Just when you thought you had heard about all of Kerry's lies, flip-flops, and waffling along comes an even bigger lie.
Writing for the Boston Herald in October 14, 1979, John Kerry said: "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
Kerry's statement at the time was similar to other statements he had made after returning from duty in Vietnam, and throughout much of the 1970s.
On the floor of the Senate on March 27, 1986, Sen. John Kerry issued this statement: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by 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."
When asked this week about Kerry's Cambodian statements, the Kerry campaign first asserted that the Massachusetts senator never said that he was in Cambodia, only that he was near the country. But when presented with a copy of the Congressional Record and asked about Kerry's letter in the Boston Herald, the campaign said it would come up with an explanation. After repeated phone calls by news media organizations, the campaign, unable to reconcile the lies with the truth, have yet to issue an explanation.
Consider:
First, the obvious:Richard Nixon was not president in December 1968
The denials of ALL living commanders in Mr. Kerry's chain of command that Mr. Kerry was in Cambodia, or was ever ordered into Cambodia (Joe Streuhli, commander of Coastal Division 13; George Elliott, commander of Coastal Division 11; Adrian Lonsdale, captain, Coast Guard, commander, Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi; Rear Adm. Ray Hoffman, commander Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam; and Rear Adm. Art Price, commander of River Patrol Force).
Three out of Mr. Kerry's five-man Swift boat crew deny that they or their boat was in Cambodia during Christmas 1968 - the other two refused to comment.
Tom Anderson, the commander of River Division 531, who was in charge of the patrol boats canvassing the waterways from Sa Dec to the Cambodian border, confirmed that no Swift boats were anywhere in the area, and that if any were they would have been stopped, or their captains court-martialed for breaching the border.
In 1992, The Associated Press interviewed Mr. Kerry about his Vietnam experience. Again, the Cambodian story resurfaced: "By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia. 'We were told, "Just go up there and do your patrol." Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it,' Kerry said."
Then, in a Boston Globe report from last summer, Kerry slightly changed his Cambodia story: "To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits." If it was "theoretically off limits," who gave Mr. Kerry the order to enter Cambodia, as he asserted numerous times before?
Yet in "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War," author Douglas Brinkley provides a thoroughly different version of what happened on Christmas 1968. According to Mr. Brinkley, who received his information from Mr. Kerry directly, Mr. Kerry was on patrol in Sa Dec (50 miles from the Cambodian border) on Christmas Eve and spent Christmas day writing journal entries back at his base.
I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me Kerry's need to lie is almost pathological. I really thought the country having suffered thru the lies of the Clinton administration, had had enough. It looks like I was wrong. Practically all Democrats and about half of the country want him to be president, despite his inability to tell the truth or make a decision and stand by it. It's a sad commentary about Democrats and half the country...