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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (131410)	8/10/2005 6:31:44 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

Sure, and John Kerry still has his "magic hat" that he got from the CIA guy he took to Cambodia at Christmas 1968. After all, he told the Globe all about it, and Kerry would lie, would he?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (131410)	8/10/2005 7:15:29 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

O'Neil, never claimed he was in Cambodia in any dishonest way. The way you stated it is not correct. O'Neil was on a lake or river that bordered Cambodia. Discrediting the Swiftboat Veterans: Did O'Neill Lie? It's always interesting to go on a little trip into the world of liberalism. Sometimes, points are made I completely agree with. But often, it seems like they're looking at only part of the equation, though I'm open to more info. Take this posting on the SBVT from "LeanLeft", where Kevin quotes O'Neill as saying: O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon. O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water. NIXON: In a swift boat? O'NEILL: Yes, sir. Kevin presents this as though it's clearly some sort of lie. But he apparently doesn't realize that there are several river systems in Cambodia, and O'Neil's statements about his service with Kerry refer to the Bay Hap river which comes out of Cambodia in a well-defined area which, I'm told, was guarded, and empties into the delta towards the south. While I don't know the actual details of the rest of O'Neil's service, if you take a look at a detailed map of Cambodia (which I've spent a bit of time doing, in order to evaluate various SBVT and MSM claims), you'll discover there are, in fact, other rivers other than Bay Hap which do run along the Cambodian river. Since (I understand) O'Neil served quite a bit longer than Kerry, it's quite possible he could have also been stationed elsewhere than Bay Hap. To prove O'Neil a liar, you'd have to show he was either speaking specifically about Bay Hap in the quote above, or prove he never operated in any of these other waterways. It's not just enough to compare two quotes, superficially, out of context. "It didn't rain yesterday." (said Wednesday) "It rained yesterday. (said Friday) Interestingly, it is Kerry's own defense team which backs me up on this possibility: "Swift Boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a senior adviser in the Kerry campaign, said Friday. "Boats often received fire from enemy taking sanctuary across the border. Kerry's was not the only United States riverboat to respond, inadvertently or responsibly, across the border." You can see the region on the right side of this map. The only problem is that we -- or at least I -- can't place Kerry here in his short service, certainly not by means of the Bay Hap river, and not around that time -- you can't get there from Sa Dec by boat without an ocean passage around the southern tip of Vietnam. Perhaps Kerry could show some records indicating he was, in fact, in Ha Tien at some later time. (More released records would certainly help.) Again, I'm not saying O'Neil did serve there, in Ha Tien (though from talk I'm seeing, it sounds as if he did), I'm just pointing out we need to do quite a bit more work to show O'Neill could not have been referring to his service at such a place, and thus is a liar. These things get accreted in the mind of unsuspecting listeners, built up one by one into a wall of bricks, but each is nothing more than a tissue of half-investigated allegations. Often, they fall apart when you look at them closely or prod them. Speaking of things which fall apart under close scrutiny, here's another strange explanation from LeanLeft: The one significant contradiction they have been able to document that is not flatly idiotic is that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as he had said, but may have been there the next month. But this is exactly the sort of thing Zacharias's article demonstrates - that particular details of events can easily be misremembered while the overall memory is based on truth. It would not be surprising if Kerry conflated his memory of Christmas in Vietnam with his memory of an incursion into Cambodia a few weeks later. I'm not sure how this would work. It looks like Kerry's own service record places him far from Ha Tien (and Cambodia) from December 1968 through March 1969. When did we get to transport Kerry all the way to Ha Tien to have this experience? tim.2wgroup.com