Christmas In Cambodia, Part VII: The Inevitable Flip-Flop
Captain's Quarters
August 11, 2004
"....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...."
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