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John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson: Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia
John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson
August 18, 2004 HINDERACKER0818
On March 27, 1986, John Kerry took the floor of the U.S. Senate and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam experience in explaining his opposition to the policy.
"I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."
[...]
Certain elements of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story were incredible on their face. Kerry attributed responsibility for his illegal 1968 mission to Richard Nixon, despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was president at the time. The Khmer Rouge who allegedly shot at Kerry during his "secret" mission did not take the field until 1972.
Moreover, there is no record that Swift boats -- the kind of boat under Kerry's command -- were ever used for secret missions in Cambodia. Their size and noise make them unlikely candidates for such missions. Indeed, the authorized biographer of Kerry's Vietnam service -- historian Douglas Brinkley -- omits from his book, "Tour of Duty," any mention of a covert cross-border mission to Cambodia during Kerry's service.
Over the past few weeks, the Christmas in Cambodia tale, a keystone of John Kerry's Vietnam autobiography, has been revealed to be fraudulent. On Christmas 1968, Kerry was docked at Sa Dec, 50 miles from Cambodia, in an area from which the Cambodian border was inaccessible.
Last week, after the falsity of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia account became public, the Kerry campaign issued a statement "correcting" the story. According to the Kerry campaign, the mission referred to took place in January 1969, when Kerry "inadvertently or responsibly" crossed the border into Cambodia. However, three of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates have denied entering Cambodia at any time, and no one has corroborated Kerry's claim.
The suggestion that Kerry may have "inadvertently" strayed into Cambodia -- leaving aside whether that was even possible -- constitutes a complete retreat from the point of Kerry's original story: that he lost his faith in government because the president lied about having sent American troops into Cambodia. And, of course, it contradicts his story about ferrying a CIA man to Cambodia.
Given the attention lavished on President Bush's service in the Air National Guard earlier this year, we thought that newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times would want to devote comparable attention to John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story. We also thought they would want to consider what the falsity of Kerry's story might have to tell us about the uses to which Kerry is putting his Vietnam service in the current presidential campaign.
To date, however, we have been wrong. Neither the influential mainstream newspapers nor the broadcast television networks have reported the meltdown of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story. Only readers of Internet blogs such as ours have kept current on the exposure of Kerry's tall tale. Or on the Kerry campaign's lame efforts to resurrect a version of the story that contradicts what Kerry has said for the past 25 years, but allows Kerry to continue using his Vietnam experiences, real and imagined, for his own political purposes.
Whatever the reason -- and we have our suspicions -- when it comes to scrutiny of Sen. Kerry's veracity, the mainstream media are saluting, but they are decidedly not reporting for duty.
John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and proprietors of the Web log "Power Line" (www.powerlineblog.com), one of 13 Web sites given credentials to cover the Republican convention in New York later this month.
The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerrys lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:
...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.
Glenn adds:
...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.
We Are Waiting
Campaign '04: John Kerry says he'll fight claims he lied about or exaggerated his service in Vietnam. The best way to fight such charges would be to stop calling people names and start providing some answers.
He'll have to show that the charges by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are false. That's a tall order. The allegations are numerous, well documented and quite serious.
In general, they insist that Kerry has consistently overstated his heroism, that many accounts of his service in Vietnam are not true and that he has slandered his fellow veterans by claiming they were guilty of widespread war crimes and atrocities.
It's too bad Kerry has responded to these charges and particularly those raised in the book "Unfit for Command" by former Swift boat commander John O'Neill by vowing to "attack."
....
But that won't do. Only answers will. The presidency of the United States is too important to give to someone with something to hide. Questions about Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief won't go away if he simply stonewalls and makes baseless charges of political bias.
After all, it was Kerry himself with the smart salute and "reporting for duty" opening of his convention speech who made his military service the keystone of his campaign. And it is Kerry who has repeatedly compared himself favorably with President Bush on that score.
In so doing, he's all but ignored his undistinguished 20-year career in the U.S. Senate and his decade as an anti-war activist.
Fair enough. Now we have questions about Vietnam. Such as:
Did Kerry commit war atrocities? This charge would seem unduly harsh to level at someone who fought in a war more than three decades ago except for the fact that he himself made it.
In a 1971 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Kerry said: "There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed . . ."
Earlier that year, Kerry claimed his now-beloved "band of brothers" were broadly guilty of war crimes as well.
During the infamous "Winter Soldier Investigation" by anti-war activists in early 1971, Kerry and his pals described a shocking array of atrocities that U.S. troops routinely committed: arson, rape, torture, murder, burning of villages, all part of official policy.
This, more than anything, explains the still-burning ire of his former comrades in arms.
....
Did Kerry lie about "Christmas in Cambodia"? This is a story Kerry has repeated over and over as explanation for his later metamorphosis from decorated hero into staunch anti-war activist.
"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas," Kerry wrote in the Boston Herald in October 1979. "The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
A couple of problems. Nixon wasn't president on Christmas Eve 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. In fact, official records of his service show Kerry was never in Cambodia as his campaign now concedes.
Subsequent "clarifications" saying Kerry in ensuing months served as a kind of ferry master for Green Berets, CIA agents and Navy Seals into Cambodia likewise have run afoul of the truth. There simply is no evidence for it.
Yet, on the floor of the Senate, Kerry said the experience was "seared seared" into his memory.
Bad memory, or just a lie? People deserve an explanation.
Kerry's medals. Kerry returned from his 4 1/2 month stint in Vietnam with three Purple Hearts for wounds, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for gallantry.
But some of those who served with him cast doubt on how he earned his medals and whether he deserved them. Harsh charges, to be sure. O'Neill's book, however, raises serious evidence to support the charges. Kerry must respond.
....
You may be wondering: Why raise these questions now, in the heat of a campaign? Sadly, the major media have all but ignored questions of Kerry's record. They've been too busy looking for scandal in Bush's past and, more recently, attacking O'Neill and anyone else who dares question Kerry's glowing accounts of his service.
The bias is pervasive. As the Media Research Center, a media watchdog, pointed out, ABC, CBS and NBC did 75 stories on charges Bush was "AWOL" from the National Guard. They did nine on claims Kerry fibbed about his war record. Biased might be too kind a description.
The major media in this country are overwhelmingly liberal and refuse to ask the questions that need to be asked. They do their viewers and readers and Kerry for that matter a disservice.
If Kerry thinks he's being slandered, he should answer with facts not with insults, threats and lawsuits.
We have questions, senator. We're ready for your answers.
musicman said:I'm sorry to keep hammering away like this, but my thoughts just won't stop racing. This is a wonderful and exciting time to be alive, isn't it? The internet is a beautiful thing, and, the best part is - THE LIBERALS NEVER SAW THIS COMING! The very thing that makes them such a threat could conceivably be their undoing - the fact that they understand nothing of human nature. The fact that every single one of their harebrained social experiments has blown up in their - and our - faces deters them not in the slightest. They simply set about extinguishing the fires they've created, and telling us we imagined the whole thing.
But, let's not delude ourselves. The fact that they are fools does not make them any less dangerous. The internet - indeed, the entire concept of free speech - has created, for liberalism, an intolerable dilemna. The ideology simply cannot survive in the face of open, rational discourse. Therefore, open rational discourse itself will soon come under attack. Bet on it. The best liberal minds in the country are hard at work on it right now. In lawyers and the courts, they possess formidable weapons. We underestimate them at our peril. Let's not pat ourselves on the back just yet.
musicman said:You've got them pegged, Kathianne. The tragic thing is that, on some level, they really believe their own press releases. Liberals lie easily and convincingly - even to themselves - because their ideology is a lie at it's very root.
That's why - until recently - they kicked conservatives' asses so badly at the "public perception game" (that, and the fact that they held a practical monopoly on the dissemination of information). For conservatives, dishonesty, envy, and blind, unreasoning hatred are character flaws. For liberals, however,these are absolute boons. They are permissible - even laudable - tools in debate, since the only purpose of debate is to win the point and advance the cause - and the truth be damned. Conservatives often reeled in shock at the depth of liberal depravity, and were thus caught flatfooted.
It's also why liberals don't get - and never WILL get - why America loved President Reagan so dearly. The idea that a politician could open his mouth and speak the simple truth of his heart is so foreign to them as to be inconceivable. The only way they can keep their heads from exploding is to figure that he was an even better liar than they.
Kathianne said:I guess that is why Kerry scares me so much! I think he believes now, his spin of 30 years ago. Psychotic as pres? I surely hope not!
musicman said:I'm sorry to keep hammering away like this, but my thoughts just won't stop racing. This is a wonderful and exciting time to be alive, isn't it? The internet is a beautiful thing, and, the best part is - THE LIBERALS NEVER SAW THIS COMING! The very thing that makes them such a threat could conceivably be their undoing - the fact that they understand nothing of human nature. The fact that every single one of their harebrained social experiments has blown up in their - and our - faces deters them not in the slightest. They simply set about extinguishing the fires they've created, and telling us we imagined the whole thing.
But, let's not delude ourselves. The fact that they are fools does not make them any less dangerous. The internet - indeed, the entire concept of free speech - has created, for liberalism, an intolerable dilemna. The ideology simply cannot survive in the face of open, rational discourse. Therefore, open rational discourse itself will soon come under attack. Bet on it. The best liberal minds in the country are hard at work on it right now. In lawyers and the courts, they possess formidable weapons. We underestimate them at our peril. Let's not pat ourselves on the back just yet.
britinusa said:Don't apologize, MusicMan! I've been obsessed with this SwiftVet story for at least a fortnight. I'm driving my wife nuts (she's a Democrat).
And your're right: the libs DIDN'T see this coming. The Kerry people just don't understand the power of the internet. You and I can can dig out information without leaving the comfort of our homes. Have they never heard of LexisNexis and Google?
The SwiftVets aren't the only people who are using Kerry's own words against him. Kerry is a TERRIBLE liar. He isn't in Bill Clinton's league when it comes to lying. Clinton was (and still is) a consumate liar, Kerry is a pathological liar.
:teeth:
musicman said:Well put, Kathianne. I never thought of it quite that way before, but, in order to be a good little liberal, one would just about have to be psychotic. The ones who aren't are just plain evil. Thank God this country has not (yet) had to endure a true liberal in the White House.
I only say that because I consider Clinton to be largely apolitical. As long as he could play all the golf he wanted, and diddle every woman who came into his orbit, he didn't give a damn one way or the other. "What is my stand on this matter? I don't know - let me check the polls and see what I think." He dodged the draft, not because of any passionate political beliefs, but because of his passionate belief in saving his own skin. It established a pattern. When an enraged America swept congress clean in 1994, giving Republicans a majority for the first time in 60 years, Bill Clinton stared into his own political grave, and did what any self-respecting soulless reprobate would do - he adopted the principles of the Republican revolution as his own, and claimed credit for the resulting robust economy. Even the bloated shitsack Michael Moore refers to Clinton as "the best Republican president we ever had".
Hillary, now - that's another matter entirely.
JIHADTHIS said:When is the Bush campaign going to stop the DNC spinners? Getting pretty tired of 4 page articles of BS allegations and the best the Bush campaign can do is have some underling say "we have nothing to do with it". That ain't gonna fly with the casual news consumer. All they see is the major media saying that Bush smeared Kerry's "holy" Vietnam service..........
Not everyone pays as much attention as we do!
