Biden's Bosnia

September 22, 2008
Baltimore, Maryland
Sen Joe Biden speaking with attendees at National Guard conference

Remember Bosnia? Well for Biden it's Afghanistan. And it's snow, not sniper fire. Here's what he told his rapt audience.

Biden: "If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

Problem is his helicopter was 'forced down' by Mother Nature. He doesn't actually say that he was in harm's way - just that he was forced down where the Al Qaeda lives.

As for McCain, Biden "says he'll (McCain) follow them to the gates of hell. You don't have to go to hell. Just go to Pakistan. Just go to that area. That superhighway of terror that exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Technically that's true, too. As for the story of the "forcing down" here's ABC News' JAKE TAPPER & MATTHEW JAFFE:

In February 2008, Biden -- along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. -- was on a chopper that made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan.

A snowstorm had forced them down.

No one was injured, and the Associated Press reported at the time that "the senators and their delegation returned to Bagram Air Base in a motor convoy, and left for Turkey.

"The weather closed in on us," Kerry told the AP at the time in a phone interview from Turkey. "It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty dangerous ridges. So the pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there, and we all agreed...We sat up there and traded stories."

Kerry joked, "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it…Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."

Chuck Hagel sure gets around, doesn't he?

Anyway, Morning Joe had a good laugh about it. Of course they had to show the Bosnia video...is someone getting royalties?

SCARBOROUGH: If bullets had gone another way, Joe Biden may not have been here today?"

GEIST: "Not bullets, kind of like bullets – snow. A snowstorm forced them to make landing."

SCARBOROUGH: "I don't understand."

GEIST: "Unless the Taliban controls the weather, the Taliban did not force this helicopter down."

And that'll be the end of it. Bosnia lasted longer than Rev Wright did. A lie is a lie, especially in the re-telling - though it appears only to matter when it's not the male Democratic candidates.