It's always interesting to go on a little trip into the world of liberalism. Sometimes, points are made I completely agree with. But often, it seems like they're looking at only part of the equation, though I'm open to more info.
Take this posting on the SBVT from "LeanLeft", where Kevin quotes O'Neill as saying:
O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.
O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.
NIXON: In a swift boat?
O'NEILL: Yes, sir.
Kevin presents this as though it's clearly some sort of lie. But he apparently doesn't realize that there are several river systems in Cambodia, and O'Neil's statements about his service with Kerry refer to the Bay Hap river which comes out of Cambodia in a well-defined area which, I'm told, was guarded, and empties into the delta towards the south.
While I don't know the actual details of the rest of O'Neil's service, if you take a look at a detailed map of Cambodia (which I've spent a bit of time doing, in order to evaluate various SBVT and MSM claims), you'll discover there are, in fact, other rivers other than Bay Hap which do run along the Cambodian river. Since (I understand) O'Neil served quite a bit longer than Kerry, it's quite possible he could have also been stationed elsewhere than Bay Hap.
To prove O'Neil a liar, you'd have to show he was either speaking specifically about Bay Hap in the quote above, or prove he never operated in any of these other waterways. It's not just enough to compare two quotes, superficially, out of context.
"It didn't rain yesterday." (said Wednesday)
"It rained yesterday. (said Friday)
Interestingly, it is Kerry's own defense team which backs me up on this possibility:
"Swift Boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a senior adviser in the Kerry campaign, said Friday. "Boats often received fire from enemy taking sanctuary across the border. Kerry's was not the only United States riverboat to respond, inadvertently or responsibly, across the border."
You can see the region on the right side of this map.
The only problem is that we -- or at least I -- can't place Kerry here in his short service, certainly not by means of the Bay Hap river, and not around that time -- you can't get there from Sa Dec by boat without an ocean passage around the southern tip of Vietnam. Perhaps Kerry could show some records indicating he was, in fact, in Ha Tien at some later time. (More released records would certainly help.)
Again, I'm not saying O'Neil did serve there, in Ha Tien (though from talk I'm seeing, it sounds as if he did), I'm just pointing out we need to do quite a bit more work to show O'Neill could not have been referring to his service at such a place, and thus is a liar.
These things get accreted in the mind of unsuspecting listeners, built up one by one into a wall of bricks, but each is nothing more than a tissue of half-investigated allegations. Often, they fall apart when you look at them closely or prod them.
Speaking of things which fall apart under close scrutiny, here's another strange explanation from LeanLeft:
The one significant contradiction they have been able to document that is not flatly idiotic is that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, as he had said, but may have been there the next month. But this is exactly the sort of thing Zacharias's article demonstrates - that particular details of events can easily be misremembered while the overall memory is based on truth. It would not be surprising if Kerry conflated his memory of Christmas in Vietnam with his memory of an incursion into Cambodia a few weeks later.
I'm not sure how this would work. It looks like Kerry's own service record places him far from Ha Tien (and Cambodia) from December 1968 through March 1969. When did we get to transport Kerry all the way to Ha Tien to have this experience?
Further, how does one confuse 'perhaps maybe, perhaps maybe not' wandering into Cambodia with something which amounts to substantial evidence that Nixon was lying when he said we'd had no troops there? I mean, if one boat perhaps wanders accidentally into Cambodia, that's hardly something which would refute the president's stance about our national policy.
Furthermore, Kerry's recollection is very detailed -- people celebrating, drunken gunfire going off, his feelings of having been clearly betrayed by Nixon. That's a far cry from getting lost somewhere upstream, alone, with just his crew. That has to enter the realm of embellishment.
Finally, the speech he's allegedly accidentally conflating into this scene took place in 1971, when he was stateside. So that's a very significant memory error, hardly attributable to "the fog of war."
I can understand arguments about the fog of war, or being confused about gunfire -- either way, mind you. But if a guy gets something that wrong, even unintentionally, then we've got to actually question his fitness for public service even if he was just making some really complicated but honest mistake. I mean, I screw up a lot of things, too. But (a) not this badly, and (b) not in sworn testimony before the Senate! What else would he misremember in this tortured a fashion?
Finally, what is so hard about just admitting the guy was really wrong? Why do we have to engage in these bizarre mental gymnastics?
Here, I'll set an example: Bush said, before elected, that he'd oppose McCain/Feingold as a violation of free speech. Now that he's elected, he's clearly broken that promise. So I'm unhappy about that, but I'll probably vote for him anyway since there are other more important issues.
See? That's not so hard. Now you try...
Regarding the O'Neill contradiction in Kevin's (not my) post, the question is not whether O'Neill and Kerry were both over the Cambodian border in the same place, but rather whether it was possible for Kerry to be so at all. O'Neill has claimed it was not, and as evidence for that he has said that it was impossible to get across the border. His contradiction is that he stated - to the President of the United States personally - that he had done so, and the President neither questioned him nor objected to the action.
This demonstrates unquestionably that O'Neill has contradicted his own claim (either it was possible to get across the border, or he falsely confessed a crime to the President). O'Neill is thus unreliable. And, since it seems obvious that, of the two, it is the former claim that is more likely to be false, the contradiction undermines his attack on Kerry, while also providing indirect support for Kerry's claim that swift boats crossed the border with Nixon's knowledge and consent.
To repeat: O'Neill claimed that Kerry could not have gone into Cambodia on a swift boat and also claimed that he himself had gone into Cambodia on a swift boat; those can't both be true, and it's the former that is most likely false.
Your argument is that he really meant that Kerry couldn't have gone into Cambodia on a boat from where he was stationed but that O'Neill did so from some other place. But O'Neill himself has not said so. If that is really what he meant, he should clarify it. As it stands, his attack on Kerry is contradicted by his own words.
Regarding the question of Kerry's memory, raised in my post, I don't see what is so confusing about it. It's not a question of "fog of war" or anything else; it's just the simple fact that people's memories often contain false elements mixed with the true ones.
Kerry claimed he was in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968, and was incensed to hear Richard Nixon claim that no one was doing such a thing when Kerry and Nixon both knew otherwise. What we know is that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas 1968, but it has been suggested he may have been there one month later, when Nixon was in office. We know also that Nixon authorized cross-border missions while publicly denying them, including (as O'Neill specifically tells us) swift boat missions.
How can we reconcile these stories? If Kerry was in Cambodia in late January 1969, about a month after he originally said he was, and he committed the mental lapse of mixing the dates of his memories of Christmas with the dates of his memories of the Cambodian mission, every element falls into place.
Is such a lapse plausible? We are still waiting for exact details of the alleged mission, though Kerry's biographer (a sympathetic source but also a knowledgeable and respected historian) has said he believes it occurred in January, and is reportedly preparing an article on the subject. Could Kerry have mixed up the dates? Obviously yes - that's exactly the kind of mental lapse people make all the time. (Recall the article I quoted, in which several people who were present at the time could not agree on the type of wounds received by a man in their own tent, or whether the round that killed him was fired by the enemy or their own unit mate right outside the tent. Memory is like that.)
There are no "gymnastics" involved. People's memories get confused - even about important details of important events. Whether he testified in the Senate is irrelevant - if he misremembered the date then he would have testified to the wrong date. But that he could misremember such a fact is perfectly trivial - people do it all the time. The real question is whether he went over the border - not which month. That question remains open, but the rest of the story makes perfect sense.
Regarding the O'Neill contradiction in Kevin's (not my) post, the question is not whether O'Neill and Kerry were both over the Cambodian border in the same place, but rather whether it was possible for Kerry to be so at all. O'Neill has claimed it was not, and as evidence for that he has said that it was impossible to get across the border. His contradiction is that he stated - to the President of the United States personally - that he had done so, and the President neither questioned him nor objected to the action.
This demonstrates unquestionably that O'Neill has contradicted his own claim (either it was possible to get across the border, or he falsely confessed a crime to the President). O'Neill is thus unreliable. And, since it seems obvious that, of the two, it is the former claim that is more likely to be false, the contradiction undermines his attack on Kerry, while also providing indirect support for Kerry's claim that swift boats crossed the border with Nixon's knowledge and consent.
To repeat: O'Neill claimed that Kerry could not have gone into Cambodia on a swift boat and also claimed that he himself had gone into Cambodia on a swift boat; those can't both be true, and it's the former that is most likely false.
Your argument is that he really meant that Kerry couldn't have gone into Cambodia on a boat from where he was stationed but that O'Neill did so from some other place. But O'Neill himself has not said so. If that is really what he meant, he should clarify it. As it stands, his attack on Kerry is contradicted by his own words.
Regarding the question of Kerry's memory, raised in my post, I don't see what is so confusing about it. It's not a question of "fog of war" or anything else; it's just the simple fact that people's memories often contain false elements mixed with the true ones.
Kerry claimed he was in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968, and was incensed to hear Richard Nixon claim that no one was doing such a thing when Kerry and Nixon both knew otherwise. What we know is that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas 1968, but it has been suggested he may have been there one month later, when Nixon was in office. We know also that Nixon authorized cross-border missions while publicly denying them, including (as O'Neill specifically tells us) swift boat missions.
How can we reconcile these stories? If Kerry was in Cambodia in late January 1969, about a month after he originally said he was, and he committed the mental lapse of mixing the dates of his memories of Christmas with the dates of his memories of the Cambodian mission, every element falls into place.
Is such a lapse plausible? We are still waiting for exact details of the alleged mission, though Kerry's biographer (a sympathetic source but also a knowledgeable and respected historian) has said he believes it occurred in January, and is reportedly preparing an article on the subject. Could Kerry have mixed up the dates? Obviously yes - that's exactly the kind of mental lapse people make all the time. (Recall the article I quoted, in which several people who were present at the time could not agree on the type of wounds received by a man in their own tent, or whether the round that killed him was fired by the enemy or their own unit mate right outside the tent. Memory is like that.)
There are no "gymnastics" involved. People's memories get confused - even about important details of important events. Whether he testified in the Senate is irrelevant - if he misremembered the date then he would have testified to the wrong date. But that he could misremember such a fact is perfectly trivial - people do it all the time. The real question is whether he went over the border - not which month. That question remains open, but the rest of the story makes perfect sense.
Posted by: Kevin T. Keith on September 2, 2004 11:21 AM