AN UGLY FIRST IMPRESSION:

KERRY CAMP FRETS OVER CAMBODIA TALE (Deborah Orin, August 20, 2004, NY Post)

THERE'S now some real angst in Democratic circles be cause of the growing evidence that Democrat John Kerry's claim to have a memory "seared in me" of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia was false — and just didn't happen.

But what worries some pro-Kerry Democrats is the fear that Kerry has, as one put it, "an Al Gore problem" — that he's a serial exaggerator.

Mr. Gore had at least been vp for eight years, so folks had some sense of the man. Most Americans have been introduced to John Kerry for the first time over the past month.

MORE:
The Kerry Wars: Where was John Kerry December 24, 1968? Not in Cambodia. (Matthew Continetti, 08/30/2004, Weekly Standard)

The Swifties don't give Kerry the benefit of the doubt on any issue. They challenge the circumstances behind every medal he earned in Vietnam. Their accusations are of three broad types.

First, there are issues of fact that are difficult, if not impossible, to resolve. The controversy over how Kerry earned his Bronze Star and third Purple Heart, for example, in which the young lieutenant pulled special forces soldier Jim Rassmann from the Bay Hap river, revolves around whether or not there was enemy fire at the time. Kerry says there was; the anti-Kerry veterans--some of whom were present that day, in boats alongside Kerry's--say there wasn't. The documentary evidence available so far backs Kerry's story. For example, Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reported last week that a newly uncovered medal citation for Larry Thurlow, one of the veterans who challenge Kerry's account of the Rassmann incident, supports Kerry. Thurlow claims to have lost the citation over 20 years ago, but has refused to release his service records. Something similar happened in the case of Kerry's Silver Star, as one anti-Kerry vet told conflicting stories to the Boston Globe over the course of a year. In the final analysis, however, such claims boil down to Kerry's word versus his opponents'.

The second sort of accusation is even harder to pin down, because it delves into questions of intent. Personal scruples also play a role here. These are charges that Kerry was not entirely honest in the after-action reports he wrote from the field; that as time passed his version of battles grew exaggerated and distorted; that details in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty, an account of Kerry's war years, conflict with those in the Boston Globe biography, John F. Kerry. The story of how Kerry earned his first Purple Heart falls into this category, as do the events surrounding an attack on a sampan by Kerry's crew in the late winter of 1969. The charge here is not that Kerry "lied," or even that he has "distorted" the truth, but that he has told inconsistent stories over the years, occasionally omitting certain details.

It is the third sort of charge--that Kerry has sometimes painted a demonstrably false picture of events--that is the hardest to dismiss. John O'Neill's group insists Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as the senator has repeatedly asserted that he was. They maintain that no one--including members of Kerry's crew who otherwise support the senator--has yet corroborated Kerry's presence in Cambodia that Christmas Eve. And indeed, after the charge had been vetted by a ravenous host of Internet bloggers, and broadcast on numerous talk radio and cable news programs, the Kerry campaign, along with Douglas Brinkley, was forced to concede: On this point, the anti-Kerry Swifties may be right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2004 10:07 PM