Not Too Swift
John Kerry still needs to come clean about what did or didn’t happen with his Christmas in Cambodia / Epiphany on the Cambodian border / Tet anniversary within 50 miles of Cambodia / I’m sure I went to Cambodia sometime story. Nevertheless, he’s not the only one who has some explaining to do right now. Apparently his top critic, John O’Neill, admitted in 1971 (h/t: Uncle) that he himself had been in Cambodia, on a Swift boat, presumably the same one Kerry himself had previously commanded during his own famously short tour of duty. Ouch.
Unfortunately, the tape has O’Neill saying very little, aside from stating that he had been “in Cambodia” inthe sense that he “worked along the border on the water.” To me, that sounds like O’Neill was “in Cambodia” in the same sense that I was “in East Germany” in August, 1987, when I rode with a group of classmates to a border area and stuck my foot over a ditch, but maybe there’s more to it than that. Also unstated – though probably stated in the original interview – was the timing of O’Neill’s duties along the border, and whether or not they give rise to a reasonable inference that Kerry had also been there.
Given the lack of details, this snippet could be the end of SBVT as credible political force, or it could be a blip on the screen. At one extreme, it could be the smoking gun that shows proves that Kerry’s “Christmas in Cambodia” story was mostly true, aside from the relatively unimportant detail of it not being Christmas. If so, it would completely sink the credibility of every Swift Vet who claimed Kerry never went to Cambodia, along with that of every Republican who didn’t condemn the Swift Vets as quickly or decisively as Crybaby McCain did. At the other extreme, this could be the non-smoking non-gun to prove once and for all that John O’Neill’s memory is less than 100% perfect, and that there really were some Swift Boats on the waters at the border – technically “in” Cambodia, but not penetrating the country on a secret mission, as Kerry has claimed – long after Kerry had left the scene.
In short, this tape either proves everything, or it proves nothing, or maybe it proves something in between. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: LeanLeft offers a brand-spanking new Kerry lie. It seems that not only did President-elect Nixon illegally usurp the powers of lame duck President Johnson by sending Kerry to Cambodia, he also sent him to Iraq, of all places. Cool! UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: the reference to Iraq is now gone. Too bad. It looks like Tgirsch managed to confuse the soft spot he has in his heart for communist mass murderers, on the one hand, with the different soft spot he has for Islamofascist terrorist states, on the other.
UPDATE x2: Apparently, the whole thing is a non-issue based on Kerryspin (h/t: Jody Neel, in a comment) O’Neill’s tenure in Vietnam, unlike Kerry’s, coincided with the Cambodia incursion of 1970, about which no bones were made by Richard Nixon (who was actually President at that time, unlike John Kerry’s excellent adventure / bogus journey to Cambodia in 1968). So the possibility that John O’Neill was in one part of Cambodia in early 1970 adds zero credibility to the notion that Kerry was there anytime between November, 1968 and March, 1969. Presumably the Kerry people knew this when they raised this bogus issue in the first place. Advantage: Swift Boat Veterans Whose Last Names Aren’t Kerry.
UPDATE x3: I finally got around to watching Tuesday’s Hannity and Colmes interview on my DVR. O’Neill didn’t bring up the Cambodian Incursion or claim to have penetrated the country, as Kerry had done, nor did he say (he wasn’t asked) when exactly he had gone. What he did say is that he had patrolled the border at one point, as he said to Nixon on that tape. He also claimed he had been saying this all along, which I don’t know first hand but have little reason to doubt. Apparently, O’Neill’s Big Lie consists of having used the preposition in on some occasions, and near on others, to describe his position along a watery border. Excuse me while I yawn.
UPDATE x4: Spoons disagrees. I guess that to some, using a different preposition to the recount the same story on separate occasions is every bit as dishonest as making a story up out of whole cloth.
FINAL UPDATE: The Pink Flamingo isn’t impressed by Spoons’s “O’Neill is a Lying Liar” theory, either, nor with his apparent eagerness to diss a vet. Frankly, I have to agree. Spoons has put out many excellent posts over the years. These two are not among them.
August 26th, 2004 at 12:33 pm
[...] pefully be my final word on the Swift Boat Vets. That’s not the case. It turns out O’Neill was part of the 1970 Cambodia incursion. Nothing to see here, keep moving. [...]
August 25th, 2004 at 12:32 pm
Yeah, so I screwed up typing. I got my disastrous lots-of-Americans-dead-for-no-good-reason wars screwed up. Sue me! :mad:
(By the way, I have corrected the error in the original.)
August 25th, 2004 at 12:36 pm
More SBVT Lies
SayUncle finds this nifty tidbit:JOHNS: Behind the scenes, Kerry’s aides were fighting the swift boat charges with unusual ferocity. They…
August 25th, 2004 at 1:31 pm
Bummer! The typo was the best part. :whip:
August 25th, 2004 at 2:21 pm
Instapundit notes that O’Neill may have been in Cambodia during the 1970 Cambodia incursion.
August 25th, 2004 at 2:34 pm
Hmm, I didn’t realize the Viet Nam war was effective in ending Communist mass murders in Southeast Asia. What a crime it is that this success has not since been trumpeted. Similarly, no Iraqis have been oppressed or killed or recruited by terror groups since our invasion.
I guess it doesn’t matter whether the war actually accomplishes the stated goals, what matters is you killed lots of people, so you’re “doing something.”
August 25th, 2004 at 4:45 pm
I’m still confused. Reports coming out have O’Neill saying that he never told Nixon that he was in Cambodia, only that he was near Cambodia. Regardless of the time, period, there is a discrepancy that goes to O’Neill’s credibility.
You’ll have to help my third-tier law brain out here.
August 25th, 2004 at 4:51 pm
The Nixon tapes show O’Neill telling Nixon, “I was in Cambodia, sir.” Now, O’Neill says he wasn’t there and that he only meant to tell Nixon he was near Cambodia.
August 25th, 2004 at 5:21 pm
Xrlq:
As Joel points out, the time frame of O’Neill’s statement isn’t even relevant. What matters is that O’Neill has said that there was no way to cross into Cambodia by river, and that as such, Kerry couldn’t have gone there. Further, O’Neill has said that he never was in Cambodia. Now, tapes emerge with O’Neill himself saying that he was in Cambodia in a swift boat. If you couldn’t get there by river, how’d he get the boat there? Did they carry it on foot?
Now he’s saying that he misspoke, and that he was never in Cambodia, only near Cambodia. Funny, when the Kerry camp made that revision, it was proof that they were lying, but when O’Neill does it, it’s okay…
August 25th, 2004 at 6:16 pm
Joel, it’s bad enough that they took those two sentences out of context; must you chop it up even smaller? Taken in this mini-context, it’s clear that O’Neill’s time “in” Cambodia consisted of patroling the border. It is not unreasonable for him to have recounted that story on some occasions as “near” Cambodia and on others as “in” it. Technically, he probably did drift in and out of it. In any event, this was an above-board mission conducted after Kerry had left Vietnam; it doesn’t provide any evidence at all to support Kerry’s yarn about the top secret mission, ordered by non-President Nixon, that was “seared, seared” in his mind over the years. And as O’Neill himself further explained on Hannity & Colmes, they weren’t even talking about the same area.
Even if your false equivalence argument were valid, the most it would accomplish is to show that both Johns are liars, not that Kerry is telling the truth. If both men are liars, neither of them should be President.
August 25th, 2004 at 7:18 pm
The Swift Boat vet ad people may have legitimate questions about Cambodia and about how Kerry handled himself post-service. But the main thrust of their attacks has been to discredit Kerry’s entire Vietnam service, to question his bravery and heroism, to project him as someone who went to Vietnam for no other reason than to run for president 35 years later.
If you are looking for a candidate who has never lied about anything good luck.
If the questions were limited to who has the better judgment and integrity to be president, that’s one thing. But their claim is that Kerry is unfit to be CIC, which means that he is totally untrustworthy, a scoundrel.
Finally, as someone who served in the military, I resent the great number of chicken-hawk war wimps who are intent on turning vet against vet. In calling Kerry a liar on very flimsy evidence, they have also called every vet who served on Kerry’s boat a liar. They have put into question the medals and awards of thousands upon thousands of vets by causing a lot of people to wonder whether the military has any integrity whatsoever in the awarding of medals.
Believe what you will. I don’t agree that the case has been even remotely made with respect to Kerry medals.
August 25th, 2004 at 7:43 pm
How do you get off calling them chicken-hawks? They served in the same war that Kerry did, most of them for longer periods. I also don’t see why you think calling Kerry a liar implies anything at all about the truthfulness of his crewmates. Is Stephen Gardner calling himself a liar? What about the crewmates who are neutral on the issue? Even as to those who back Kerry, the possibility that he is a liar does not lead to the conclusion that they are, as well. They could be honestly mistaken. At minimum, somebody is.
August 25th, 2004 at 8:06 pm
Xrlq,
I’m not calling the vets chicken-hawks — I’m referring to the drug-addicted non-serving Rush Limbaughs who are advancing this story. I’m talking about people, blgogers and talk-show folks alike who have never had a military rifle slap them in the butt exploiting the anger of some war vets who are bitter about Kerry’s anti-war activities.
August 25th, 2004 at 11:30 pm
Nice to know who you’re unfairly smearing and who you’re not. It would be nicer still if you realized that using such an idiotic term as “chickenhawk” only hurts your credibility, not theirs.
August 26th, 2004 at 6:27 am
Xrlq,
You’ve been participating in quite a nasty smear of John Kerry, so I don’t know what you know about credibility.
August 26th, 2004 at 7:12 am
More than you, obviously. What have I said about anybody that wasn’t true?
August 26th, 2004 at 8:51 am
If O’Neill was involved in the 1970 Cambodia incursion and this was legal and he wouldn’t have been subject to court martial as John Kerry should have been if he went to Cambodia as he or his campaign has said, why did he go to such great lengths in his interviews prior to disclosure of the Nixon tapes to deny it?
August 26th, 2004 at 9:05 am
I don’t think O’Neill ever denied having run a Swift boat along the border, which is the only thing he told Nixon he’d done. When running a boat along the border, the line between “in” and “near” is a very fine one indeed. Nothing like Kerry’s story, which placed him several miles inside the country, at a time when no troops were officially supposed to be there, by order of a guy who wasn’t even President yet.
August 26th, 2004 at 9:28 am
I still don’t understand why O’Neill presented such strong denials about his being in Cambodia before the Nixon tape release, especially since he was involved in an approved 1970 incursion. And O’Neill did claim that it was impossible to be on along the border because there is no Mekong River “watery border” between Vietnam and Cambodia. On ABC before: O’Neill: “How do I know he’s [Kerry] not in Cambodia? I was on the same river, George. I was there two months after him. Our patrol area ran to Sedek, it was 50 miles from Cambodia. There isn’t any watery border. The Mekong River’s like the Mississippi. There were gunboats stationed right up there to stop people from coming. And our boats didn’t go north of, only slightly north of Sedek. So it was a made-up story.” And, I believe Kerry/Kerry surrogates have placed him (Kerry) was 5 miles inside.
August 26th, 2004 at 11:23 am
“Apparently, O’Neill’s Big Lie consists of having used the preposition in on some occasions, and near on others, to describe his position along a watery border. Excuse me while I yawn.”
Sorry X, but as others of your commenters have ably pointed out, this is the exact same sort of B.S. that Kerry pulled when this story broke. It makes a difference, though, whether someone says they were in Cambodia, or whether they were near Cambodia. At least, we all claimed it made a difference when Kerry tried to pull the same thing.
We didn’t buy it from Kerry, and we shouldn’t buy it from O’Neill.
August 26th, 2004 at 12:03 pm
No, Spoons, it’s not the same, nor even close. O’Neill may have used different prepositions on different occasions, but the substance of his story remains unchanged: he patrolled the border area. Period. Whether that puts him “in” Cambodia, “near” it, or just “on the border” is purely a matter of semantics. It’s not evidence even of a flip-flop, let alone a lie.
Contrast that with Kerry’s brief, but Swift-ly abandoned “Christmas Near Cambodia” story. That version of his story, if true, would have been completely pointless. So what if a sailor spent Christmas near Cambodia at a time when the non-President denied that we had troops in it? No one denied that we had a military presence in Vietnam!