Kerry Lied

Glen Reynolds has got to be thrilled-- the Old Media has finally decided to take on Kerry's Cambodia tales.

From WaPo:

Kerry's Cambodia Whopper

By Joshua Muravchik
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A17

Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia.

It is an assertion he made first, insofar as the written record reveals, in 1979 (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that "Apocalypse Now" came out in '79--Ed.) in a letter to the Boston Herald. Since then he has repeated it on at least eight occasions during Senate debate or in news interviews, most recently to The Post this year (an interview posted on Kerry's Web site). The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

Kerry argued that contra aid could put the United States on the path to deeper involvement despite denials by the Reagan administration of any such intent. Kerry began by reading out similar denials regarding Vietnam from presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Then he offered this devastating riposte:

"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 have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech.

Next, the campaign leaked a new version through the medium of historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," a laudatory book on Kerry's military service. Last week Brinkley told the London Telegraph that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions." Oddly, though, while Brinkley devotes nearly 100 pages of his book to Kerry's activities that January and February, pinpointing the locations of various battles and often placing Kerry near Cambodia, he nowhere mentions Kerry's crossing into Cambodia, an inconceivable omission if it were true.

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.

After his discharge, Kerry became the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Once, he presented to Congress the accounts by his VVAW comrades of having "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires . . . to human genitals . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned foodstocks." Later it was shown that many of the stories on which Kerry based this testimony were false, some told by impostors who had stolen the identities of real GIs, but Kerry himself was not implicated in the fraud. And his own over-the-top generalization that such "crimes [were] committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" could be charged up to youthfulness and the fevers of the times.

But Kerry has repeated his Cambodia tale throughout his adult life. He has claimed that the epiphany he had that Christmas of 1968 was about truthfulness. "One of the things that most struck me about Vietnam was how people were lied to," he explained in a subsequent interview. If -- as seems almost surely the case -- Kerry himself has lied about what he did in Vietnam, and has done so not merely to spice his biography but to influence national policy, then he is surely not the kind of man we want as our president.

The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Kerry was never in Cambodia and it matters. Kerry has said fifty separate times that Dick Nixon sent him to Cambodia on Christmas Eve of '68. And that while in the Big C, drunken South Vietnamese (Shit-talking the allies-- typical Kerry!!!) getting their Christmas on (Hello??!!! Do they do that?) shot at him and a CIA Spook gave him a magic hat. He even carries around the hat on the campaign trail to turn on his media bitches (think Mike Barnicle, Chris Matthews and Laurence O'Donnell).

God Bless the Swifties for forcing the WaPO to concede that Kerry's a lying shitbag-- if this is all they accomplish, they'll have been wildly successful.

Comments

[Rock City]

So if Kerry is elected and you continue to charge he is a "lying shitbag," would that then make you a "self-loathing American?"

Or is that label restricted to Bush critics?

[CDash]

Nah, Kerry is a lying shitbag. I'm saying-- we shouldn't elect him. I'll admit it, I'll never accept his presidency.

Unlike the Left, I'll still want America to do well.

I don't mind private citizens talking down Bush. What I do abhor is celebrities mouthing off against Bush.

BTW, I hate what Kerry represents-- elitism, Eurocentrism, contempt for the workaday Americans in the Heartland, contempt for "Jesus nuts" and general douche bagness.

The Left hates Bush because they hate the America he represents. I suppose I hate Kerry for the America he represents-- a nihilistic, fashionably Left, soft America that I don't think is viable in the new normal.

[Rock City]

[I don't mind private citizens talking down Bush. What I do abhor is celebrities mouthing off against Bush.]

Agreed. Most of it is pretty mindless, even Bruce Springsteen's manifesto. Never thought the Boss could be that cliche.

[The Left hates Bush because they hate the America he represents. I suppose I hate Kerry for the America he represents-- a nihilistic, fashionably Left, soft America that I don't think is viable in the new normal.]

I think we've done all we can with hard power at this point. We can't feasibly go after Iran or Syria or even North Korea right now with it after what has happened with Iraq.

Soft power is entirely appropriate and would be most effective at this point, and both Bush and Cheney are incapable of harnessing it, if only due to global perceptions of them.

Maybe Bush has served his purpose and it's time to let him go.

[CDash]

"Agreed. Most of it is pretty mindless, even Bruce Springsteen's manifesto. Never thought the Boss could be that cliche."

This is another Julianne Phillips moment. Springsteen seems estranged from the people.

He lives far too lavishly to credibly proselytize the wonders of Marxist economics.

In additon, he is a song man for Soros. Soros is worth $35 billion dollars. He is a global menance and he is behind this lame concert. If it was ever revealed that some nefarious, self interestd multi-billionaire was behind that concert that pretends to be for the little guy, those acts would be marked as sell outs for life.

"I think we've done all we can with hard power at this point. We can't feasibly go after Iran or Syria or even North Korea right now with it after what has happened with Iraq."

I disagree entirely. For Soft Power to work there needs to be a credible threat of Hard Power. Kerry has no credibility.

In additon, Kerry's statement that the coalition of the willing is nothing more than a coalition of the "coerced and the bribe" is hardly effective diplomatic talk.

"Soft power is entirely appropriate and would be most effective at this point, and both Bush and Cheney are incapable of harnessing it, if only due to global perceptions of them."

For the reasons I mentioned, Kerry can't credibly delpoy Hard or Soft power.

"Maybe Bush has served his purpose and it's time to let him go. "

Nah, Bush is the Man in this election. Kerry's a horribly conflicted, flip-flopping machine.