JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – In his online biography, a campaign video and speeches, Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens recounts how he volunteered in Bosnia to help children orphaned or separated from their families by a horrific ethnic war.
But the refugee camps he visited as a college student in summer 1994 actually were in neighboring Croatia. Only in recent years has he increasingly referred to his work as occurring in Bosnia.
The discrepancy in Greitens’ description of his past is notable because his gubernatorial campaign against Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster is built largely upon his remarkable resume. He’s an Oxford-educated author and public speaker. A humanitarian who has documented the conditions of the downtrodden around the world. And a Navy SEAL officer who survived an attack in Iraq.
Leading up to his victory in the Aug. 2 Republican primary, Greitens stressed his Navy SEAL background with ads showing him shooting large guns and causing a fiery explosion. But he has showcased a softer side since then. His first online video for the general election highlighted his humanitarian efforts, as Greitens declared into the camera: “I went to work in refugee camps in Bosnia.”
Asked by The Associated Press why he refers to his refugee work in Bosnia as opposed to Croatia, Greitens replied: “When you think about the violence, people recognize and they understand what happened in Bosnia, and they understand working with Bosnian refugees.”