. “No one got up and ran out of the room – it wasn’t something like that. I don’t look like a man with a gun to my head,” Biden admitted, later walking back from his claim.
McCain’s campaign quickly issued a statement that the retired Black Hawk pilot could not be shot or forcibly killed by the enemy. Biden’s aides quickly offered two other examples. They clarified the 2005 story and said a bullet “narrowly missed” the helicopter Biden and his staff were flying in.
They also pointed to a 2004 story about Biden leaving Iraq on a C-1`30 cargo plane when the anti-missile system was activated, signaling that the plane had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
U.S Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans legal director Patrick Campbell warned Biden that he needed to clarify his combat zone experiences. “Veterans don’t like people who misrepresent their services and tell them what happened is superfluous. We have their names,” he said.
Stephen Hess, George Washington University Professor, said back in 2007 that Biden needed to be careful about statements that could be deconstructed under scrutiny. Biden has a history of stretching the truth, even being forced to drop out of the 1988 Democratic presidential primary for plagiarizing his speeches and law school papers.
Self-dramatization remains tempting to every Democrat out there. They want to pretend they’ve lived actual hardships when they’ve really just sat behind a fancy desk and tried to dictate the lives of those who’ve lived actual hardships.
