Posted on 08/15/2004 10:12:56 AM PDT by CT
Kerry's Cambodia account challenged by ex-commander
By Scott Canon
Knight Ridder Newspapers
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — John Kerry's repeated claim that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 upriver in Cambodia — against official United States policy — has drawn harsh criticism from anti-Kerry veterans.
Roy Hoffmann, a retired admiral who was a Navy captain in command of Kerry's unit at the time, said the candidate's Cambodia statements can't be true.
"I think he just outright lied," said Hoffman, a founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "He never was there."
Over the years, Kerry has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time, Cambodia was considered a neutral nation presumably off-limits to U.S. troops.
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing during a debate on U.S. policy toward Central America. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the 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."
A few years earlier, the Massachusetts senator had talked with the Boston Herald about "the absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops."
Nixon had been elected by Christmas 1968 but didn't take office until the next month.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Just a bit of caution.
It is not beyond credibility to think the Clintons are now manipulating their friends in the media to keep the story alive.
What better way to set Hitlery up for 2008 than to subtly help the media expose the Cambodia story as an indication of Kerry's seriously flawed character? The Clintons can assure Kerry's defeat, but make it appear to be an attack of the VRWC, which they will denounce in 2008.
It would be wise for all of us to track their activities during the evolving exposure of this story, and be prepared to use that information in four more years.
Let's worry about 2008 in 2008
Maybe we could start a little earlier, like 2007?
This may well be a very interesting week.
I'm surpised at the source. Isn't the Seattle Times normally to the left of Trotsky?
All I'm saying is keep an open eye and collect the data.
I'll start worrying about Hillary again on Nov. 3, 2004. Right now, this is the battle.
The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerry’s lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:
...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.
Glenn adds:
...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.
Just so. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to re-establish. Ask Bill Clinton.
In April, I used the metaphor of a driver stuck in snow, who presses the accelerator, and finds the spinning wheels only melting more snow, making traction all the more difficult. The current efforts of the press to define Kerry’s lies as a non-event are destroying their own traction. The media eruption over far less serious charges about Bush’s National Guard service is too fresh in the recesses of most peoples’ minds. And, of course, Bush didn’t choose to run for re-election on the basis of his honorable, even brave service as a jet jockey, a highly dangerous occupation.
But it is summer now. So let me switch metaphors. The establishment press is facing its Gottedamerung – the twilight of the gods. For decades, god-like figures handed down their version of the truth from corporate Valhallas like the New York Times and CBS News. The public credulously accepted their writ on what is important and what is not important.
But god-like pretensions are dangerous, indeed, often fatal. Especially when combined with mono-maniacal convictions on the need for their point of view to prevail. Post-modernity, a concept beloved of the bien pensants, cuts two ways. The public is skeptical of anyone who pretends to be an authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge. Kerry, who has never cut much of a figure as a genuine, warm, empathetic human being, is an ideal target for citizen skepticism.
The establishment press is coming across as every bit as pompous and conniving as the man who married two centi-millionaire heiresses.
They are, in fact, destroying themselves. Their industry is in serious trouble. Circulation scandals have hit major newspaper publishers, while the scandal-free press can take little comfort in their declining readership. Network TV news is a shadow of its former self, and its future is very limited. CNN’s monopoly is shattered, and it boasts a poor fraction of the viewership of Fox News, the only cable news outlet fully covering Kerrygate with the same seriousness accorded Bush’s National Guard service questions.
The blogosphere is the camel whose nose, and now a good part of its neck, is under the tent. Leadership in coverage of the self-destruction of the Kerry Campaign is in the hands of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt (guru to many of us), Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Just One Minute, and many other bloggers.
Nobody had ever heard of Bob Woodward until Watergate. Afterward, he became a powerful brand name, and his and Bernstein's work inspired generations of new journalists. The same phenomenon is taking place today, and journalism will never be the same again. The big difference is that this time around, there is a technological revolution compounding the destructive force operating on the old media. Hurricane Charley has nothing on the winds of change now blowing away the old media practices and economics.
Future historians are going to find this election deeply significant for not just War on Terror policy reasons. This is a transformative election for the structure of political information.
Thomas Lifson
Time to get other papers on this story! Write them!
Contact list here:
http://www.swiftvets.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2424
Hillary! is going to get trounced by Rudy in 2006 unless he runs for governor. Or she will stay Jr. Senator forever.
---The Washington Post quotes Kerry talking about a mildewy and faded-green camouflage hat he carries in his black attaché.
"My good-luck hat," Kerry told the Post. "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia." ---
This was from a puff piece on Kerry! What were they thinking?
I would say much earlier than that--say the day after election, 2004.
Interesting that within the first few pages of "Unfit" readers learn that, for all his mocking of Bush's service in the Air reserve, Kerry himself first tried to get in to the Navy reserve, which would have meant largely stateside service - maybe what he's really upset about is that Bush got into the reserves and he didn't.......
Then Maureen Dowd would have been all over it.
No, they are reporting is because it's less damaging than the Alston didn't serve story, and also because the book will debut at #1 on NYT best seller.
They can't avoid it.
The reason all these Dem/Libs tell so many lies is that they are never held accountable. It seems only when they run for President that any attention gets paid to their serial dishonesty and, that attention is minimal at best.
Interesting.
By that logic, can we expect to see leaks of kerry's medical and military records (and other nasties perhaps squirreled away in raw FBI files) before this thing is over?
---No, they are reporting is because it's less damaging than the Alston didn't serve story---
The Alston story might be the two of the one-two punch out of this. Imagine It breaking that the man who made such a passionate (and recent!) speech about Kerry at the Convention never served under him!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.