Xmas in Cambodia

Captain Ed has been banging away at John Kerry's claim that he spent Xmas 1968 in Cambodia. Evidently this is false on a number of fronts and Kerry has milked it for political gain.

First, how Kerry milked it: he claimed that he was commanding a Swift boat in Cambodian waters during Xmas 1968. He also claimed that he became disillusioned with the war then because President NIXON claimed AT THAT TIME that there were no American servicemen in Cambodia. Problem: the President in 1968 was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Thus, Kerry is using the Nixon boogeyman to rally his leftist dopes.

Second, as Capt. Ed has shown in this entry, Kerry's main media hagiographer described how Kerry's attack into Cambodia actually violated orders and had Kerry worried about a court-martial. But although the BoGlo story Capt. Ed quotes says that Kerry fired off a sarcastic note to his superiors, he also never wrote any after-action reports backing up his statements.

There's much more, and most of it related to the Swiftees' accounts vs. Kerry's accounts of the time. Most notably, half of Kerry's crew in that Swift boat denies that they were in Cambodia in December 1968.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are preparing to attack the Swiftees.