The heated campaign trails have reached the Internet with global bloggers noting the comments.

A Bosnian-American Fedja describes the comments as disturbing and that McCain should have said something in defense of his rival.

The most disturbing part of the rally was when McCain asked the question: “Who is the real Barack Obama” and someone from the audience shouted “A terrorist!” We all know that the intellectual level of McCain supporters is that of a 5 year old with a slight mental retardation, but rather than stepping in and saying “That's out of line, sir…” McCain contorted his disfigured face into a smirk and carried on.

The blogger goes on to write about Palin’s rally and what October 6, 2008 will now be remembered as.

If you thought that this was the climax of this sad day for America, you were wrong. At another rally, being held at the same time, Sarah Palin was throwing the kitchen sink at Obama, trying to associate him with a man who was engaged in despicable acts when Obama was 8 years old and who served with Obama on two charity boards where many conservatives served. She said: “what are we going to do with him?” And someone from the audience shouted: “Kill him.”

This should be remembered as the day when McCain and Palin became just two sad, racist, xenophobic, idiotic criminals with nothing but hatred spewing out of their disfigured faces. I will be truly ashamed to be American if these two get to run our exhausted country.

An expat in South Korea Expat Jane agrees with the Bosnian-American blogger, stating that the Republican candidates shouldn’t have disregarded the comments.

If you continue to support a man that will stand and say nothing while his supporters say this then you're just as evil as he is. And I'm someone who in 2000 thought McCain wouldn't be so bad. Clearly, he's learned all the bad and dirty tricks that kept him from the nomination in 2000.

Letting people yell “kill him” is simply dangerous and unnecessary. I also have to say if you don't support him but you sit back and don't tell others about this video and what's in it, you're complicit too.

Can you imagine how much worse this makes the USA and its citizens look? Like Obama or not he's a husband and father of two young girls. I don't like McCain or Palin but I don't wish death on either one of them. This is an outrage!

Australian blogger of firedoglake, states that Palin and McCain are allowing “lies” to spread.

You can never accuse the McCain/Palin ticket of not playing to their base. The economy is tanking, despite McCain's impotent grab for the bailout laurels, and Obama is widening his lead in the polls, so the “brains” behind the ticket have resorted to what they do best: sliming the opposition. Churning out the bilious hate and the barely veiled bigotry, McCain and Palin started the new week on the campaign trail, leaving behind a wake of vitriol and lies.

Across the Atlantic in Portugal, João Lopes, points out that Palin left out poignant facts when speaking of Obama’s relationship with William Ayers.

“Palin não só não referiu a especificidade desta relação pontual, como omitiu dois elementos do artigo: primeiro, que Obama é citado por The New York Times, considerando que Ayers é “alguém que se envolveu em actos detestáveis, quando eu tinha oito anos”; segundo, que The New York Times, aliás à semelhança de outros órgãos de informação (The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times e The New Yorker),
conclui que não tinha qualquer fundamento a ideia segundo a qual Ayers e Obama teriam uma qualquer relação de proximidade. Depois do confronto de ideias, assistimos, assim, ao despertar dos monstros da difamação. A menos de um mês (4 de Novembro) da eleição do Presidente dos EUA, isto significa que os próximos tempos poderão não ser muito edificantes.

The news of the Republican campaign trails have further hit the Twittersphere, with Tweeps commenting on the “Kill him” remark in a forum.

African American Tweep, Zik, was one of the poignant Tweeps in the forum, stating his disapproval of the remark and that a vote for McCain/Palin resulted in a vote for racism.

Another African American, mmoney, stated that the obvious racisim could eventually lead to something more horrific.

Finally, McCain Supporter was also flabbergasted by the comment and stated an apology was necessary.

Pero it seems that it is a real word and wasn't a gaffe. According to Media Matters for America:

According to the U.S. State Department, as of 2002, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina consisted of the following ethnic groups: "Bosniak 48.3%, Serb 34.0%, Croat 15.4%, others 2.3%."

The CIA World Factbook states: "Bosniak has replaced Muslim as an ethnic term in part to avoid confusion with the religious term Muslim -- an adherent of Islam."

I gave them how to get onto this blog too, so they could see for themselves, the pictures of the SFF, and that I have only good things to say about the Festival, and I.T. Computers :) and mostly I have good memories of Sarajevo!

Kevin Spacey got an absolutely huge reception here, his movies are well liked here. They showed ‘The Usual Suspects' and the interview was great. He is an interesting man and a very good director. Hearing how he works was fascinating. He is a very appealing character. It was his first time in Sarajevo. He really likes the city, I could tell he wasn't just making nice!

Kevin Spacey has been a big supporter of Barack Obama and there were a couple Obama related questions which he handled with great finess.

Speaking of Obama, I hadn't put Biden on his short list for V.P. but I am delighted that Biden will be the running mate! EXCELLENT choice, really excellent!

(Biden has a really good foreign policy record over all. Biden is strong in his own right, which shows that Obama has some guts!)

After sitting in the crowd, under the tent, I was a bit over heated and dizzy, so I went and got an orange juice, not a Cedavita, it was MOBBED over by the Cedavica booth!
Then I walked to the bus stop, the Dom Armije stop. The official name of the building is no longer ‘Dom Armije' it is Dom Oružne Snaga BiH' but EVERYONE still calls it ‘Dom Armije'

Monday Ramzan is supposed to start and this is a big time for weddings. In fact processions of cars with honking horns proceeding at high speed have been common for about the last week or so. I got a nice shot of one of those processions yesterday.

It was really LOUD, then I went and got a bus home. Today, I walked into town and will walk back. My very important piece of mail did not arrive yesterday EITHER, so a friend who knows the area is going to help me go to the special postal facility by the railway station. I will hopefully be able to find out what happened then. I don't know what time this will happen tomorrow. The friend has other business, it is one of my dear friends from the little dress shop in Baščaršija.

Frankly, I am going to miss them FAR more than I will miss the S.O. It is sad to say it, we have known each other about 10 years, and I really did love him, but right now I feel so blank about him. I guess that feeling is my friend. It will keep me from doing anything stupid about him. I thank God for that feeling!

Often women who have broken up with a guy take him back shortly after the break-up, without anything being resolved. I did that with him once years ago.

To make it as plain as I can while protecting everyone's privacy, he wasn't violent, he isn't a mean guy, he is in fact perfectly charming, even sweet at times. The trouble with the S.O. is he isn't very good about telling the truth. Nor is he especially faithful or reliable. He is not THERE for you wh en the chips are down, not even emotionally. The chips are very much down for Drugarica Katjša just now.

If I had any way of staying in this really wonderful city, I would, with or without the S.O. it is a wonderful place, and most of my time here has been spent without the S.O. actually. Between him getting sick, which he can't help at this point, and his being in Croatia often which he damned well COULD help, he hasn't been around anything like enough.

Other than the day I had enough of the less good part of him, it has been o.k. even wonderful at times. But there is no future with him, there cannot be. Anyone I am with has to be honest with me, and true to his word.

BBC News video

CBS news story.

ABC news story.

Associated Press story.

The Tall Tale

Looking through the First Lady’s remarks on her visit to the base in Tuzla, with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow, one finds a first hand recollection of the threat she was facing in Tuzla. In remarks at Dover Air Force base in 1999, Hillary Clinton recalled her visit to Tuzla. She said:

"You know, I went to Bosnia shortly after the peace accords were signed, when it was safe enough to go to our base in Tuzla, but not very safe to go anywhere else."

Somehow, over time, the "safe" trip to Tuzla has grown into a war story where Hillary Clinton is braving sniper fire to prove her foreign policy bona fides. It is as if the facts were being fixed around her campaign created myth of "experience".

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."  - Hillary Clinton, Remarks at George Washington University, March 17, 2008

"Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK — because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke — I didn’t say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire — that’s not what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can’t, I can’t rush by her, I’ve got to at least greet her — so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that’s my memory of it." - Hillary Clinton, interview with Daily News editorial board, March 24, 2008

 But don’t worry, she is ready to answer phone calls at 3 a.m.

Bill Clinton bears a very large share of responsibility for the problems faced by the Balkans and Caucasus today. These are, in particular, a dismembered, non-functioning Bosnia; an anti-Western, disruptive Serbia; and a dismembered Georgia. The problem was not that Clinton was a particularly reactionary president in world affairs, but that he simply was not very interested in them, something that resulted in a failure of leadership. The mess in Bosnia is above all the fault of the former British Conservative government of John Major and the former French Socialist regime of the late Francois Mitterand; they were the champions of appeasement and the architects, along with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, of Bosnia’s dismemberment. Clinton could and should have insisted upon a change in Western policy vis-a-vis Bosnia upon becoming president. Instead, he chose to defer to his pro-Belgrade European allies, Britain and France, not wishing to fall out with them over something trivial like genocide in the heart of Europe. This was not only a moral failing, but a betrayal of US interests; the disastrous Anglo-French policy and Clinton’s vacillating support for it greatly damaged both transatlantic relations and the Balkans. There are times when Europe needs American leadership; Bosnia was one of them.

After the initialling of the Dayton Peace Accords in November 1995, Clinton continued to neglect Bosnia, allowing the indicted war-criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to escape arrest - primarily because he did not want to risk American casualties in arrest operations. Nor does Clinton deserve particular credit over Kosova; it is highly questionable whether the US would have acted to prevent the genocide there in 1999 had not Major and Mitterand been replaced in the meantime by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. NATO’s liberation of Kosova should have been followed up by the prompt recognition of its independence, while the Russians were in no position to cause such trouble for us as they are today. We could have ’punished’ the Serbia of Milosevic with Kosova’s independence, instead of the Serbia of today, led as it is by the relatively pro-Western President Boris Tadic. But that problem, too, was allowed to fester; its resolution today is proving much more difficult than it need have been.

Over Russia and the Caucasus, too, Clinton, like George Bush Snr before him, showed a disastrous failure of leadership. With Russian politics in a state of flux, with the pro-Western Boris Yeltsin in power in Moscow and financially dependent on the West, a golden opportunity existed to push Russian policy in the Caucasus in a less imperialistic direction. The Western powers should have acted decisively to halt the dismemberment of Georgia in the early 1990s and prevent the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from falling under Russia’s exclusive control. We should have recognised the independence of Chechnya, preempting Yeltsin’s violent assault on the country in 1994. But as is so often the case, the dovish policy is the one most likely to lead to confrontation in the long-run - think of Neville Chamberlain and Munich. Our failure to engage in the Caucasus, and Blair’s shameful support for Vladimir Putin over Chechnya in 1999, have been richly rewarded: Georgia, an aspiring NATO member, faces perpetual dismemberment, while an aggressive, ungrateful Putin has reentered the Balkans with a vengeance with the deliberate aim of derailing the region’s Euro-Atlantic integration. Chechnya proved to be the poison of Russian democracy and Russian-Western friendship; a Russian president willing and able to use weapons of mass destruction against his Chechen citizens is unlikely to respect democratic freedoms in Russia proper, and an undemocratic, authoritarian Russian regime is more likely to be hostile to the West.

In fairness, Russia is not solely responsible for the mess in the Caucasus; Georgia’s brutally chauvinistic former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was one of the architects of his country’s dismemberment, as was the Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who supported the Abkhazians. The people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had legitimate grievances against Gamsakhurdia’s regime and its successors in Tbilisi. These are all issues that a more forward-looking US policy could have helped to resolve, but did not.

I fear, therefore, the consequences for South East Europe of a US president who is dovish, uninterested in or unserious about foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has always worked hand-in-glove with Bill in the political sphere, and should share responsibility with him for his disastrous Bosnia policy. Indeed, the story is that her influence made it worse; that she read Robert Kaplan’s truly dreadful book ‘Balkan Ghosts’ and passed it on to her husband; this book, filled as it was with crude stereotypes about the Balkans (along the lines of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’), encouraged the perception of the Bosnian war as an expression of intractable ethnic conflict in which no moral issues were at stake, militating against any intention Bill might have had to resist Serbian aggression. Be that as it may, Hillary was more frank in welcoming Kosovo’s independence than Obama, who appears to see Balkan politics largely through the prism of his need to win the goodwill of the Serbian and Greek lobbies in the US. Hence his letter to the Serbian Unity Congress, in which he stated: ‘I support and shall help in every possible way development of the dialog between all sides in Kosova because I believe that peace and stability can be reached only by solutions acceptable for all sides’ - not far from an endorsement of the Serbo-Russian position on Kosova, which insists on a Serbian veto on any settlement. Hence also Obama’s endorsement of the Greek-nationalist position on Macedonia. These acts may be motivated by simple electoral opportunism, but they do not bode well for a principled and forward-looking US policy toward the Balkans should Obama become president. In flirting with the US’s Serbian and Greek lobbies, Obama is flirting with groups that encompass ultra-right-wing, Christian-fundamentalist, Muslim-hating bigots.

There are several reasons to believe that McCain would follow a more serious and principled policy toward South East Europe than either Clinton or Obama. He is aware of the importance of what he calls a ‘progressive Turkey’ as a strategic partner of the US and a beacon of Muslim democracy, and of the mutual inter-relatedness of democracy and stability in Turkey and Iraq. Turkey is both the most important Balkan country in world affairs and a state that borders on Iraq; the Balkans and the Middle East are adjacent, interlocking regions; McCain’s commitment to staying the course in Iraq is therefore most likely to promote stability in the Balkans.

McCain was correct to oppose Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide (here I break ranks with Norman Geras). The Ottoman Empire in 1915 was undoubtedly guilty of genocide against the Armenians, and Turkey should recognise this genocide. But it is not for an outside power like the US to single out this historic crime as uniquely totemic and worthy of recognition, particularly given that the US Congress has taken no parallel steps to recognise the genocidal crimes carried out by Russia and the Balkan Christian states against Ottoman and Caucasian Muslims during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Why should the US recognise the Ottoman genocide of one million Armenians, but not the Balkan Christian genocide of over six-hundred thousand Ottoman Muslims in 1912-13, when the latter crime was an immediate catalyst of the former ? The Turks would be entirely justified in taking offence at such double standards, and McCain is entirely correct that the US should be developing its relationship with Ankara, not creating new barriers to it - though he is also far from uncritical in his support for Turkey.

McCain was an early supporter of Kosova’s independence. He stood by the oppressed Kosova Albanians before it became fashionable in Washington to do so, and continued to do so despite the support given by many right-wing Republicans - largely for anti-Clinton and anti-Islamic reasons - to the anti-Albanian policies of Milosevic and subsequent Serb-nationalist politicians. A Republican president who is ready to put a combination of US strategic interests and morality above petty sectarian domestic feuds and religious hatred is more likely to act in South East Europe’s best interests.

Finally, McCain led a delegation of US senators to Tbilisi in August 2006, to express unconditional support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and to challenge the presence of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, suggesting they be replaced by a UN or OSCE force. Although Moscow likes to draw a false parallel between Kosova and South Ossetia, in reality, secessionist South Ossetia is more like the Serb-controlled enclave in northern Kosova - an expression of the imperialism of a larger neighbour that seeks to punish a former colony for seeking independence by dismembering it. Georgia is not Russia’s backyard, and any policy that treats it as being so will only bolster the anti-Western Russian neo-empire that has arisen under Putin to become a dangerous enemy of the West. McCain is entirely correct in his belief that in defending Georgia, the West will be defending itself. His suggestion that Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia be replaced by a UN force should be welcomed by all multilateralist opponents of unilateral intervention by great powers in the internal affairs of other countries. But don’t hold your breath.

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The Washington Post has exposed Hillary Clinton’s little fib about her Bosnia trip. Hillary Clinton told her audience earlier this week that her trip to Bosnia was dangerous. She said:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

The problem of course is what she said happened never happened. The Washington Post dug up pictures and video from the greeting ceremony in Bosnia. Sinbad was there, an 8 year old girl was there, Hillary Clinton was there. However, there was no running with heads down and there was no sniper fire.

Many have questioned Hillary Clinton’s credibility based on this account. I, however, question her threat perception.

I have no reason to believe that Hillary Clinton is lying. It may just be that her recollection of the events in Bosnia are different than the actual facts. She may have perceived a greater threat than actually existed. Perhaps she feared sniper fire and that fear has made her forget that indeed there was a greeting ceremony. She may have a heightened sense of threat perception. She may perceive threats as much worse than they actually are.

It may be the same kind of heightened and exaggerated threat perception that led her to vote for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. She was susceptible to the propaganda that led the drum beat to war. It may have led her to the one percent doctrine, where possibility becomes probability. It is a view of the world where all risks take on equal likelihood of occurring. It is a view of the world that leads to overreaction - a trait that is dangerous in the hands of the person in charge of the world’s most powerful fighting force. To wit, George W Bush.

As I survey the behavior of the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primaries, I also see evidence of overreaction to perceived threats. For example, Hillary Clinton’s outburst over the Obama campaign mailers questioning her stand on healthcare and NAFTA. Taken together, it is a pattern of behavior that is alarming.

Of course I could be wrong. It is possible that Hillary Clinton was simply lying about her Bosnia trip.

In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the "scariest" part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. "I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’"

Now, if you are like me, you might think that a would-be commander-in-chief should not be taking so much incoming from comedian like Sinbad. And you would be right. The Clinton campaign responded just as forcefully:

Still, defending Clinton against Sinbad the refuter, Singer said, "The sad reality of what was going on in Bosnia at the time Senator Clinton traveled there as first lady has been well documented. It appears that Sinbad’s experience in Bosnia goes back further than Senator Obama’s does. In fact, has Senator Obama ever been to Bosnia?"

It appears that the Clinton campaign is suggesting that both Clinton and Sinbad have passed the commander-in-chief threshold by visiting Bosnia. Mrs. Clinton already has stated that the Republican nominee, John McCain, has also passed this crucial threshold to the be President of the United States. This leaves Barack Obama as the only candidate left who has failed to cross this threshold.

Since I am a Barack Obama supporter, and since I have now been convinced by the Bosnia test that my candidate is not commander-in-chief material, I have gone googling to find my ideal candidate. I am still not sold on Hillary Clinton and I am also not comfortable voting for a candidate who goes by the one word name of a pirate. So, I have compiled a list of a number of people, who like Mrs. Clinton and Sinbad, have passed the crucial Bosnia test. I ask you the reader to help me decide who to vote for as our next commander-in-chief. All of the following have passed Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia test and should be considered commander-in-chief material:

• singer Mary Chapin Carpenter
• the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
• Houston based Latin band La Mafia
• New York city based rock band Evil Jake
• Arnold Schwarzenegger (will need a constitutional amendment)
• B. B. King
• Comedians Louis Johnson, Jeff Burghart and Mike Estime
• The Bellamy Brothers
• alternative rock band Oleander
• jazz musician David Sanchez
• Tanya Roberts and Kurtwood Smith
• Ruth Pointer of The Pointer Sisters
• country singers Paul Brandt and Claudia Church
• Football players Russell Carter, Byron Hunt, Roland James, Ronnie Lapette, Don MacNeal, Curtis McGriff, Stephen Baker, Scott Connover, Pete Shaw and Willie Buchanon