Christmas in Cambodia?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLIX

"How many people fake the turning point of their life?"

Here are some key texts in the saga of John "F" Kerry's 1968 Christmas in near Cambodia Vietnam Earth.

Article in the Boston Globe, October 14, 1979.

.... On more than one occasion, I, like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now," took my patrol boat into Cambodia. In fact 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....

Speech on the Senate Floor, March 27, 1986.

.... Mr. President [that is, the presiding officer of the US Senate], 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, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict....

Passage in biography Tour of Duty, 2004, drawing on Kerry's own journal.

.... By the time they reached Sa Dec [in South Vietnam], the air had cooled off considerably. "The night for once is comforting," Kerry wrote, "and you take a Coke and some peanut butter and jelly and go up on the roof of the cabin with your tape recorder and sit for a while, quietly watching flares float silently through the sky and flashes announce disquieting intent somewhere in the distance."

Silhouetted by the lights shining from the junks parked along the canal, Kerry could see empty fishnets swaying from their teak poles in the gentle breeze. He realized that the nets would not be filled that Christmas Eve, or any other night as long as the war ground on; nighttime meant curfew for the South Vietnamese, by a law — American law. It was their country, but the United States imposed and enforced the edict that at night anything that moved could and would be shot, and damn the consequences. After all, one could never know if a movement in the dark was innocent or hostile. All a PCF [Patrol Craft Fast] officer could know was that somebody, for some reason, was breaking curfew....

Kerry's arch-nemesis John O'Neill is interviewed at Human Events Online today:

.... The significance of "Christmas in Cambodia" is that he accused every single fellow officer — I mean every superior — of a war crime in crossing an international boundary illegally. He painted himself as a hero among villains. He said it was the turning point of his whole life many times — how many people fake the turning point of their life?...

Perhaps a better question is What kind of person fakes the turning point of his life?

Deborah Orin writes at the New York Post today.

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. (Remember how Gore claimed to have invented the Internet and inspired the novel "Love Story"?)

Remember Kerry's claim that "I've met foreign leaders" who told him he had to beat Bush? Turned out he hadn't met any foreign leaders in years.

Kerry's campaign Web site claimed credit for Vietnam missions when another man, Tedd Peck, was the skipper (that was removed when he protested) and last week was claiming credit for former Sen. Bob Kerrey's service as Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman.

"John Kerry, Bob Kerrey — similar names," blithely explained Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan, as if Kerry didn't know his own bio.

Not one of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy, recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 — and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam.

Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident — of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.

Team Kerry's excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won't square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was "seared — seared — in me."

Unlike the conflicts over Kerry's medals, this isn't a he said/he said dispute — Kerry either was or wasn't in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas — yes or no.

For sure, as the anti-Kerry Swift vets pointed out — thus embarrassing every reporter who missed it for over a decade — Kerry's statements were clearly false, since Nixon wasn't yet president in Christmas 1968. But adding Nixon sure embellishes the tale.

The story has unraveled so badly that Kerry's court biographer, Douglas Brinkley, is said to be preparing a new account in which Cambodia is said to come post-Christmas. So why did Brinkley leave it out of his campaign bio?

The other fascinating part of this story is the key role that bloggers on the Internet have played in pointing out the holes in Kerry's story — even as much of the press tries to ignore them.

For instance, when Team Kerry held a press conference featuring his crewmates this week, one was conspicuously missing — David Alston — after the Internet-fueled revelation that he may have only served on Kerry's boat for one week.

A Web blogger, captainsquartersblog, began questioning whether Alston (who has spoken emotionally about how they "bled together") ever served with Kerry. National Review examined the records and concluded maybe — for just one week.

This whole story could be a test of the Internet's impact in this campaign. While most papers have been ignoring the story — until Kerry went ballistic at the Swift vets yesterday — bloggers have been examining it in detail.

On Web sites like Instapundit.com, captainsquartersblog.com, hugh- hewitt.com and rogerlsimon.com, skeptical veterans are trading details on Kerry's service and raising intricate questions about his veracity based on their own experience.

Their online dialogue is punctuated with questions about why the "mainstream media" have been mostly ignoring this story — and why the 13 pro-Kerry vets are automatically assumed to have more credibility than 264 anti-Kerry vets.

Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. For those bloggers, this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias.

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington bureau chief.

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P.S. The Inimitable One weighs in, Aug. 15 (quoted ellipsis in original):

.... It turns out at Christmas 1968 [John Kerry] wasn't in Cambodia but was instead 55 miles away at Sa Dec, South Vietnam. So the Kerry campaign's begun riffling hurriedly through its Sears Rowback catalog for more or less watertight back-pedaling of the story: They now say that ''many times he was on or near the Cambodian border,'' which is true in the sense that 80 percent of Canadians live on or near the American border. But most folks in Vancouver don't claim to be living in the Greater Seattle area.

Earlier, senior Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told ABC News: ''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.'' For a crowd of ostentatious multilateralists, they can't seem to hold the map the right way up: The Mekong River isn't the border between Cambodia and Vietnam; it cuts through the heart of Cambodia and then runs through Vietnam to the sea.

But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''

So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?

It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.

And it turns out it's total bunk....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 08/20/04 08:19:41 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Historical & John Kerry.