Kevin T. Keith of "Lean Left" has responded to my perplexed post regarding his blog's claim that O'Neill has lied.

I've tried to do some digging into this story to get the geography and quotes straight. As a result, I have a few self-corrections to make, though sadly, not because my opponent brought them to my attention. Shame on both of us.

(I can't help but wonder if Americans get better at geography only when debates erupt about different regions, sending everyone scrambling for a good map.)

First, I mistakenly used the name "Bay Hap" when I should have said "Mekong", transposing the two rivers. Mea culpa!

Second, I wondered aloud if Kerry had served in both places, due to the brevity of his service. Apparently, he has, and thus, like O'Neill, could have served "along the border" with Cambodia in March, as that is where the Bay Hap river flows.

So there remains two questions: Did O'Neill lie about Cambodia? Did Kerry lie about Cambodia?

Kerry on Cambodia

First, let's look at what Kevin says in Kerry's defense:

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.

Kevin writes: "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."

I grant you that people often get memories mixed up, or remember false things. This has been shown on the witness stand. But there is a matter of degree involved, which you seem to be glossing over.

I wouldn't be suprised if someone got a date wrong, or the color of an object, or couldn't remember if someone was present. Or if the other driver honked first.

What is unusual is remembering an entire Christmas celebration which could not have happened -- as it occured behind enemy lines -- a speech on the radio which wouldn't happen for three more years (which Kerry would have heard in a nice building somewhere stateside), being ordered to go in at his leaders' request, a CIA man, being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (who were not yet an army) and the newfound knowledge -- which was seared, I tell ya-- into his head that Nixon must have been lying, at that very moment.

All this when he was supposedly only operating "along" the border.

There's a difference between adding a single false element -- say, gunfire -- and a story which is shown to have, out of all it's elements, only one possibly true one -- being in Cambodia.

As I said, it's not that people can't have such memory problems. It's just that when it goes this far, we typically call such people "delusional", and offer them help, not public office.

Regarding:

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.

No, the "real question", the one before the Senate, which is why we are discussing this, concerned bad behavior in Vietnam, and abuses authorized at the highest level by the President. A soldier who kinda, sorta might have wandered into Cambodia -- and if so, just along the border -- is not relevant testimony to that question.

Instead, Kerry provided a picture of being in Cambodia, deep in Cambodia, on a secret mission. He gave the story vivid details which not only convinced our Senators he had an excellent, detailed memory, but which were crucial to his contention to know, for a fact, that Nixon had lied, right then, at that moment.

Without these details, Kerry's story is just one of a sailor lost somewhere upstream.

So, perhaps Kerry misremembers being lost upstream as one of the greatest abuses of American power of the time. Possible! But then I wouldn't hire him to work in the mailroom, much less the Oval Office.

You ask if Kerry could have mixed up the dates. I'd grant you that -- I do similar things (see corrections above!). But that's not an honest question: you can't make the difference between the two stories appear smaller by simply pretending numerous other "mixups" -- ones far harder to swallow -- simply aren't there.

It's not just the date. It's a CIA man. It's the Khemer Rouge. It's the difference between authorized and unauthorized. It's the difference between operating out of two different regions of Vietnam, one inland among the swamps, one by the ocean. It's the difference between operating along the border and being deep inside Cambodia, clearly out of bounds. It's a speech which wouldn't happen for three more years but which is allegedly Kerry's main motivation for his dedication to the cause which determined the course of his life. And it's a question as to how a person's memory could have "seared" by events which merely misremembered.

It's dishonest for you to reduce eight or more differences, most of which are so serious that anybody would have a hard time mixing them up, down to one: a mere date fumble, which we'd all do.

There are no "gymnastics" involved.

Then give me a narrative which accounts all these other differences, not just getting the date wrong.

O'Neill

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.

First, we don't know what O'Neill claimed on the tape his publicist played. As the post on "Lean Left" post admits, we only have CNN's paraphrase, given without any context whatsoever:

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.

The problem is that CNN is playing games with us and not giving us an exact quote. If O'Neill had been speaking in reference to Kerry's service of December (through March), when they were based in Da Sec along the Mekong, then his remarks are to be understood as referring to that context, and not in contradiction with other remarks he's made (such as to Nixon) about his serivce in other areas, such as Ha Tien.

And indeed, CNN doesn't provide the context of the conversation.

For example, say this is what was heard on tape:

Publicist: So did you go on such a mission, crossing into Cambodia?
O'Neill: Never.

That could be summarized as "O'Neill said he never went to Cambodia". But it wouldn't be a contradiction of what he said to Nixon: O'Neill would have been answering a question about a mission, and going deep into Cambodia, not answering a question about skimming along the edge of the border, which what he is clearly saying to Nixon.

The same holds true for the other statement about not being able to cross by river. From what I can see, the Bay Hap near Ha Tien either does not cross the border at all, or, if you look at the little tributaries coming in from the north -- is undoubtedly not well defended. Either way, what we know of O'Neill's taped statement (or what we can learn of it) makes the most sense in the context of a discussion about the Mekong River, which actually "crosses" the border rather than flowing along it as the Bay Hap does.

A man is only said to have "lied" if there exists no charitable explanation for his words. We don't level the charge just because we want to think badly of him. But CNN hasn't given us enough her to assure us at all that O'Neill wasn't referring to the Mekong River when he made either statement.

And that's crucial to showing he lied.

In fact, I'll go one further: I suspect CNN provided no context, and only provided us with their own paraphrase, of a very few snippets of words, because of their biases. I can't prove it, but since I've caught them doing things like this before, so it's not like it's unlikely.

And the internal evidence of the quote -- O'Neill talking about river-border-crossings, suggests they probably did.

So no, O'Neill didn't "unquestionably" contradict himself. Half the testimony you're looking at is a context-free paraphrase from a group with a point to prove. Until you know what's in the first quote, and can definitively show O'Neill's statement didn't and couldn't pertain to just the Mekong, you only have a charge, not proof.

And then there's this:

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... 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.

I don't think your argument here makes any sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you?

You claim: Since Nixon, after the fact, had to ask a swiftboat veteran if he'd been to Cambodia, this "proves" (???) that the vet had been there with the President's knowledge and consent?

You're serious?

Example: My wife leaves the house and returns. Then, I ask if she'd gone to the store. She says yes. By your way of thinking, my asking such a question proves she went there at my request, and that I knew where she was going before she left?

Really?

Tortured logic aside, nobody is seriously debating whether some American troops were in Cambodia. That's well-established. But I don't think any swiftboats were sent there by Nixon (that makes little sense, logistically), and the question isn't about whether someone went in, ever, it's whether Kerry went in, via swiftboat, at the President's request.

Could he have done so? It's not completely impossible. But as O'Neill says, the Mekong entrance is heavily defended, and swiftboats are loud, and at Bay Hap ... ?

The problem with Kerry's "secret mission" from Bay Hap would be that he had, it appears, about a week or less to do it, since he arrived in the area only days before he shipped out for good. O'Neill could indeed confidently assert Kerry couldn't have crossed over if they'd only been there a few days (with O'Neill being there much longer), with Kerry constantly in view.

So Kerry's alleged mission merely looks incredibly unlikely to me, but I can't yet show it's completely impossible.

Of course, if we grant that he could misremember the eight or more differences between his first story and his new one, I see no reason to believe he couldn't have also misremembered Vietnam as Cambodia, entirely. I mean, why stop at eight differences? Go for nine or more! Chalk them all up as an unintentional mental abberation: He never went there at all, but it's not his fault. These things get misremembered all the time. No problem, really.

That would certainly help explain VC the dog and the foreign leaders. :-)

Wrap Up

I find your standards interesting.

To me, it looks like CNN took O'Neill's taped words out of context (the, uh complete lack of context would be a tip-off :-)) in order to make him appear contradictory.

Whether you buy it or not, I think I've shown there is indeed a charitable interpretation of what happened (O'Neill was referring the Mekong on tape) which doesn't show O'Neill to have been at all deceptive: Just two comments in two different conversations, each which was honest, given the preceeding discussion, but which appear contradictory when excepted and juxtaposed, especially for a public which doesn't understand that Kerry's Christmas activities, if any, must have taken place out of Da Sec, and O'Neill's statement he was along the Cambodian border referred to Ha Tien, in a completely different area of Vietnam.

But I find the contrast amazing: We won't grant even that O'Neill might have been referring to the Mekong on CNN's tape. Even though a rather simple, charitable interpretation exists, O'Neill must clearly be not-credible. So much so that we should call him "liar" and not listen to a single word he says.

Kerry, on the other hand, despite his actual retractions, is just an unwitting victim of a very bad memory. One so bad, it has him encountering Khemer Rouge and listening to a famous Nixon speech years before each. And his own campaign has admitted now that he wasn't in Cambodia at Christmas. And you admit the same when you try to blame his memory -- that's an admission what he said was untrue.

Kerry and O'Neill. You claim or admit each has said something which is untrue -- about the same era and the same topic. Yet, by your own standards, one should not even be listened to, and one should be vigorously supported, and given control of our entire military.

Fascinating.