Team Hillary doubles down on her Pakistan mistakes

I say “mistakes” because there are more than one. ABC, following Politico’s lead, only reports on Hillary’s saying that Musharraf is “on the ballot” when he’s not in fact on the ballot, having been re-elected to a third five-year term as president back in October. But that’s just one of the mistakes that Hillary made on Sunday. She also mischaracterized Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and she put Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on the ballot to run against Musharraf. Neither Bhutto nor Sharif were running for Musharraf’s office, and Sharif couldn’t run at all because he’s a convicted felon. So both ABC and Politico don’t have the story entirely right, either. Their reporting is an inch deep on this.

Anyhow, to the Clinton team’s blatant lies. Their spin now is pathetic.

ABC News’ Brian Wheeler, Teddy Davis and Kate Snow report: The Clinton campaign says Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., did not make a mistake when she talked about Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a presidential candidate, in a recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“Well, his party is on the ballot,” said communications director Howard Wolfson, in an interview at Clinton headquarters in Des Moines, Tuesday, suggesting that the senator knew the difference between the man and the party being up for election, but was using shorthand. “And I don’t think anybody questions that Sen. Clinton has a vast and deep knowledge about foreign policy.”

Well, her vast and deep knowledge was easily blown away by poking around on Google for 10 or 20 minutes. Her vast and deep knowledge was in fact entirely wrong. The only thing vast and deep about the Clinton machine is its tendency to lie and toss out vast and deep quantities of BS.

And saying “Well, his party is on the ballot” is true, but it’s also irrelevant. The now postponed Pakistani election won’t replace Musharraf and never would have. It’s about parliament and the prime minister job. Hillary didn’t know what she was talking about.

Hillary Clinton made a series of major mistakes on a major story, mistakes that show that she doesn’t know the story as well as she claims to. She ought to own up to that, get up to speed on the story, and make amends. That’s what normal people do. But that’s never been the Clinton MO. They’ll trot out their army of spinners to lie through their teeth to the American people, just like they did for 8 years when they had power.

(via Ace)