Christmas in Cambodia, cont.

Is there any resolution yet of the modified (i.e. Christmas-less) yet still mutually contradictory versions of the Cambodia story being offered respectively by the Kerry campaign on one side and by Kerry and his court historian Brinkley on the other? The campaign says Kerry was in waters near Cambodia and suggests he may have drifted inadvertently across the border. Brinkley says Kerry was deliberately sent three or four times into Cambodia on covert missions. Of course Kerry’s long-time story is also that he was sent across the border on special missions, which, he has said, was the reason for his life-changing epiphany when he heard President Nixon deny that the U.S. had forces in Cambodia. The campaign version and the Kerry-Brinkley version cannot both be true.

A further contradiction just occurred to me. Since Kerry’s purported mission into Cambodia was covert, why would he have been so shocked and scandalized by President Nixon’s denial that U.S. troops were in Cambodia? Did he expect Nixon to say, “My fellow Americans, I have sent that fine young American, Lt. (Jg.) John F. Kerry, on a secret mission into Cambodia”? So, Christmas is already out. Nixon is already out (since Nixon was not president in December 1968 and, as far as I know, did not issue any statements denying the presence of U.S. forces in Cambodia in the first months of his presidency). And the covert mission seems most unlikely based on the reason I gave here, as well as the abundant testimony from veterans that Swift boats were never used and could not have been used for covert missions. Not a shred remains of Kerry’s Cambodia tale, the supposed turning point of his political life.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 22, 2004 03:46 PM | Send