Cambodia

[RobDownSouth]

From the log of AJ:

Day 5 of Operation Swift Smear. Still no traction in mainstream press. Situation increasingly desparate.

 

[A_Jacks]

How long do you think they can keep pimping Charlie?

 

[A_Jacks]

It's his SECRET PRECIOUS!

 

[A_Jacks]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t.../books/all/ref=b_tn_bh_be/104-9653392-6669554

When you're number one, you're gonna generate some conversation.

The Kerry re-election campaign, headquartered in the offices of the NY Times, can't keep this down forever. Eventually, they will have to list it at number one too!

To quote Mick...

Ti-i-i-ime is on my side.

Yes it is!

 

[Ishmael]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t.../books/all/ref=b_tn_bh_be/104-9653392-6669554

When you're number one, you're gonna generate some conversation.

The Kerry re-election campaign, headquartered in the offices of the NY Times, can't keep this down forever. Eventually, they will have to list it at number one too!

To quote Mick...

Ti-i-i-ime is on my side.

Yes it is!

It's building.

Gonna be fun, you bet.

Ishmael

 

[A_Jacks]

The Democrtas have NEVER warmed to Kerry.

Once he is "outed" as a guy who makes up stories, ESPECIALLY about military service, they'll turn on him. And AND AND AND, since he cost them the election, they'll be especially viseral. This should bump up Nader by the end of this month.

 

[busybody..]

From the log of AJ:

Day 5 of Operation Swift Smear. Still no traction in mainstream press. Situation increasingly desparate.

Silence.

This is what the Democrats have been reuced to, hope that the mass media is SILENT on the various myths that Kerry has built up the past three decades.

The past weeks have seen attacks on the vets and restatements of statements Kerry has made for three decades. That didnt work, now they hope that all the lies and secrets will be IGNORED.

Can you imagine if Bush were to say



I will keep my taxes SECRET

I will keep my medical records SECRET

I will keep my military records SECRET

the press will bell all over him.

The AWOL issue, made up by McCauliffe lasted a month

The Burglar Berger issue was NOT one of a thief stealing documents, but it was one of when Bush knew there was an investigation ....and the papers and media wonder why they lose circulation and audience?

 

[busybody..]

CAMBODIA STORY WATCH

Columnist Lee Cearnal of the Houston Chronicle, a former Marine helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam from mid-1968 through mid-1969, looks at Kerry’s Cambodia story and declares that:

“Kerry has pimped the story repeatedly in an effort to paint himself as a stand-up eyewitness to events that were both illegal and, in his view, immoral.”

Meanwhile, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, who it is safe to say will probably not be voting for Bush this year, finds Kerry’s explanations weak:

“Kerry’s statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. “I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia,” Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. “I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me.”


The Kerry campaign now says Kerry’s runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. “Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon,” Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. “Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group.”


Answers like that aren’t good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it — and he should answer them himself.”


I wonder if enough pressure will build until Kerry will eventually be forced to do that, and how much better off he would have been to respond fully to the Swift Boat Vets immediately after their May press conference.

 

[busybody..]

Mickey Kaus finds the statement that reveals so much about the thinking of Kerry's foreign policy gurus: "Richard Holbrooke instinctively hits on the winning political response to Bush's troop redeployment: 'I know that the Germans are very unhappy about these withdrawals.'"

This wouldn't be happening if Sandy Berger were still around. (Holbrooke would have said, "I had written out a lengthy, detailed statement about Bush's proposed change in policy, but somebody walked off with it.")

 

[Ricwilly]

Who cares?

 

[busybody..]

So why the fuck are you here?

Drink hemlock.

 

[busybody..]

DAM BREAKS: The L.A. Times has mentioned the Kerry Christmas-in-Cambodia story. On the other hand, according to Times- watcher Patterico, "The article is pro-Kerry spin, pure and simple. The strategy of the article is apparent: before actually setting forth a single detail of the Swift Boat Vets' allegations, the article carefully lays the groundwork to prepare the reader to be skeptical."

He has an extensive critique of the article, which is well worth reading. What's interesting is that this explicitly pro-Kerry oped by Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe is actually more honest and straightforward in its reporting of the facts:


Kerry's statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

The Kerry campaign now says Kerry's runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. "Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. "Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group."

Answers like that aren't good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it -- and he should answer them himself.


It's an interesting commentary on the state of journalism, when partisan opeds provide less spin -- even on behalf of their own team -- than ostensible "news" stories do.

More thoughts on the L.A. Times coverage here: "Incredibly, the LAT ignores the fact that the Kerry camp has already admitted that Sen. Kerry has 'misremembered' the dates of his alleged forays past the Cambodian border."

It's hard to keep up with your guy's latest spin points in this Internet era. I'm not surprised at the spin myself, but spin is better than a blackout.

UPDATE: More in the Houston Chronicle:


The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry's military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former. . . .

To those of you who say such questions are unseemly, consider that John Kerry's principal claim on the presidency is that he served four months and 11 days in Vietnam. OK, fine. Let's examine the records — all the records, which, unlike Bush and contrary to popular perception, Kerry has not released — and have a debate. We would be if it were George W. Bush. The media would see to it.


All Kerry has to do is to release the records. Why won't he? And why isn't the press calling him on it.

Okay, I know the answer to both questions, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt observes:


How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.

In fact, the secondary nature of the old media is becoming quite obvious. Reporters, pundits, talking heads etc all know about the magic hat and the now discredited claims of Christmas Eve in Cambodia. . . . Other shoes will drop soon, and the papers are fighting the battle of two weeks ago. Very weird, but very revealing of why the papers are dying and why some of them, like the Los Angeles Times, cannot add market share even with a monopoly position in their markets --they have nothing to sell to anyone not part of their ideological world.


Ouch. No wonder Walter Cronkite is upset

 

[busybody..]

OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA:


The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend.


Give him points for honesty -- but it's pretty funny to hear people dismiss complaints of media bias in the face of admissions like this. And like so many stories this spring, it makes a mockery of campaign finance reform, doesn't it?

 

[A_Jacks]

Sending out the sycophants…

http://www.boston.com/news/politics...erry_disputes_allegations_on_cambodia?mode=PF

Featuring yet ANOTHER version of his story about Cambodia...

 

[A_Jacks]

Silence.

This is what the Democrats have been reuced to, hope that the mass media is SILENT on the various myths that Kerry has built up the past three decades.

The past weeks have seen attacks on the vets and restatements of statements Kerry has made for three decades. That didnt work, now they hope that all the lies and secrets will be IGNORED.

Can you imagine if Bush were to say



I will keep my taxes SECRET

I will keep my medical records SECRET

I will keep my military records SECRET

the press will bell all over him.

The AWOL issue, made up by McCauliffe lasted a month

The Burglar Berger issue was NOT one of a thief stealing documents, but it was one of when Bush knew there was an investigation ....and the papers and media wonder why they lose circulation and audience?

I see Purple Haze made up a lame attempt, Dixon has simply stoped trying, and anyone heard from lavy? But, he's not Bush, so he's their man even if they WON't stick up for him or show the slightest curiosity as to why he won't release ANY of his records...

 

[A_Jacks]

OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA:


The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend.


Give him points for honesty -- but it's pretty funny to hear people dismiss complaints of media bias in the face of admissions like this. And like so many stories this spring, it makes a mockery of campaign finance reform, doesn't it?

Liberals know the press is smarter than them and better equipped to make important choices as to who the President should be so they do and think what they are told. Like when they are told to call conservatives Neoconns and mind-numbed robots...

 

[Algore]

I was closer to being President than that man was to Cambodia...

Where did they get thise guy?

There's a reason I passed him over for Veep!

 

[Algore]

We got one vote for Nixon being in office in December '68...

Thank goodness it's just one in twenty or I'd be really concerned.

 

[Algore]

Has Kerry released his reocrds yet?

 

[Algore]

Are we getting traction yet?

 

[Algore]

Still waiting for Kerry to tell us the truth instead of labeling everyone else a liar.

 

[Algore]

Does John Frobes Kerry owe the Khmer Rouge an apology for insinuating they came across the border to shoot at him?

 

[AStranger2004]

Has Kerry released his reocrds yet?

I don't know Al, and I'm not even certain what his reocrds are, but I wonder, did anyone else, like me, enjoy The Dead Kennedys' release of the record "Holiday in Cambodia"?

 

[Algore]

I think it is safe to say that I have yet to hear a single song from that group.

Heard of them? Who hasn't!

I just haven't heard them...

 

[AStranger2004]

I think it is safe to say that I have yet to hear a single song from that group.

Heard of them? Who hasn't!

I just haven't heard them...

You're missing out.