Nixon Was Not President

The Kerry campaign has conceded that it can't confirm John Kerry's precise location on Christmas Eve of 1968, but is certain "that at some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia." We'll await Kerry's response to the inevitable question. But let's look at the disingenuous way this story is sustained. There's a minor tit-for-tat trying to explain Kerry's retelling of his Cambodia tale. It hinges on a 1979 review of Apocalypse Now:

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.

Everyone in the blogosphere is fond of parsing statements. Here's how it is ceaselessly repeated:

It was Christmas of 1968, and he heard President Nixon denying that we had troops in Cambodia while he himself had been sent there. ... We pointed out that, as everyone in the blogosphere knows, Kerry's account was false on its face, since Richard Nixon was not President in December 1968.

Did you catch that? Did you catch where Kerry said he heard President Nixon on Christmas of 1968? Neither did I. But knee-kerk reactions and jumping to conclusions, the kind of things the MSM attempts to avoid and is the pride of the blogosphere, became the generally accepted wisdom. Now let's do a little of the blogosphere's favorite pastime and parse this. Was Kerry's statement false on it's face? Kerry describes Cambodia as a country "in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" Is that false. Nope. For it to be false requires that Kerry heard President Nixon on Christmas of 1968 on a mission in a war presumably listening to the radio during some down time. To make this analysis work, facts which are not there have to be added. Here's another instance of Kerry's tale told to the Senate in 1986:

I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what is 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...

On November 12, 1971 President Nixon said:

We have made a conscious decision not to send American troops in. There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. There are no American combat advisers in Cambodia. There will be no American combat troops or advisers in Cambodia.

There were no denials before this. Can Kerry remember Christmas of 1968 and Nixon's denial? Of course. Kerry wouldn't have heard any President saying anything on Christmas of 1968 while on his mission. He would have learned about it some other time. And that's exactly what happened and that's exactly what he said. Kerry makes no claim that the events are contemporaneous. Now, Nixon doesn't say that troops were never in Cambodia so that could be parsed and nitpicked. Kerry would be wrong to imply that Nixon's denial could be applied back in time from a technically factual perspective. But how do we read Kerry's statement? Kerry remembers what is was like to "have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there." He's using himself to establish the presence of troops in Cambodia, and he's making two points: the presence of troops and the denial of the presence of troops. Both true. Since the timing seems to be all important and the specifics would not have occurred at the same time, Kerry's statement is properly read, to "have [at some other time] the President... telling..." Two events, two different times. So the refutation that "Kerry's account was obviously false, since Nixon was not President in December 1968" is obviously false. That's not what Kerry said. But this 'analysis' goes further. It says that the point Kerry is making is that he became disillusioned with the government during his time in Vietnam because of these two nearly simultaneous events. But that's not true either. Remember, many years have already passed. He became distrustful of government, and his point was that the government will tell the American people one thing while it does another. And that's exactly what Kerry communicates with his story. It doesn't matter when he became distrustful; the purpose isn't to convey that information. For the point Kerry is making, this story is perfectly acceptable. The details are, in fact, irrelevant; and that's why the details change but the message is constant. But the blogosphere wants it to be relevant so it manufactures a make-believe framework from which it can deduce the significance it desires.
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It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).
. . .
With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought). Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.
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A firefighter's widow who said she voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 and would do so again this year, placed the responsibility with Mr. Clinton. "I believe Clinton knew a lot and didn't tell Bush about it when he came into office," she said.
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O'Neill said he believed, in hindsight, that legitimate questions were raised about the war. He said that some who voiced concerns — such as Al Gore Sr., a Tennessee senator who jeopardized his career by announcing his opposition — were brave and even patriotic. But O'Neill did not believe Kerry was brave. He said Kerry was an opportunist who used Vietnam to advance his political ambitions. "I've lived a happy life, sure, but at least 15 of my friends died there," O'Neill said. "What I'm dealing with is a set of values that are above and beyond politics. And if following the truth — coming forward — elects Bush, we can accept that."

Some of O'Neill's closest friends are among those who question his crusade. But they say it is merely a reflection of his tenacity. "He develops legal lockjaw," said Gerry Birnberg, a prominent Houston lawyer, a friend of 20 years and the chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party. "All of this relates entirely and exclusively to his personal feeling of outrage — with which I do not agree at all — about Kerry's opposition to the war. That indelibly and irreversibly formed his image of Kerry. It is an image that he cannot and will not get over."
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Buchanan shows how the small clique of neocons in this administration moved within hours of the 9/11 terrorist strike to divert the president's anger, and the nation's, toward Iraq, rather than Osama bin Laden. He strongly implies that the neocons exercised a thinly-veiled threat to abandon the president if he didn't take immediate action against Saddam Hussein:

Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals was telling the President of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be publicly charged with a 'decisive surrender' to terrorism.

Buchanan tells the story of a president who was deceived into war, lied to by his own top advisors, and then led down the garden path by a bunch of war-maddened ideologues. I would tend to agree, but would add that this view would be strengthened by an analysis of why this course has been politically advantageous to the president and his party, particularly as it relates to the role of the Christian fundamentalist foot-soldiers who play such a vital role in the GOP electoral machine.
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The fact that the official under investigation works for Mr. Feith has also made the case politically sensitive for the Bush administration. Before the war in Iraq, Mr. Feith created a special intelligence unit that sought to build a case for Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda, an effort that has since been heavily criticized by American intelligence professionals as an effort to justify the war. Mr. Feith has also long been known as a major supporter of Israel, and while he was out of government in 1996 signed a paper, titled "A Clean Break," issued by a Jerusalem-based policy group that called for the toppling of Saddam Hussein in order to enhance Israeli security. Before he came to the Pentagon, Mr. Feith was also a partner in a law firm with L. Marc Zell, a lawyer with a firm now based in Israel.
. . .
As a result, the investigation is likely to give rise to questions about whether Israel may have used the information to influence American policy in the Middle East. The Pentagon analyst who officials said was under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for secret meetings with Iranian dissidents, including Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer. Mr. Ghorbanifar was a central figure in the Iran-contra affair in the 1980's, in which the United States government secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon and to finance the fighters, known as contras, opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, were approved by senior Pentagon officials and were originally brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs.It was not clear whether the espionage investigation was directly related to the meetings with Mr. Ghorbanifar. Nor was there immediate evidence of whether money had changed hands in exchange for classified information.
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But Dole also made another statement that day, one that hasn't been aired until now. Of McCain's charge to President Bush during a 2000 debate—"You should be ashamed"—Dole told Wolf Blitzer, "He was right." Dole made the remark off-air, while CNN broadcast the Kerry ad called "Old Tricks," the one featuring McCain's 2000 debate remarks. The campaign stopped airing it recently at McCain's request.
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Broadcast: "American Evil Appears"

A sweep operation was conducted on 15 Mar 68 recently in SON TINH. Crazy American enemy used light machine guns and all kinds of weapons to kill our innocent civilian people in TINH KHE Village (SON MY (V)). Most of them were women, kids, there were some just born babies and pregnant women. They shot everything they saw, they killed all domestic animals, they burned all people's houses. There were 26 families killed completely - no survivors. The fierce devil Americans dropped down their priest covers to become barbarous, and cruel. American wolf forgot their good sheeps' appearance. They opened mouth to eat, drink our people blood with all their animal barbarity.
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One morning in the latter part of March, Task Force Barker moved out from its firebase headed for "Pinkville." Its mission: destroy the trouble spot and all of its inhabitants. When "Butch" told me this I didn't quite believe that what he was telling me was true, but he assured me that it was and went on to describe what had happened. The other two companies that made up the task force cordoned off the village so that "Charlie" Company could move through to destroy the structures and kill the inhabitants. ... After hearing this account I couldn't quite accept it. Somehow I just couldn't believe that not only had so many young American men participated in such an act of barbarism, but that their officers had ordered it.
. . .
If Terry, Doherty and Gruver could be believed, then not only had "Charlie" Company received orders to slaughter all the inhabitants of the village, but those orders had come from the commanding officer of Task Force Barker, or possibly even higher in the chain of command. Pfc Terry stated that when Captain Medina (Charlie Company's commanding officer Captain Ernest Medina) issued the order for the destruction of "Pinkville" he had been hesitant, as if it were something he didn't want to do but had to. Others I spoke to concurred with Terry on this.
. . .
"Bernie" substantiated the tales told by the other men I had talked to in vivid, bloody detail and added this. "Bernie" had absolutely refused to take part in the massacre of the villagers of "Pinkville" that morning and he thought that it was rather strange that the officers of the company had not made an issue of it. But that evening "Medina (Captain Ernest Medina) came up to me ("Bernie") and told me not to do anything stupid like write my congressman" about what had happened that day. Bernhardt assured Captain Medina that he had no such thing in mind. He had nine months left in Viet Nam and felt that it was dangerous enough just fighting the acknowledged enemy.
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There were photographs of dismembered bodies, of soldiers holding up severed ears and testicles and of the actual moments of torture. There were men and women being beaten to death, and drowned, and humiliated in stomach-turning ways. On one photograph was a stick-on balloon above the torturer's head, which said: "That'll teach you to talk to the press."

The question came up whenever visitors caught sight of these pictures: why had they not been published? A standard response was that newspapers would not publish them, because their readers would not accept them. And to publish them, without an explanation of the wider circumstances of the war, was to "sensationalize."

At first, I accepted the apparent logic of this; atrocities and torture by "us" were surely aberrations by definition. My education thereafter was rapid; for this rationale did not explain the growing evidence of civilians killed, maimed, made homeless and sent mad by "anti-personnel" bombs dropped on villages, schools and hospitals.

Nor did it explain the children burned to a bubbling pulp by something called napalm, or farmers hunted in helicopter "turkey shoots," or a "suspect" tortured to death with a rope around his neck, dragged behind a jeep filled with doped and laughing American soldiers.

Nor did it explain why so many soldiers kept human parts in their wallets and special forces officers who kept human skulls in their huts, inscribed with the words: "One down, a million to go."

Philip Jones Griffiths, the great Welsh freelance photographer with whom I worked in Vietnam, tried to stop an American officer blowing to bits a huddled group of women and children.

"They're civilians," he yelled.

"What civilians?" came the reply.
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Disingenuous Incredulousness

FRANKS: I think we had a lot of problems in Vietnam. One was the lack of leadership of young people like in -- in John Kerry's position. He was a young officer over there, and I'm not sure that -- that activities like that didn't take place. In fact, quite the contrary. I'm sure that they did take place. ...

HANNITY: I mean, raped, murdered, all these things. But he never told names. Does that anger you? I mean, this is the guy now that is the leading candidate for the Democrats.

FRANKS: I don't know. I -- um, I think Vietnam was uh-- I think Vietnam was, uh, was a bad time. I think that what I've learned in my life, Sean, is that it's a heck of a lot easier to protest than it is to step up and, uh, take responsibility for the actions, um, of a unit or for -- or for your ... your own actions.

And so, um, I don't -- I don't like what I saw, uh, but at the same time, I would -- I wouldn't say that ... [long pause] the things that Senator Kerry said are undeniable about activities in Vietnam. I ...I ... I'm ... I think that .. I think that things didn't go right in -- in Vietnam. And so...

Dysfunctional

Watching the video (Part 3), I get the impression that Hannity was expecting a denial of some sort. Maybe not an outright 'not true' denial, but a denial that approves of keeping the family dysfunctional. Asking about feelings is open-ended enough to elicit a judgment going to appropriateness, but a 'should' would have been more to the point. What Hannity was after is a response like John O'Neill's, "He impugned our honor and hurt our feelings." Hannity didn't want to discuss right and wrong, fact and fiction; he wanted viewers to dislike John Kerry. Franks, who thinks Kerry is fit for command, acknowledges hesitantly that maybe the wound of Vietnam was self-inflicted.
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The Centerpiece of His Campaign

"The concern about Kerry was that he had great credibility as a decorated Vietnam veteran," Colson recalled in a recent interview. So Colson and his staff tried repeatedly to dig up dirt on Kerry.
. . .
The White House found a better way to go after Kerry. Colson had seen a press conference featuring a young Navy veteran named John O'Neill, who served in the same swift boat division as Kerry shortly after Kerry left Vietnam. O'Neill, like many swift boat veterans, was outraged at Kerry's claim of US atrocities. In short order, O'Neill became the centerpiece of the Nixon White House strategy to undermine Kerry.
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MATTHEWS: —so you're telling me he deliberately threw the hamster off the boat?

MALKIN: I'm saying the Swift Boat Veterinarians have raised serious questions about whether he dropped it.

MATTHEWS: You're saying he threw it off the boat!

MALKIN: I'm saying he's been accused of dropping it—
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Does that fact cheapen the value of the medal? During the ongoing conflict in Iraq, several U.S. military grunts have complained to me that while their bravery has gone generally unrecognized, the awards system has been unfairly tipped in favor of officers. In fact, I've written about an Army general who put himself in for a Silver Star merely for being in Iraq. And an Air Force bomber crew received the Distinguished Flying Cross for dropping a bomb from 30,000 feet onto a home where Saddam Hussein was believed to be hiding. More recently, plans to award Bronze Stars to the Army's 800th Military Police Brigade were dropped after a report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba and photographs were released about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

The awards system has always been fraught with abuse, but for anyone who has ever served in combat, the difference between earning a Purple Heart and death is, indeed, very slim. Former Navy doctor Louis Letson clearly recalls treating Kerry and removing a small piece of metal from his arm with forceps, bandaging that wound and returning him to duty. And when Kerry was hit, he was certainly engaged with the enemy and in harm's way. In fact, if the fragment Letson removed had been slightly larger and struck the lieutenant between the eyes, Kerry's award would no longer be a current-events issue — since he'd be planted in Arlington National Cemetery instead of campaigning to be the next occupant of the Oval Office nearby.
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On an earlier tour in Vietnam, one of my gallant soldiers, a draftee named Don Wallace, picked up seven Purple Hearts in less than a year without ever being hospitalized. Most of "Ole Magnet Butt's" wounds were easily patched up by "Doc" Holley, our battalion surgeon. But any one of them could have shut off his lights forever. Jerry Sullivan, another trooper in the same "Hardcore Battalion," was wounded just once. He spent five years in hospitals and still lives in agony.

As we loaded the boats up with all the ammo we could possible get on board I remember the silence. No one said a word. The crew of the cutter was watching us also and they knew better than to break the silence. It's a feeling that only men who are about to go into combat have ever experienced. There were glancing looks at each other for we all knew that every time we went out that some of us might not come back. Nothing had to be said, we all understood that. It was after all, "Our Job".
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But politics and style aside, Kerry did serve with distinction in Vietnam when he easily could have avoided that killing field. His service to his country shouldn’t be diminished by the same despicable, politically motivated tactics visited upon Sens. John McCain in South Carolina and Max Cleland in Georgia, also Viet vets. This kind of gutter-bashing doesn’t belong in American politics, and vets shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as ammo for cheap shots at one of their own.

The stalwart Brown Water Navy warriors who fought at Kerry’s side say he was A-OK, which is good enough for me. The muckrakers such as John O’Neill and his Swiftboat snipers – who didn’t sail on his boat but served anywhere from 100 meters to 300 miles away – are now coming off like eyewitnesses when in fact not one of their testimonies would hold up in a court of law. A judge would call these men liars and disallow their biased statements.
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This isn’t the first time Kerry’s been sniped at. Joe Klein wrote in The New Yorker that Nixon aide Charles Colson formed the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace in 1971 solely to attack John Kerry. Colson told Klein that Kerry “was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O’Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O’Neill meet the president, and we did everything we could do to boost his group.”
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John Kerry: They told the stories at times they had personally...taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power...

We spent the night on the cutter. Before turning in for the night I decided with many others including some of the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter to watch the Green Berets interrogate our young VC prisoner. He did not seem too responsive to their questions so they gave him a little encouragement to talk. They hooked a blasting cap detonator to his ears, dumped a bucket of water on him for greater conductivity and shot what I remembered to be 60 volts and 2 1/2 amps directly through his head. His body shot up in the air and then shuddered and he went limp and fell to the deck each time they did this. As I look back on it now I am saddened by the fact that I had no feeling for him at the time. I guess I had taught myself how not to feel. With a casualty rate now over 80% in our unit I think it hurt too much to feel so we just numbed out. At the time it was just another event to me. As I look back at it now I am not proud of that but I am not ashamed of it either.
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We were second in line while exiting the river and going through the opening in a fish trap when a mine blew up under the No. 3 boat directly in front of us and we started taking small arms fire from the beach. Almost immediately, another mine went off somewhere behind us. All boats, except the one hit, immediately wheeled toward the beach that most of the fire came from (a tactic devised by Lt. Kerry, I later learned) and commenced showering the beaches with so much lead, that it could probably be now mined there.

We got right next to the village and were going to proceed farther when all of a sudden an explosion went off on the starboard side close to the lead boat. There was a large open field on our starboard side with a tree line quite a ways back. The Viet Cong had shot a B-40 rocket and it slid in the mud and exploded on the bank just missing the boat. We turned the boats starboard and beached them and raked the area with all the firepower we had. Bogart was wounded in the melee but not seriously. He had taken a piece of shrapnel in the bicep of his arm. We think it was from one of the stupid Cambodians firing an M-79 round too close to the boat but we were never sure. We received no more enemy fire. We turned the 3 boats around and beached them on the other bank where the Village was. I say, "was" because when we left, the village was no longer there nor anything left alive in it. We wasted it and did not give a damn either.

Charles Gibson, who served on Kerry's boat that day because he was on a one-week indoctrination course, said Kerry's action was dangerous but necessary. "Every day you wake up and say, `How the hell did we get out of that alive?"' Gibson said. "Kerry was a good leader. He knew what he was doing." When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial. "When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, `John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post.' But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said.

As a general rule Swift Boats did not get into a whole lot of combat. The patrols were rough in the monsoon rains and high seas and it was always a danger boarding and searching suspected enemy vessels. A young LTJG by the name of Bernique in Coastal Division 11 out of An Thoi felt that he was not getting enough action so he and another boat entered a canal which later became known as Bernique's Creek and caught the Vietcong by surprise. He killed several of them and turned in a report that he had done so. Bernique was sent to Saigon for a Court Marshall and Saigon sent him back with a Silver Star.

"I would go up a river with that man anytime. He was a great American fighting man," said Michael Bernique, a highly decorated veteran who served as a swift boat skipper alongside Kerry. But Bernique remains upset with Kerry's assertion that atrocities were committed, an assertion that Kerry has not backed away from. "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick."
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Hold the convention in Birmingham.
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Atrocity Deniers

[S]oldiers -- including American soldiers -- commit atrocities in all wars. That was true even of the so-called Greatest Generation in World War II, it was true in Korea and Vietnam, and it's undoubtedly true in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Denying that is to deny the reality of war. And failing to face the harsh realities of war is what makes it so easy for the U.S. to slide into nasty, unnecessary conflicts -- like Vietnam and the Iraq War now.
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Pre-emption: Past Is Prologue

John O'Neill defines free-fire zones as "discretion to fire first if threatened or when confronting enemy forces," rather than waiting to be fired on first.
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JOHN O'NEILL: I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam.

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

JOHN O'NEILL: There were gunboats stationed right up there to stop people from coming. ... it was a malicious story because it painted all the guys above him, all of the commanding officers, in effect, as war criminals, that had ordered him into a neutral country, it was a lie.

Should Have Stuck With 'In'

"I think I made it very clear that I was on the border, which is exactly where I was for three months. I was about 100 yards from Cambodia," O'Neill said in clarifying the June 16, 1971, conversation with Nixon.

Why does that matter? Because he was serving (as Kerry was not) during the Cambodia incursion of 1970, which began on April 29 and lasted two months. (Nixon didn't deny that operation; it was official, and large, and well-publicized, and presumably pre-existing barriers at the border would have been removed.)

Sticking To The Script

Hugh Hewitt: OK. When you were on the boat, did you ever go into Cambodian waters?

Steve Gardner: Absolutely not. That was a physical impossibility to go inside Cambodian waters.

Hugh Hewitt: If such a mission had been undertaken, would it have been undertaken by a swift boat?

Steve Gardner: Nope.

Nobody Ever Crossed Over

Further north, on November 16th, [1968,] the Navy launched Operation Tran Hung Dao, a series of interdiction patrols on two waterways along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien to Chau Doc. Swift boats (PCFs) patrolled the western end and river patrol boats (PBRs) the eastern end.

Since May 1967, when the U.S. Military Command in Saigon became concerned at the way the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were evading American "search and destroy" and air attacks in Vietnam by making more use of bases in Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. Special Forces had been running special, highly classified missions into the two countries.

Stop Teasing

By 1970, Swift Boats were definitely running into Cambodia, but Kerry's journal can definitively place Kerry only in the vicinity of Sa Dec. O'Neill's argument holds, for now. But is it even relevant? Even if Kerry never was in Cambodia, I don't think using a favorite 'war story' is all that the hyberbolic, hyper-ventilating crowd would like it to be.

The Brinkley/Kerry version says Kerry did run covert missions to Cambodia, just not on Christmas. Kerry's crewmates insist they had gotten near Cambodia and could have crossed over. Kerry's journal notes a faulty positioning system on the boat leaving open the possibility. This is plausible as the border was only a few hours away and the boats were equipped for 4-5 day patrols, and there's nothing to suggest enemy bases right on the border that would have prevented a noisy boat moving across. It seems likely any such enemy positions would be regular targets, and Kerry's mission may have been to deliver weapons and personnel to forces already operating there.

Now that the campaign has taken a position, Kerry should just say that his statements that have the kids all excited were based on blended memories. Nothing damning about that. And remind that he was in Vietnam, "Killing people, saving people, holding Life & Death in his hands like a savage gift."

"I'm sorry," Stewart said. "Were you or were you not in Cambodia?"

Stewart and Kerry then leaned in and stared each other down before Stewart asked about other things Kerry's opponents are saying.
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Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn't really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry's record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam in the first place. Needless to say, the proposition will be a hard sell in those dim and tiny reaches of the electorate where voters have yet to make up their minds. Indeed, it's far more likely that moderates and fence-sitters will be disgusted by the lengths to which partisans will go to discredit a rival. But this anti-Kerry campaign is not designed to win undecided votes. It's designed to reassure uneasy minds.

But, nonetheless, what I believe they heard and the ads suggest what they heard. They had to reconcile that with Kerry the hero who earned the medals. I believe to make their own story consistent for themselves they believed he couldn't have earned those medals. Hence, he was a liar then. He was a liar when he protested the war. He must be unfit to be President. I think this is an exploration in the process about human memory requires us to create a consistent story, particularly about people we intensely dislike.
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Indoctrination Session

Alfred French of the Clackamas County district attorney's office appears in the ad sponsored by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the spot, French says: "I served with John Kerry. ... He is lying about his record." A group of Vietnam veterans who protested outside the county courthouse Monday said French implied he had firsthand knowledge of Kerry's war actions when in fact he had heard about what Kerry did from friends. In an interview with The Oregonian newspaper last week, French said he relied on the accounts of three other veterans in making the statement about Kerry and did not personally witness the events.

George Elliot said that based on the affidavits of the veterans on other boats... In one affidavit, for example, Van O'Dell, who said he had been in a boat near Kerry on that day, declared that Kerry had "lied" about what happened on that day and said that Rassmann was not under enemy fire when Kerry pulled him aboard.

"I do not have a single document," Van O'Dell said. "I have the fact that I wasn't wounded in that 5,000 meters of fire that he wrote about." ... O'Dell said he had met with Republican strategist Merrie Spaeth, a public relations consultant to his group, and once bought a home from Bob Perry, a large Republican donor from Texas and close associate of Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.

Elliott said he was no under personal or political pressure to sign the statement, but he did feel "time pressure" from those involved in the book. "That's no excuse," Elliott said. "I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake."

Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The investigator said he would send it to him by e-mail for his signature. Mr. Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.

The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade. But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.

The group says Mr. Kerry himself wrote the reports that led to the medal. But Mr. Elliott and Mr. Lonsdale, who handled reports going up the line for recognition, have previously said that a medal would be awarded only if there was corroboration from others and that they had thoroughly corroborated the accounts. "Witness reports were reviewed; battle reports were reviewed," Mr. Lonsdale said at the 1996 news conference, adding, "It was a very complete and carefully orchestrated procedure."

"If that's what we have to say," Mr. Chenoweth added, "that's how it was."

Ken Cordier, a former Vietnam PoW, resigned from the Bush campaign after it emerged that he had appeared in a commercial made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that has led the attacks.

"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement being run by a 527 organization," Schmidt said.

Swift Boat group's funder, Bob Perry, is co-hosting a fundraiser at next week's GOP convention, with Karl Rove as an honored guest.

But when they asked Perry's spokesman what the deal was, he suddenly hadn't heard a thing about it. Perry's spokesman Bill Miller says he was surprised to see his boss's name on the list. "He told me, 'I never approved the use of my name. I'm not going to be there,' " Mr. Miller told the Dallas Morning News.

Charles Plumly, a retired Navy captain who was Hoffmann's chief of staff. He says Kerry "required a lot of supervision" and "did things without permission." Asked in an interview for examples, he said, "I can't give you exact specifics."

However, because of these new ads and, I understand, a new book recently published by an old Charles Colson "Enemies List" hit man, I feel compelled to speak out. Unfortunately, the veterans featured in these attacks are being used by extreme right wing Bush supporters to spread their lies... Anyone who doesn't think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river.

After Chris Matthews said to O'Neill, "You go back to the Nixon era, when [former President Richard] Nixon was looking for someone. [Chuck] Colson and those guys were looking for somebody to debunk the Kerry record, because all the records show they were scared to death of this guy. And you played that role." O'Neill replied, "That's just not true."

THURLOW: I learned that from the people who had been with him at that time.

THURLOW: Steve Gardner.

Under pressure, Thurlow coughed up a name—Steve Gardner. But alas! If Matthews was even minimally prepared, he’d have known that Gardner wasn’t present, in any way, during the incident in question.

“There’s got to be some truth to the charges,” Dole said. But to put it simply, Dole doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

O’Neill describes the after-action report as “Kerry’s report.” He contends that language in Thurlow’s Bronze Star citation referring to “enemy bullets flying about him” must also have come from "Kerry’s after-action report.”

THURLOW: The reason I believe it was from his report is because he‘s the only one that filed one and the fact that he—and the reason I know he filed it is because his boat was the central figure in the report.

THURLOW: Because he had this master plan that was...

MICHAEL DOBBS, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: There‘s no proof of that at all. It‘s based on his claim and the claim of some other swift boat veterans that it was John Kerry that wrote the after-action report. In fact, Mr. Thurlow was the senior officer in that particular engagement, so it‘s just as possible to suppose that he wrote the action—after-action report as Mr. Kerry. ... And there were many things that Mr. Thurlow was doing that are mentioned in his citation that John Kerry was not in a position to observe.

CLELAND: Third, you don‘t go to war, at least I didn‘t, and I don‘t think John Kerry did or anybody on his crew, saying, Gee, this is a great day to get blown up. This is a terrific plan for my life. I‘m going to get blown up once. Then I‘ll get blown up twice. Then I‘ll get shot three times, and I‘m going to bring that shrapnel home so I can be a war hero.

Although he did not appear in the ad, Gardner, 56, of Clover, S.C., agreed with those statements — while conceding he was not on the boat with Kerry during the incidents for which Kerry got his medals.

In an apparent attempt to substantiate his status as an eyewitness to key Kerry events, Gardner claimed on Scarborough Country, "[T]hat boat never left the dock that I wasn't aboard it with John Kerry, never. I was with that boat everywhere we went." Gardner went on to make assertions regarding the events that occurred on March 13, 1969, involving Kerry's rescue of Jim Rassmann, for which Kerry received the Bronze Star. ... But later in the show, Gardner admitted to not being present that day. When Scarborough attempted to revisit the "March 13, 1969 incident," Gardner said, "I'm not going to deal with that. Because I wasn't there."

THURLOW: Because he had this master plan that was...

A lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign disclosed Tuesday that he has been providing legal advice for a veterans group that is challenging Democratic Sen. John Kerry's account of his Vietnam War service. Benjamin Ginsberg's acknowledgment marks the second time in days that an individual associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort.

On the same day that the Bush-Cheney campaign repeatedly denied coordinating attacks with the anti-Kerry group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida was caught promoting a rally in Gainesville for the group. A flyer being distributed at the Alachua County Republican party headquarters, which doubles as the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters for the county, promotes a weekend rally sponsored by "Swift Boat Vets for Truth, Veterans for Bush, Alachua Bush/Cheney Committee," and others.

This is so profoundly a part of the military code of behavior that it cannot be over-emphasized. The rule is that those who brag about being heroes usually aren't heroes at all. Bragging is for drunks at the end of the bar, not for real vets. And certainly not for anyone who wishes to trade on his service to become our commander-in-chief.

What really bothered the Dems was that the president looked like a successful wartime leader in his flight suit. To our disloyal opposition, that was worse than his actual status as a successful wartime leader.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

Q: On behalf of Vietnam veterans -- and I served six tours over there -- we do support the President. I only have one concern, and that's on the Purple Heart, and that is, is that there are over 200,000 Vietnam vets that died from Agent Orange and were never -- no Purple Heart has ever been awarded to a Vietnam veteran because of Agent Orange because it's never been changed in the regulations. Yet, we've got a candidate for President out here with two self-inflicted scratches, and I take that as an insult. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Six tours? Whew. That's a lot of tours. Let's see, who've we got here? You got a question?

THURLOW: Because he had this master plan that was...
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Those credentials have been questioned by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose Web site shows a photo of Kerry with 19 officers from his division. The group said only one man in the picture, Skip Barker, supports Kerry. Rich McCann and Rich Baker are among four listed as “neutral.”

But McCann, 60, a consultant from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, said he told the group he was neutral about whether it used his picture. “I was never neutral about (Kerry) as president,” he said. “If the question is whether John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief, my answer is absolutely.” Baker, 61, now a baker by trade, says he was never contacted by the group, perhaps because he recently moved to Pittsburgh. Kerry is “very well fit for command,” he said. “He was one of the most courageous and aggressive swift boat captains in the division.”

Both men say they voted for Bush in 2000 but won’t again. Neither accompanied Kerry on the missions that led to his two awards for valor and three Purple Hearts for injuries. Both said the men criticizing Kerry could have spoken up 35 years ago. Officers usually debriefed one another after missions before one of them, usually the senior tactical officer, wrote the official after-action report, they said.

The group’s claim that Kerry made up reports of enemy fire during a March 1969 mission when Kerry pulled a Green Beret from a river and won the Bronze Star doesn’t make sense to McCann and Baker. “The other officers would have had the opportunity to say at the debriefing, ‘No, John, we weren’t under fire,’ “ Baker said. Members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have said they were unaware until years later that Kerry had written about the incident.

Jim Russell, 60, of Telluride, Colo., was an eyewitness on a boat behind Kerry’s. In a conference call arranged by the Kerry campaign, he said accusers “couldn’t have seen if he was under fire” because Kerry’s boat was in an ambush zone farther down the river. Russell also said those who say Kerry’s injuries were too minor to merit the Purple Heart don’t understand that Navy regulations required all wounds be reported and treated. “If it got infected, you could be court-martialed for not getting it treated,” he said.
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Three Navy men won Bronze Stars for their actions that day: Kerry, Thurlow, and radarman first class Robert Eugene Lambert, a petty officer in the boat captained by Thurlow. ... Asked about the discrepancy between his own account and his citation, Thurlow, who was the senior skipper in the flotilla involved in this engagement, said that Kerry was often able to present his own (presumably self-serving) descriptions of events to superiors. But neither Thurlow nor the Swift Boat group has substantiated this claim. And did Kerry rig not only his own award recommendation but those of Thurlow and Lambert? In the award recommendation for Thurlow's Bronze Star, Lambert--not Kerry--is listed as the eyewitness. (And Del Sandusky, a crew mate of Kerry, was the eyewitness listed in the award recommendation for Kerry. According to the National Personnel Records Center, Lambert's file no longer contains the award recommendation for his Bronze Star.)

A previously silent participant in the March 1969 incident that led to Kerry's Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart told the Washington Post that Kerry did come under enemy fire. "There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river," Wayne Langhofer, who was on the boat directly behind Kerry's, told the newspaper. The swift boat group has argued that there was no hostile fire.
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