SwiftVets.com

[bach04]

This is from the today's wall street journal. I have heard somewhere that the WSJ is the most widely read newspaper in America. Godbless the swiftvets!


Holiday in Cambodia
The most damning testimony on John Kerry in Vietnam has come from John Kerry.

BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Monday, August 16, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

John Kerry volunteered for service in Vietnam. John Kerry was wounded in Vietnam. And a number of the men with whom John Kerry served testify to acts of courage on his part.

This much seems beyond question, and I see no reason to weigh in on the factual disputes surrounding Mr. Kerry's medals being waged by pro-Kerry vets like Jim Rassmann and the anti-Kerry vets of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Both sides strike me as sincere, but eyewitness accounts of fast-moving and stressful situations like combat are too unreliable for there to be much hope of getting at the "truth" here.

But Americans have never accepted that a record of service, however honorable, should forever entitle a man to deference on matters of war and peace. (Ask George McGovern.) And the political uses to which Mr. Kerry would later put his Vietnam experience are certainly fair game for criticism. Which brings up Mr. Kerry's claim--repeated in at least three different decades, and on the floor of the Senate--that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 not in Vietnam but in Cambodia. He obviously considered it a point of some significance, since he used it to impugn the integrity of those who waged the Vietnam War.

This is how he described it to the Boston Herald in 1979: "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies. . . . 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."

In 1986 Mr. Kerry argued on the Senate floor against U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras, again citing the 1968 Christmas in Cambodia and "the president of the United States telling the American people I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me." In a 1992 interview with the Associated Press the story came back: "By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia."

Trouble is, the person who appears to have been wrong here about Mr. Kerry's location was not the president--who was Lyndon Johnson, not Nixon, by the way--but Mr. Kerry himself. His commanding officers all testify to this fact, as do men who were on his boat at the time. And so now, reluctantly, does the Kerry campaign.





Last Wednesday Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan sent me a statement saying that "During John Kerry's service in Vietnam, many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia. . . . On December 24, 1968 Lieutenant John Kerry and his crew were on patrol in the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia deep in enemy territory." I asked for clarification as to whether the "one occasion" was Christmas Eve 1968. "No," was the reply.
"Watery borders" is something of an evasion, intended to imply that Mr. Kerry's "seared" memory might have been easily confused. But according to both the maps and the testimony of swift vets, the Mekong doesn't run along the Cambodian border but bisects it, such that the coincidence between the two is obvious. In any case, Mr. Kerry's own journal, as cited in Douglas Brinkley's biography, records him being 50-some miles from the border at Sa Dec on that day contemplating visions of "sugar plums."

Does this matter? Well, if President Bush was found to be using tall tales from his National Guard days to justify his policies in the war on terror it would certainly attract some attention. So the would-be commander in chief can hardly complain of being subject to scrutiny, especially since he's joined in criticism of Mr. Bush's war record and made his own a campaign centerpiece. Never mind the anti-Kerry swiftees. So far the veteran whose testimony is doing John Kerry the most damage is . . . John Kerry.

Mr. Pollock is a senior editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal.

[Scott]

OW -- That's gonna leave a mark!
_________________
Bye bye, Boston Straggler!

[pmc3rcc]

I hope all the papers start dealing with the facts as they are.Instead of shouting lies,lies,lies.I was under the impression thats what news and media did,and took pride in it.Lately Ive been so disappointed in my
re-education about the news & media.
Will someone please show thier pride in thier chosen profession.Deal
will this ON THE FACTS.
_________________
Hold all media accountable,If you see or hear an untruth dont let it slide EMAIL them.let them know .When they figure out they are fooling noone and it goes to their credibility and enough people let them know.Maybe the slant wont be at such an angle.

[Cowboy]

Did most journalists actually choose their profession? I was under the impression that the majority of journalists graduated from college with a liberal arts degree that was mostly useless for any sort of real employment. Accordingly, they found a job in the only industry that would hire them, i.e., as reporters. Hence, it wasn't an entirely voluntary choice. It was either write at a rag staffed by other liberal arts majors, or starve.

This is also a source of anger for most jounranlists. They believe that they are smarter than most other people, based on the grades that they received from their liberal arts professors. After graduating and realizing that the real world didn't recognize their intellectual superiority, they become angry and take out their anger on those who they perceive as challenging their view that journalists intellectually are superior to most other people.

Those who can't teach or do anything else useful, write about those who can.

[Rev. Churchmouse]

The Pollock editorial is online at www.opinionjournal.com

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