If Ben Carson’s tale of a “full scholarship to West Point” is going to get reviewed and fact-checked, why not some fact-checking of Hillary Clinton’s more implausible claims? To give credit where it is due, CNN checked out Hillary Clinton’s repeated claim that she tried to join the Marines. Back in 2007, I expressed skepticism about her story, and in the intervening years, no further evidence has arisen to confirm her claim that she tried to join but was told she was too old, had poor eyesight, and wasn’t acceptable because she was a woman. As I noted then, a former Army recruiter scoffed that the Marines would be so picky at that time:
From my own experience, I have no doubt that if a 27-year-old female with a doctor or bachelor of laws had appeared before any recruiter’s desk and inquired about entry into the armed forces, that recruiter would have probably been willing to violate a half-dozen clauses of the UCMJ to get her in.
CNN’s report takes a similarly skeptical tone, pointing out everything else going on in Hillary’s life at that time:
“We asked her campaign for just a few more details on this,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny said. “It seems so unusual that a Yale-educated lawyer who worked on the anti- war campaigns of [Eugene] McCarthy and [George] McGovern, who had just moved to Arkansas, whose husband was about to become the attorney general of the state, would decide to want to join the Marines. But the campaign said they’re not going to add any more comment onto this.”
But remember, she always was a Yankees fan, and she dodged the sniper fire in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996.