It has been a rough ten days for Senator John Kerry.  First Democratic Party moneybags George Soros said Kerry’s name on the Presidential ballot was a dead loser. Then Teresa Heinz Kerry decided to borrow a dead winner’s
rather than a live loser’s last name, reverting to “Teresa Heinz” for public appearances. But the worst day Kerry had was a Sunday answering Tim Russert’s questions on Meet the Press on --- (what else?) ----Vietnam.

Asked about his Christmas Eve in Cambodia “seared, seared” in Kerry’s memory, according to one of his Senate speech transcripts, Kerry tried a half-baked variation on the theme: “Was it on that night? No, it was not on that night. But we were right on the Cambodian border that night. We were ambushed there, as a matter of fact. And that is a matter of record, and we went into the rec-- you know, it's part of the Navy records.” 

To ambush or not to ambush

Alas “as a matter of fact,” at least according to Kerry’s own journal, supplied to his biographer Douglas Brinkley for inclusion in TOUR OF DUTY, “that night” Kerry was in Sa Dec in Viet Nam, south of Saigon and fifty miles from Cambodia, writing his parents about “visions of sugar plums.” And it isn’t “part of the Navy records” either. An “ambush” would require an official after action report like the ones Kerry exhibits on his “complete” website. So
either Kerry doesn’t include one on this because there isn’t one, or Kerry’s website isn’t complete, or both.

It gets worse. Under Russert’s questioning Kerry has a burst of sudden recall. “But we did go five miles into Cambodia. It was on another day. I jumbled the two together, but we were five miles into Cambodia. We went
up on a mission with CIA agents--I believe they were CIA agents--CIA Special Ops guys. I even have some photographs of it, and I can document it. And it has been documented.” 

Unfortunately there is no indication “it has been documented” and no one has ever reported seeing “some photographs of it.” Admiral Roy Hoffman commanded all the Swift Boats in Vietnam and had the responsibility for
parceling the missions assigned to him to the commanders of his bases. According to Hoffman, who commanded Kerry for the four months he served in Swift Boats, “In all the time I served in Vietnam, I never assigned a Swift Boat mission for the CIA to a South Vietnam base like Kerry’s at An Thoi. I assigned Swift Boats for several missions for the CIA infiltrating North Vietnam but I believe they are still classified.” 

Hoffman, as Chairman of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, is certainly a Kerry antagonist. But Navy lieutenants do not simply gather their crews and climb in their Swift Boats, gas up at the local Total station, buy some ammo at
a sporting goods store en route and go swanning off on “secret missions” their commanders don’t know about.  And not one of Kerry’s faithful crewmembers who stood on the stage with him at the Democratic Convention and exactly none of Kerry’s commanders confirmed Kerry’s
first story of Christmas in Cambodia and so far, none confirm the Meet the Press revision, and neither does Douglas Brinkley. 

Kerry Admits Running Guns to Communists?

But even assuming there is somewhere a top secret after action report that backs up Kerry and those nasty Swifties are taking advantage of the fact that we can’t see it because it is still classified, Kerry proudly told Russert and
the world what his top secret mission was. “We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia. We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border. And I have some photographs of that, and that's what we did.” 

If that is true, the United States should have shaken up the CIA 35 years earlier. The “Khmer Rouge,” so named derisively by Cambodian leader Prince Sihanouk, were the Cambodian communists who were later to murder millions of their fellow citizens in the “killing fields” in 1974.  “Ridiculous,” snorted a former CIA station chief from neighboring Laos, “That is the equivalent of delivering arms to the Viet Cong.” Robert Turner, an expert on
North Vietnamese and Vietcong affairs at the embassy in Saigon at the time and now a professor at the University of Virginia says: “Kerry has gone delusional. This is hilarious.” When Kerry was in Vietnam in 1969 the
estimate of Khmer Rouge strength was only 2500. They would have been hard to find, much less deliver weapons to, scattered around a country of 10 million almost the size of Oklahoma. 

Clearing the records

All this confusion will be cleared up now Russert has gotten Kerry to agree to sign the Standard Form 180 that will allow the Navy to release all Kerry’s records after a false start or two that has the ring of Kerry: “I'd be happy
to put the records out. We put all the records out that I had been sent by the military. Then at the last moment, they sent some more stuff, which had some things that weren't even relevant to the record. So when we get--I'm
going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn't in the record and we'll put it out. I have no problem with that.” A week later The Boston Globe confirmed
Kerry’s pledge  “to sign Form 180, releasing all of his military records.” But Kerry does want to “make this clear: My full military record has been made public." 

Except that a day later on The Don Imus Show Kerry seems confused again about what has been made public, and rededicates himself to signing the still-unsigned form 180 “Shortly… . As soon as I get, as required by the
military, precisely … .  Because I have a stack of different material they sent me. Every time they send me something I want to know what they sent me. I'll get it done. ...” 

As a born again Christian, professing compassionate conservatism, the least President Bush can do is appoint Kerry U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia before this gets any worse. Perhaps then Kerry can find out what really did
happen before even CBS finally figures out who ran for the Presidency based on dubious statements about his military record.  

Thomas Lipscomb, who grew up in Oregon,  is a senior fellow at the Annenberg
Center for the Digital Future

© 2005 Thomas Lipscomb