During a visit to Belfast last week, Secretary of State Clinton was working to settle peace agreements and, during a speech she was giving to the parliament, that active imagination got away from her again. The UK Times reports:
[D]uring a speech [Clinton] made to the Stormont parliament she said that Belfast’s landmark Europa Hotel was devastated by an explosion when she first stayed there in 1995.The Europa, where most journalists covering the decades-long conflict stayed, was famed as Europe’s most bombed hotel, earning the moniker “the Hardboard Hotel”.
However, the last Provisional IRA bomb to damage the Europa was detonated in 1993, two years before President Clinton and his wife checked in for the night.
The last time the Europa underwent renovations because of bomb blast damage was in January 1994, 22 months before the presidential entourage booked 110 rooms at the hotel.
Whoopsie! And just because she's not running for office anymore, don't think she's lost her inner politician. When asked if this was another case of Clinton "mis-speaking," a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said that she had been trying to express "perception" of Belfast's darker days.
The spokesman told a Belfast newspaper: “We are not talking about the same thing [as ‘mis-speaking’ about Bosnia]. Secretary Clinton was simply contrasting.”