Bosnians beat Sinbad to the punch on Clinton in Tuzla

Hillary Clinton and her misstated trip to Tuzla have made headlines in the United States of late, but in the Balkans, it's all old news.

Back in early January, a former member of the Bosnian presidency, Kresimir Zubak, was reported to have called her story of her arrival in the Bosnian city, sniper fire and all, completely false (article here if you read Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian).

Clinton's Tuzla trip came under further attack by the Bosnian Serb political leader Mladen Ivanic -- although Ivanic had a different account of Hillary's motivations than did the Obama camp. He explains (text in Serbian):

Given that the world, and especially America, associate the activity of snipers shooting at innocent civilians exclusively with Serbs as 'the bad guys,' Hillary Clinton has sent a clear signal as to kind of foreign policy she would hold towards this part of the Balkans. The Serbs would still be 'the bad guys,' while the Bosniaks and the Croats would be 'the good guys.'"

It's no surprise a Bosnian Serb would beat Sinbad to the punch on this one. After all, it was Clinton's husband who led the push for NATO's 1995 airstrike on Bosnian Serb targets. But these Balkan denouncers were so quick to jump on Clinton's story that they seem to have gotten a few facts wrong themselves. Zubak argues that Clinton did not actually arrive in Tuzla until December 22, 1997. According to Clinton's official schedule for March 25, 1996, released by the National Archives, Clinton did in fact visit Tuzla in 1996 -- just in time to meet an eight-year-old Bosnian girl and a 7th-grade class adopted by Germany.