Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia

Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia

John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and proprietors of the Web log (Power Line), one of 13 Web sites given credentials to cover the Republican convention in New York later this month. They have extensive coverage of the Kerry meltdown at their site.
The article was written for The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, MN.
---Larry Everett

"John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson: Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia
John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson
August 18, 2004 HINDERACKER0818

On March 27, 1986, John Kerry took the floor of the U.S. Senate and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam experience in explaining his opposition to the policy.

"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 having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."

To emphasize the importance of this incident to his subsequent political development, Kerry asserted: "I have that memory which is seared --seared -- in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible to avoid that kind of conflict."

The story of his 1968 Christmas in Cambodia is one that Kerry has told on many occasions over the years. He invoked the story in 1979 in the course of his review of the movie "Apocalypse Now" for the Boston Herald. Most recently, Kerry told the story -- with remarkable embellishments involving a CIA man who gave him his favorite hat -- last year on separate occasions to reporters Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe.

Certain elements of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story were incredible on their face. Kerry attributed responsibility for his illegal 1968 mission to Richard Nixon, despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was president at the time. The Khmer Rouge who allegedly shot at Kerry during his "secret" mission did not take the field until 1972..."[Read the Whole Thing]