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Just to be clear Ralph, the burden is on Brinkley, not me. Brinkley didn't assert the existence of these "black" missions in his book -- only in his Telegraph interview, which he only consented to once the Swift boys had pointed out the discrepancy between Brinkley's book and Kerry's assertions concerning Christmas in Cambodia. In fact, Brinkley didn't refute the Christmas in Cambodia story in his book explicitly. He merely wrote it in such a manner that he put Kerry in Vietnam "only miles" from the Cambodian border, but never put him in Cambodia ta Christmas.
In the Telegraph interview, Brinkley introduces for the first time the notion of black ops by Kerry. But if it is based on Kerry's records, the vagueness is curious -- three missions, or four?
The interesting thing is, there is a literature on SOG Salem House missions into Cambodia, not a single one of which mentions the use of Swift boats.
Brinkley even goes as far as to conclude that the missions were "dangerous as hell". I don't imagine this is a professional judgment, as I'm not aware that Brinkley has a military background, much less one in Special Ops. Since there isn't any mention of Swift boats in Salem House missions, it can't be based on the literature. Brinkley does have a Vietnam War Oral History Project at the Eisenhower Center at UNO. Is that his source? We don't know. Brinkley has yet to provide a source for his black ops assertions. That's right. Completely and utterly unsupported by the citation of any evidence whatsoever.
Meet the Press, August 22, 2004.
My dad used to say that everyone's IQ drops by 50 points the minute they get behind the wheel of a car. Is there something about the computers and the Internet that degenerates most folks' rhetorical skills the minute they log onto an HNN discussion board? Pravda-on-the-Hudson! Heh. This is entertaining. Better than the talk earlier in the summer about cow tipping. By the way, where's your source for the $60 million in anti-Bush ads?
A better question, and a far more relevant one as far as I'm concerned:
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that John Kerry deliberately lied about when he was in Cambodia. So what? What were the consequences of Kerry saying he was in Cambodia at Christmas instead of January or February? Who was hurt by this lie?
"Christmas in Cambodia" has a rather nice flair to it. Perhaps Kerry sought place greater emphasis on stirring rhetoric than precision. He'd hardly be the first politician to do so.
Can you think of some ulterior motive Kerry had in propagating this lie? If not, we're left with the conclusion that Kerry gussied up a war story to make a good speech. Is that going to prevent you from voting for him? If so, I'd direct you to examine more closely Bush's exaggerations which, I'd point out, had far graver consequences.
Richard, You really ought to have yourself checked in somewhere. I was married within about 2 years of John Kerry's service in Viet Nam. Over the last many years, I am quite confident that I have gotten the date of the weddding wrong _at least_ four times. And, do you know what? It's because I was _lying_ every time I said it!
From the October 14, 1979 Boston Herald film review of Apocalypse Now, written by John Kerry:
"In fact 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."
March 27, 1986, Kerry, on the floor of the Senate, was moved by events in Nicaragua to wax lyrical on the subject of Cambodia:
"Mr. President, 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 there in Cambodia."
September 4, 1997 Senate subcommittee hearing:
"I first was introduced to Cambodia when I spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict."
"I found it to be a rather remarkable and very beautiful country which had an allure to me, and to many others, which has been sustained through those years."
In June 2003, to Boston Globe reporter Kranish, in December'68 "he had gone several miles into Cambodia, which theoretically was off-limits".
So we have Kerry, on four separate occasions, relating that he was in Cambodia in December '68 -- he even provides a tourist description of its beauty.
And yet, when Brinkley puts the matter to type, the closest Kerry gets to Cambodia is still Vietnam, "only miles" from the Cambodian border.
He "mis-spoke" four times? Is that what they call it these days?
I'd like to recommend this post by another historian, Josh Marshall, for really putting this into perspective:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_22.php#003311
If the link doesn't work, just go to www.talkingpointsmemo.com and follow it down to August 23rd at 12:29 AM.
JR
Excuse me? Kerry makes claims unsupported by official documents or by eyewitness testimony -- claims repeated in his authorized biography -- and the burden is on me to prove his claims false? I don't think so. Where I come from, the burden is on the one making the claim.
This isn't the only case where Brinkley took assertions at face value. He repeated the representations of a VVAW member that Kerry resigned from the VVAW at the St. Louis meeting, based on assurances that there is a resignation letter to that effect in VVAW files in Wisconsin (Brinkley honestly characterized the "evidence"). Turns out FBI surveillance reports, obtained through FOIA, had Kerry participating at the subsequent Kansas City meeting, where a proposal to assassinate Nixon and Congressional leaders was broached and (thankfully, and to Kerry's credit) dropped. Kerry's own spokesman, in a roundabout manner, has since confirmed his presence at the Kansas City meeting.
I remember some years back, the editor of this site, Rick Shenkman, and Brinkley appeared together on television, discussing Jefferson's use of state laws to pursue Federalists, after Jefferson has campaigned against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Brinkley characterized the case of The Wasp, a foundation case in First Amendment law that stands as a monument to Hamilton's legal skills, as a case of "personal libel" (and yes, that's a quote). In fact, the editor of The Wasp was prosecuted and convicted under the common law of seditious libel of the state of New York -- not as a personal libel case (Jefferson was not a party to the suit). The editor of the Wasp had charged that Jefferson had paid Callendar to smear Federalists -- a charge that is true -- but truth wasn't a defense against the common law of seditious libel, though it was a defense in the federal Sedition Act. You can check my memory against Shenkman's. Brinkley gets carried away from time to time with his political enthusiasms. Rule of thumb -- apply a little skepticism to the claims of court historians.
Give Kerry credit -- at least he has a military record that can be amplified. Bush couldn't even make his weekend warrior meetings. How pathetic is that?
Big deal, Richard. What on earth are you so exercised about? So he mis-spoke. So what? He was in error. There is _nothing_ in his being error that ought to affect how one ought to vote in this election. What other distractions do you have for us? If I were supporting Geo W. Bush, I'd be desperate for distractions too.
It has occurred to me that there is some confusion about a certain matter. The claim that Kerry was in Cambodia in '68 is very much alive and well, reasserted yesterday on Meet the Press by Tad Devine, Senior Adviser to the Kerry-Edwards Campaign. The transcript, complete with a lot of dodging and weaving, is available through the MSNBC website. Access Meet the Press, and there's a link to the current transcript right there on the Meet the Press homepage. Some might have thought Devine was only reaffirming Brinkley's uncorroborated claims of Cambodian trips in '69. Not so. The discussion is of '68.
Richard, If Kerry is the source and if you have no evidence to show to the contrary, you need to acknowledge that and to let that be an end to it. Let it go.
Richard, Let us know when you find other sources. Until you do, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the claim _isn't_ true. Given that, you'd be well advised to allow the case to close.
Maybe Kerry is a liar. He was in/around Cambodia. Either way, who cares? So, he told tall tales and war stories. Well, at least, he hasthem and not just tales of how much he drank the night before.
What does that prove? That after getting elected, Kerry may lie about WMDs. Or just make things up about how much benefit his tax cuts got to the middle class. Or maybe he will tell us how many new jobs he can create. Maybe, just maybe, Kerry will lie about wanting to foster democracy in the Middle East by bombing into a rubble the third most holy shrine in the entire Muslim world.
The only, and I mean the only, source for that claim is Kerry himself. That may close the case for you, but not for me.
I did read the article. It refers to two different things. Brinkley admits what Kerry's own campaign refuses to admit as late as yesterday -- that Kerry wasn't in Cambodia in December '68.
It then makes claims of other trips into Cambodia. These claims rely on no documentary sources, nor on human testimony. There is not a member of Kerry's crew, not a document offered, nor anybody else's testimony, that contends that Kerry went into Cambodia on other occasions. Manan says Brinkley has the sources. The source is none other than Kerry himself, from journals that Brinkley arranged for exclusive access to, which Kerry refuses to allow others to see (like his complete military records), and such journals aren't even contemporary records, as Brinkley says in his book that Kerry kept no diary.
Richard, If you had bothered to read Manan's original comment here, you would know that the point you want to put a period on was already stipulated at the outset. It really would help the quality of conversations here if you would bother to read what is said rather than to think that you have to refute something.
Richard, It _is_ closed. Kerry made such runs in January and February 1969 when Richard Nixon _was_ President. You don't seem to want to register that up-date. You're suffering today from that tendency to have to have the last word in every discussion. Problem is that you hadn't caught up with what was already known two days ago.
I'm a little rusty with my geometry, so if you can help me out here, I would much appreciate it. If you're on a river that was part of a border (as Zaladonis has it), how does one end up 5 miles into Camdodia (as Tad Devine has it)? I don't seem to have a hard time understanding the distinction between being on the border, or being "in the vicinity" of the border, and being five miles into the adjoining country, at the orders of a President who hadn't even taken office. You might even say the distinction is seared into my memory. Is this a difficult concept? So let's be clear about this. There is not a single member of Kerry's crew that says they were inside Camdodia in '68. Period.
I thought I had commented on Ralph's blog entry. It is his position that you know the Swift boat campaign is in trouble when .... Actually, Kerry's numbers with vets are plummeting. I put forward the contrary thesis. You know the campaign is succeeding when Pravda-on-the-Hudson, after ignoring $60 million worth of anti-Bush ads, suddenly discovers (after less than $1 of Swift boat ads), and displays on the frontpage, that there are people who support Bush and who gave to the Swift boat ads. $60 million of anti-Bush ads, and we don't have a Pravda-on-the-Hudson article, much less a frontpage article, on the equally numerous connections between the anti-Bush 527's and Kerry's campaign. Imagine that?
As for the Business Week article, it makes good points, and then descends into incoherence. I believe Rassman and Rood. I believe they took fire that day, and that the Swift boat vets are wrong on that score. The article then talks about the fog of war, and muddled memories, and then jumps to the fatuously stupid and contradicting conclusions that the Swift boat ads aren't about truth, and that they aren't equivalent to MoveOn.org ads, which are transparently partisan. Funny, I haven't seen a warning on those ads saying beware, this is a no-truth zone. The distinction is invented by the author of the article. The article follows the usual pattern. It picks out one or two assertions, throws water on them, and declares the whole matter closed.
i quote:
But two of Kerry's crewmates -- Wasser and Zaladonis -- both told the Times the boat was in the vicinity of the Cambodian border and fought an engagement with a Viet Cong sampan on Christmas Eve day.
"We patrolled a river on the border," Zaladonis said last week. "Unless I'm out of my mind or mistaken, that river was part of the border."
There are no after-action reports that pinpoint where Kerry's boat was. But a file from Navy archives in Washington obtained by the Times provides support for both sides.
An entry in a monthly summary of engagements for December 1968 reports that on Christmas Eve, "PCF-44 fired on junk on beach. Results: one sampan destroyed."
The entry was made by then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann, the overall commander of Swift boats and now one of Kerry's most vocal critics. The entry contains a coordinate that points to an area about 40 to 50 miles south of the Cambodian border, near an island called Sa Dec.
The entry also notes that the incident took place at around 7 a.m., which would have given Kerry's boat 12 hours to make it to the Cambodian border by nightfall. At a cruising speed of 23 knots, the boat could have covered the distance in about two hours.
This would be consistent with the contention of Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan that Kerry was in Sa Dec but reached the Cambodian border later the same day.
Ralph, it's not worthy of you. Wasn't it Bush 41 who said, "if it looks like a troll and walks like a troll ..."?
Richard, perhaps it might be more appropriate to comment on Ralph's actual blog entry? What do you think of the Busainess Week article?
What correction would that be, Ralph? Tad Devine on Meet the Press on Sunday (transcript available online)saying both that Kerry was on the border, and in Cambodia? Or John Hurley, on Fox, saying Kerry was both on the border, and in Cambodia? Where is this correction that has been clearly made? Do you want a link to the Meet the Press transcript where Kerry's own spokesman repeats the fantasy?
For the record, my "crap" calls you out for your enthusiastic participation in a smear of patriotic service. You don't even acknowledge the correction of the record that's already been clearly made. Next time your George Bush sends American soldiers to war, he really ought to have an exit strategy. So should Colin Powell.
For the record, the only source for these Cambodia stories is Kerry himself.
Help me out here, Ralph. Where's my smear? Is it your position that Nixon was President in December '68? Is it your position that Kerry was in Cambodia in December '68, when not a single member of his crew backs him on it? And what is Brinkley's source for the "secret missions"? Kerry. The same guy who provided him the Christmas in Cambodia fantasy. Too funny. Save your holier than thou crap for somebody who is impressed with it.
For the record, and Brinkley has the record, Kerry was in Cambodia on missions in January and Feb.
How good does it feel, Richard, to be smearing someone who, unlike your candidate for president, actually served combat duty, was highly decorated for his service, and is now smeared for those things?
Is your changing of subject a sub rosa admission that Pravda-on-the-Hudson is acting as the proganda arm of the Kerry campaign? Before this "smear" campaign, I was unaware that for years Kerry has been falsely claiming to have spent Christmas '68 in Cambodia, at the orders of Nixon, who wasn't even president then. Now I'm finding out he's been saying he ran spooks, SF, and Seals into Cambodia, one of whom gave him his special Gunga Din hat. Strange that Pravda-on-the-Hudson never informed me of these things. I wonder why? Want to make any bets that Kerry's "secret missions" (they got to be true, right, they carry the imprimatur of Douglas Brinkley, ha, ha) go the way of the tales of that great bullshit artist, Tom Harkin?
Tell me, Richard, did you ever see a right wing smear campaign that you didn't like?
In trouble? Kerry's numbers among veterans are going south. So much so, in fact, that Pravda-on-the-Hudson (known to others as the NY Times) felt compelled to go with a front-page Kevin Bacon Six Degrees of Separation story on (horror of horrors) Republicans, even Bush Republicans, working with the Swift Boat Veterans.
Interestingly, $60 million of anti-Bush ads by 507's never seemed to generate any story, much less a front-page one, on the connections between the DNC and Kerry, and the 507's taking a bite out of the hide of Bush. In fact, the only thing that had been generated were puff pieces like Laura Blumenfeld's in the WaPo, which stepped over the story of Kerry's Cambodia in Christmas fantasy, complete with a President Nixon who hadn't taken office.