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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer, who admitted overseeing the torture and killings of as many as 16,000 Cambodians while running the regime’s most notorious prison, has died. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was 77 and had been serving a life prison term for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 was accused of genocide for causing the deaths of so many of their countrymen from executions, starvation and lack of medical care due to its radical policies. Only after neighboring Vietnam pushed the Khmer Rouge from...

Recently, I was re-reading one of P.J. O’Rourke’s books, and this happened to be while John Kerry was on Larry King Live. As Kerry was trying to dig his way out of a hole with such vigor that he was about to reach China, I ran across the chapter title, “Commies: Dead but too dumb to lie down.” I looked up at John Francois Kerry, and it was as if the gods of fortuitous timing were with me that evening. The chapter title, most of it anyway, was the perfect description of what has become of John Kerry’s presidential aspirations....

John Kerry continues to play damage control on his decades-long contention he was on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as word comes the author of a positive account of his Vietnam duty is preparing a column to explain the candidate's suspect story. According to the Drudge Report, historian Doug Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," is writing a piece for the New Yorker saying it was actually January 1969 when Kerry was sent into Cambodia, not December 1968. Kerry spent four months in Vietnam as skipper of a SWIFT Boat before returning to the U.S. and...

I thought it might be useful to get some basics down from Brinkley's book; the people, the boats, the timelines. This time I was able to get a non-large print version of Tour of Duty, so I will be able to highlight the pages where the information is located. I'm starting with Chapter 10, since that concerns the events of Christmas Eve, 1968) Kerry's boat at Christmas 1968 was the PCF-44 (Page 209). Men on board the PCF-44 are as follows: Drew Whitlow (209), James Wasser, Radarman (213) also second in command (228); Stephen Hatch, Bosun's Mate (214), Stephen Gardner,...

Aformer member of John Kerry's swift-boat crew says the Democratic presidential candidate's account of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia is not true. Steve Gardner, who served on board PCF-44 under Kerry's command in December 1968, as well as part of January 1969, says that at the time, in the area in which Kerry and his crew were operating, it was not possible to take a swift boat to Cambodia. It was physically, totally, categorically, across-the-board impossible to get into the canal that went to Cambodia with a swift boat," says Gardner. "There were concrete pilings that were put in the...