August 24, 2004
LIKE THAT LAST JAPANESE SOLDIER . . .
Holiday in Cambodia: The "Christmas Eve" attack on Kerry is cheap and almost certainly wrong (Fred Kaplan, Slate, 8/23/04)
Having pretty much failed at their efforts to disprove the official U.S. Navy account of Kerry's valor in battle as skipper of a "Swift boat" patrolling the Mekong Delta, the veterans against Kerry have moved to discredit his more obscure claim—made a few times over the years, in interviews and Senate floor speeches—that, on Dec. 24, he took CIA or special ops forces across the border into Cambodia, even while Washington claimed no American troops were there. . . .Kerry's Cambodia Whopper (Joshua Muravchik, Washington Post, 8/24/04)O'Neill, Drudge, and the other sneerers choose to ignore the 10 preceding pages—the opening pages of a chapter called "Death in the Delta." On Christmas Eve 1968, Brinkley writes, Kerry and his crew:
headed their Swift north by the Cho Chien River to its junction with the My Tho only miles from the Cambodian border. … Kerry began reading up on Cambodia's history in a book he had borrowed from the floating barracks in An Thoi. … He even read about a 1959 Pentagon study titled "Psychological Observations: Cambodia," which … state[d] that Cambodians "cannot be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of U.S. aims and policies." [Italics added [by Kaplan].] . . .But one thing is for sure: Lieut. Kerry did not spend that Christmas Eve just lying around, dreaming of sugarplums and roasted chestnuts. He had plenty of time to cover the 40 miles from the Cambodian border to the safety of Sa Dec (he did command a swift boat, after all). More to the point, the evidence indicates he did cover those 40 miles: He was near (or in?) Cambodia in the morning, in Sa Dec that night.
Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.It's always amusing when the press keeps fighting for their man long after he's thrown in the towel. Posted by David Cohen at August 24, 2004 9:48 AM
To paraphrase the Senator:
How Do You Ask a Man to Be the Last Man to [justify your lies about] Vietnam?
Posted by: oj at August 24, 2004 10:02 AMSince the Clinton spinners thought they could redefine 'is', I guess Kerry spinners think they can redefine 'near' to mean 'in'.
Posted by: Chris B at August 24, 2004 10:13 AMAnother hit from "old faithful" Kaplan.
"Obscure" ? Of course it was important for Kerry on the Senate floor to make his point effective that he be "in" Cambodia, not "near". And since he was not "in" Cambodia he had to not tell the truth. Isn't that the point of all lying?
Posted by: h-man at August 24, 2004 10:18 AMThe "Christmas Eve" attack on Kerry is cheap and almost certainly wrong.
I love that term "almost certainly".
Defending a serial fantasist is cheap. Not to mention delusional.
Posted by: jim hamlen at August 24, 2004 11:07 AMIf it was obscure, ttat was not for lack of Kerry's trying to publicize it.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 24, 2004 1:28 PMKaplan states "[Kerry] took CIA or special ops forces across the border into Cambodia, even while Washington claimed no American troops were there"
But note that Kerry always says he did it while Nixon claimed no American troops were there, despite Nixon not even being President. Kerry frequently (including his convention speech) refers to Vietnam as "Nixon's war", and I think his Holiday in Cambodia fabrication is part of his (and the left's) pathology of pretending Vietnam was the creation of the evil right-wing Nixon, and not the result of decisions by JFK and LBJ.
Posted by: carter at August 24, 2004 2:17 PMI recall a 'town hall' meeting that Chris Matthews moderated in Little Rock concerning Clinton late in the second term. Matthews asked one of the audience what she thought of Clinton having an affair with Gennifer Flowers. The woman denounced the 'allegation' as a slander against Clinton. Matthews was (atypically) speechless, then informed her that Clinton had admitted to the affair in sworn deposition testimony. The audience member didn't budge, and continued to denounce it as a right-wing lie.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at August 24, 2004 2:30 PMIt still defies logic that, even using Kerry's revised 1968-69 time line, if he knew of illegal covert actions in Cambodia involving the hated CIA during the opening weeks of Nixon's presidency, he wouldn't have exposed that information to the world during his April 22, 1971 testimony on U.S. war crimes before the Fulbright committee in the Senate.
Posted by: John at August 24, 2004 2:31 PMFred: And he was so impressed with that tactic that he's been using it ever since.
Posted by: David Cohen at August 24, 2004 2:43 PM