Who Can Really Say?

I linked here and here to stuff on the SwiftVets ads and book about John Kerry's medals, etc. Things have heated up in the last few days as major media outlets are beginning to acknowledge the story exists.

Donald Sensing has an interesting post on the matter today. Sensing is a retired Army officer and has this to say about how medal citations and other reviews are often self-written:

The only thing I've heard or read Kerry reply that has any merit as a defense is that official Navy records back him against the SBVT's charges concerning his combat decorations. Whatever the actual merits of SBCVT's contentions, that defense is simply going to be too difficult to overcome in the public mind.

They say that Kerry wrote up his own recommendations for medals. Well, maybe, but so what? I once wrote my own officer efficiency report, the most critical document in an officer's advancement potential. I was told to do so by my rater. I wrote his narrative and my senior rater's narrative, too (a lieutenant colonel and a colonel). They read it and signed it without changing a word.

Anyone reading that OER will come away convinced that I was the greatest soldier since Achilles. Come to think of it, I recall writing the recommendation for one of my own medals, too, at direction of my commander, who read it and signed it.

This happens a lot more than you might think.

Fair enough. It's another example of why trying to pry votes away from Kerry with micro-attacks upon individual events thirty years ago is a loser. The SwiftVets may be right for all I know. But at this stage of the game, in this context, it ain't gonna fly.

But, Sensing is also right that there's one bit of all this that sticks to Kerry, and that's the bit about Cambodia. Major media remains silent on that point, but Kerry has referred at least several times, and critically, in his official capacity as a Senator, to the fact that while he was in Cambodia on a secret or illegal mission over Christmas in 1968, President Nixon was denying that American troops had crossed the border. Sensing quotes the crucial bit from the Congressional Record:

"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, ...

Seared? To quote Inigo Montoya "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Anyway, even the Kerry camp, although not Kerry directly (yet), has backed off his claim of further international travel. They had to because a) Kerry wasn't in Cambodia and b) Nixon wasn't President in December 1968 and made no statements about troops in Cambodia for many months (I'm not sure but it might have been 1970) after taking office.

So, the problem with Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story is not that it isn't true, although it appears it isn't. The problem is that he used it to substantiate his arguments in the US Senate. This says it well:

Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident ? of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.

Team Kerry's excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won't square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was "seared ? seared ? in me."

Unlike the conflicts over Kerry's medals, this isn't a he said/he said dispute ? Kerry either was or wasn't in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas ? yes or no.

For sure, as the anti-Kerry Swift vets pointed out ? thus embarrassing every reporter who missed it for over a decade ? Kerry's statements were clearly false, since Nixon wasn't yet president in Christmas 1968. But adding Nixon sure embellishes the tale.

Instapundit has relentlessly blogged on both the Cambodia story and the failure of Major Media outlets to give it the coverage it deserves. He says it's because they want Kerry to win. I think he's right.