Swifties 1 kerry 0

[dude1394]

So the swifties are telling the truth about kerry's cambodia christmas. I guess until proven wrong everything else they say should be taken as true as well.

swifties 1 kerry 0

Unsurprisingly, the Swiftvets' attack on John Kerry's credibility scored its first direct hit even before their book Unfit For Command has been released to the general public, and the Kerry campaign has been forced into its usual strategy -- yet another flip-flop. Human Events Online notes the transcript from today's Fox and Friends, in which Kerry's advisor Jeh Johnson beats a hasty retreat from both Cambodia and the Swiftvets.

First, here's what John Kerry told the Boston Herald in a letter dated October 14, 1979, and reproduced by the Swiftvets in their book:

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. 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.

As discussed earlier, Nixon wasn't president in 1968, he was president-elect, and he wouldn't have been on the radio discussing troop deployments over which he had no control and probably little information that wasn't already public. No matter; by the time Kerry spoke about this seminal event in his life to the Senate in 1986 in order to argue against assisting the Nicaraguan contras against the Sandanista junta, he'd dropped the Nixon reference and made it more generic (Congressional Record, March 27, 1986, page S3594):

I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what is was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khme[r] 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....

Now the campaign has this to say about that seared-in memory:

JOHNSON: John Kerry has said on the record that he had a mistaken recollection earlier. He talked about a combat situation on Christmas Eve 1968 which at one point he said occurred in Cambodia. He has since corrected the recorded to say it was some place on a river near Cambodia and he is certain that at some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia. My understanding is that he is not certain about that date.

[BRIAN] KILMEADE [co-host]: I think the term was he had a searing memory of spending Christmas - back in 1986 in the senate floor in Cambodia.

JOHNSON: I believe he has corrected the record to say it was some place near Cambodia he is not certain whether it was in Cambodia but he is certain there was some point subsequent to that that he was in Cambodia.

This is, of course, complete crap. For thirty years Kerry has pushed that Christmas In Cambodia myth in order to explain his embitterment about the Viet Nam war, as the catalyst that transformed him into an eager young officer to a cynical anti-war activist. Until this year, no one challenged him even on naming the wrong president, which you think a newspaper like the Herald would have caught. Now he wants people to believe that he meant he was near Cambodia. Well, he was at Sa Dec, which is almost as close to Cambodia as it is to the Mekong Delta -- about 55 miles away. (See the map at Power Line.) What of it? He was supposed to be in Viet Nam! So why the disillusion and embitterment?

The truth is that John Kerry never went to Cambodia on Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve, or Arbor Day. He certainly never went there on a Swiftboat, as the Mekong was blockaded to keep all but the light-drafting sampans from crossing the border in either direction, as Stephen Gardner -- Kerry's shipmate -- pointed out yesterday. None of his shipmates, in fact, have ever agreed with Kerry's contention that he went to Cambodia, and even his official biographer left that claim out of his book, released earlier in the primaries.

John Kerry lied about his service record. He took a contentious issue and simply pasted it into his narrative of his military experience in order to add a certain cachet, an odd credibility to his assertions of widespread atrocities when he turned his back on his fellow vets, once stateside. Don't believe me, Kerry could say? Well, I've run illegal clandestine missions into Cambodia and seen it all. I even have the hat! And I tell you, everyone there committed atrocities ...

This isn't just a politician's fib about supporting federal funding for Head Start; this is a man who tells fundamental lies about his background in order to puff up his importance, and for what? To gain the notoriety needed to stick his fellow veterans in the back. To step on the corpses of their reputations into a political career. To get in good with the cool people. What else has John Kerry lied about, and what new versions of his life will be forthcoming?

Tell me I'm wrong. Demand that Senator Kerry release his full service record so that he can prove me and the Swiftvets wrong. If he can't get his dates and places straight for what he's featired as his primary qualification for the Presidency, then let's get the records out and see what they say. He and his party demanded it of George Bush when they called him a deserter with a hell of a lot less cause than the Swiftvets have provided. It didn't take much courage for him to press Bush for those records when everyone happily smeared with the AWOL charge; failure to produce them now will demonstrate Kerry's cowardice in the most clear and objective manner possible.

[dude1394]

Kerry also was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that he ran CIA agents into Cambodia from South Vietnam, which implies strongly, I think, that Kerry meant that he sailed his boat into Cambodia on more than one occasion. So when?

However, three of Kerry's own crew members - his campaign's band of brothers - have stated firmly that they were never in Cambodia or Christmas 1968 or any other day. So do all of Kerry's Vietnam commanders still alive.

It would be a simple thing for the CIA agent(s) Kerry boated into Cambodia to call FoxNews or the NYT and say so, or for records to be gleaned from archives showing whether Kerry's boat sailed CIA agents into the country.

But Kerry and his campaign apparently cannot offer any actual evidence to back up Kerry's decades-long claims. Instead, they are hemming and hawing and playing, "What the candidate meant to say."

But today, on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," Kerry Campaign Advisor Jeh Johnson had this to say to the show's co-host Brian Kilmeade:

JOHNSON: John Kerry has said on the record that he had a mistaken recollection earlier. He talked about a combat situation on Christmas Eve 1968 which at one point he said occurred in Cambodia. He has since corrected the recorded to say it was some place on a river near Cambodia and he is certain that at some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia. My understanding is that he is not certain about that date.

Just when and where did Kerry say this? My Google searches turned up nothing. So I went to Kerry's own campaign web site and used the site's search feature, searching only for the word, "Cambodia." It yielded exactly two results. One is nothing but a repost of the text of the WaPo story linked above. The other is a summary about Kerry's Vietnam service in which the word, "Cambodia," does not appear; I don't know why it came up as a hit on the search.

If Kerry had done what Johnson said he did - go "on the record" to correct the date - why does not Kerry's campaign site at least link to the record concerned?

I want to know:

# In what medium is Kerry directly quoted making these corrections?

# When were they uttered by Kerry?

# In 1986 Kerry said his 1968 Cambodia Christmas was "seared, seared" into his memory. Why is this memory so indistinct now, to the point that today's story is that he spent Christmas "some place on a river near Cambodia," in Johnson's words? Which river? And how can that be squared with his own diary's account that he was in Sa Dec, South Vietnam at that time?

Until these questions are effectively addressed by Kerry himself, I have to agree with Instapundit reader Daniel Aronstein:

WHAT IF... Porter Goss had lied about going into Cambodia during the Vietnam War repeatedly, over a few decades, in different media, and on the floor of the House)?

Would we want him as DCI? Would he get confirmed? NO WAY!

We should not hold Kerry - who is running for CIC - to a lower standard.

As Glenn said, "Indeed."

[dude1394]

And now Kerry is displaying his characteristic Gallic nuance on the rather binary, yes-or-no question of whether or not he was actually in Cambodia, as he has frequently, stridently, resume-paddingly alleged.

Was he in Cambodia? His answer is the same as to the questions, "Would you have gone to war with Iraq?" or "Do you support gay marriage?"

Sort of yes, but not really, although in a way yes, but also no. Yes, for all helpful political purposes; but no, to the extent "yes" might be used against me politically.

"Nuance" over policy questions is one thing. "Nuance" over yes-or-no historical facts completely within his competency to answer is another thing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Liberal Spirit Squad in the media is aiding and abetting John Forbes Kerry's political need to have it both ways on every question, one way to appeal to moderates, another way entirely to appeal to his Howard Dean lovin' leftist base.

He may be the first presidential candidate in American history to exist on a quantum level. As the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle informs us, the exact position of a nuclear particle cannot be absolutely determined; it exists in a wide range of positions at once, a probablistic "cloud" of multiple and varied positions rather than a single definable state.

Determining where Kerry falls on a position at any moment is much like attempting to pin down the exact location of an electron. Like an electron, he manages to be many places at once, and it is beyond the ken of mortal minds to plum its quantum mysteries.

And like an electron, the actual act of measuring his position actually changes his position, moment to moment. A reading on Kerry's position when he's on television will not be the same reading observed when he's delivering a speech to a liberal organization.

[FishForLunch]

Come on it was 30 years ago, time to move on. Hey on the bright side he does care for the children