Beyond Cambodia

According to the liberal media, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth are liars. For example, this week's Time magazine called the anti-Kerry Swiftboat ads "sabotage". Yet the Swifties showed that Kerry's long-standing claim to have infiltrated Cambodia was fantasy, as the campaign later conceded. Only a biased press could confuse truth and sabotage.

And new revelations may follow, now that the conservative group Judicial Watch asked the Pentagon to review Kerry's Silver Star commendation. The future Senator's commendation was signed by former Navy Secretary John Lehman. Yet Lehman was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and held that job in the early 1980s, long after Kerry's stint in the Navy. Moreover, Mr Lehman denies all knowledge of the commendation. "It's a total mystery to me," he said last week. "I never saw it, I never signed it and I never approved it."

Kerry originally was awarded the medal for action on February 28, 1969. Kerry's current citation is dated March 1981 (typo corrected), a full 12 years later. Yet, as the Bandit shows, Kerry's Silver Star citation was amended twice--there are three different versions! Overall, the second and third version eliminated many of the events cited as original justification for Kerry's medal. Moreover, Kerry's website contains a Navy record listing his Silver Star with a "V" for Valor--a designation that does not exist. The campaign says the "V" was a "typo."

All this is irregular, to say the least. More twisting facts to suit his electoral ambitions. Clearly, Kerry has tons of influence and insider help--anything but the "common man" he now claims to be. It reeks of apple polishing politics at its worst.

Kerry's own hagiography historian Douglas Brinkley admits the investigation could be trouble for Kerry:

[If it] turns up evidence of "purposeful" deception, it could spell doom for the top Democrat's White House bid.

Praising reporter Thomas Lipscomb, who broke news of the Navy investigation on Friday, Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, "Journalists are going to have to see whether there's a discrepancy on [the citations posted to Kerry's] Web site - whether there's something wrong that's said there or not."

John Kerry whines that fact-checking his record is an excessive "personal" attack. Nonsense, says Mark Steyn:

Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry. . .

Sorry, man, that's not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he's even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia.

There's an easy way to resolve the issue: Senator Kerry should sign a "Form 180" waiving service record confidentiality, authorizing the Navy to release his (non-classified) service records to the public. But John Kerry's balked--and lied, according to the WaPo:

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.

Civil libertarian author/editor Nat Hentoff hints at a cover-up:

What is in these 100-plus pages? Since the centerpiece of Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign is not his 20-year Senate career, but what he did in Vietnam, including his medals, aren't voters entitled to look at the entire record? If not, why? . . .

The Post story continues: "The Kerry campaign has refused to make available Kerry's journals and other writings to The Washington Post, saying the senator remains bound by an exclusivity agreement with [Kerry biographer Douglas] Brinkley." [Mr Brinkley's book has been published and is available for purchase.]. . .

What I find strange is that Mr. Dobbs writes that "Kerry himself was the only surviving skipper on the river then who declined a request for an interview." Why did more than 250 Vietnam veterans testifying in Mr. O'Neill's "Unfit for Command" make themselves vulnerable to a libel suit by Mr. Kerry, which, if they lost, could do great damage to their careers and incomes? After all, in such a suit, both sides would have to testify under oath. Are they all liars for Mr. Bush?

Would Mr. Kerry then really release all of his original Vietnam records to be scrutinized in the lawsuit's depositions? In a challenge to Mr. Kerry, Mr. O'Neill says, "Sue me!"

A post-Vietnam fog of war does indeed hover over the Kerry candidacy. And why has most of the mainstream media not followed up on this smoking gun about Mr. Kerry's failure to release all of his Vietnam documents?

No surprise then that recent polls give President Bush a double digit lead, including key states. The Swifties are partly responsible for Kerry's eclipse, but not by sabotage. If there's a saboteur, it's Senator Kerry himself--of his own campaign.

More:

Bandit and River Rat analyze all the Kerry medals. (via Captain's Quarters)