Just a few months ago, George W. Bush’s National Guard service record was all over the news, even the CBC. Based on the statement of the commanding officer of the airbase in question that he didn’t recall seeing Bush there, Liberals were gleefully proclaiming Bush a deserter.
After several of his fellow Guardsmen turned up with clear recollections of his service at the time and place in question, and the administration turned up dental records proving he was there, and the commanding officer in question turned out to have Alzheimers (!), the issue sort of fizzled out, although it still seems to survive in the Liberal catechism, and I’ve had to rebut it several times in conversations since.
John Kerry has made a great deal of his service in Vietnam during his political career. In the 70’s, he was a vocal protester against the war (he’s even honored as a hero in a war museum in Vietnam), claiming that he and his fellow veterans were war criminals who committed atrocities on a day-to-day basis. During the 80’s and 90’s, he voted against any increase of military spending or new weapons program he saw. He voted against the first Iraq war. He happened to vote for the second war, but then voted against funding it, while criticising the Bush administration for underequipping the troops. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, he made a great deal of his Vietnam experience, and contrasted his service overseas with Bush’s in Texas.
In the last week or two, a story has developed about John Kerry that should be the delight of any investigative reporter.
A group of Vietnam veterans who served in the same Swift Boat unit as Kerry have come out with a book and TV ads that claim that many details of Kerry’s story about his service in Vietnam are false, and that the injuries for which he received the three Purple Hearts that allowed him to return to the US after only four months were trivial and self-inflicted.
In addition, John Kerry has claimed many times over the years to have been in Cambodia in 1968. In a Congressional hearing in 1986 he said that the memory of that Christmas was seared into his mind. In fact, he carries a jungle hat around in his briefcase that he claimed in 2003 was given to him by a CIA operative in Cambodia.
But in his official biography, published last year, we find a journal entry for that same Christmas, dated from Sa Dec, 50 miles from the Cambodian border.
So when asked about this by Fox News, the Kerry campaign first slandered the Swift Boat veterans, then claimed that Kerry never said he was in Cambodia, then claimed that Kerry was mistaken about being in Cambodia, and is now claiming that Kerry, stationed on the Mekong delta, was on the border of Cambodia — an impossibility evident to anyone who glances at a map to see that the Mekong in fact flows perpendicular to the border
So here we have a grand tale of lies, misdirection and coverup, but so far only one reporter at Fox News, and the Telegraph of London, of all things, is covering the story. Why isn’t this story all over the news the way that the Bush’s National Guard service was? Anyone like to offer a hypothesis other than the majority of the traditional media are die-hard liberals who will stop at nothing to defeat Bush?
Much much more at Instapundit and Power Line, and Vodkapundit.
Update: An excellent article is here. Hat tip: Instapundit.
Thanks.
It’s so hard to find anything out there that is not from a very liberal point of view.
Gord, you are my only source of real political thought. Since I don’t know much about what’s going in the world (and I don’t generally trust what everyone SAYS is going on) your comments are very helpful to me in trying to sort out the whodunit of American politics. Not that I spend a lot of time thinking about it…but your emails give me my 90 second “political education update” every now and again. (And I end up looking smarter when other people talk about politics!)Thanks for informing me.
Hey, not at all, you guys. I’m glad my obsession can benefit someone :-)