The London Telegraph went where no American newspaper deigns to go this morning, taking a long and critical look at John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia myth, doing the work that the American press claims it exists to do. The Telegraph's David Rennie takes apart even the newest claims from the Kerry campaign in its full retreat from this story:

The Kerry campaign responded, initially, that Mr Kerry had always said he was "near" Cambodia. Then a campaign aide said Mr Kerry had been in the Mekong Delta "between" Vietnam and next-door Cambodia - a geographical zone not found on maps, which show the Mekong river running from Cambodia to Vietnam. ...

In newspaper articles, interviews and at least one Senate speech, Mr Kerry has claimed that he spent Christmas 1968 inside Cambodia, at a time when even the US president was publicly denying that American forces were inside that country.

He has cited the missions as a psychological turning point, when he realised that American leaders were not telling the truth to the world about the war in south-east Asia.

Michael Meehan, a Kerry campaign adviser, told ABC Television: "The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol . . . in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam. He was ambushed, they fired back, he was fired upon from both sides, from the Cambodian side of the border and the Vietnam side during that day in 1968."

As Rennie notes, the physical description given by Meehan makes no sense at all. There is no point in that region where the Mekong Delta is between Viet Nam and Cambodia. The delta itself starts around Sa Dec, which is where Kerry was on Christmas Eve in 1968 -- and that's 55 miles away from Cambodia. It would be similar to stating that the Mississippi Delta was somewhere between Arkansas and Missouri. Maps flatly contradict it. Besides, being shot at from both sides of the border is not the same as being inside Cambodia while the President denied your existence there, which is what Kerry has claimed all along -- and used as an excuse for his anti-war activism.

Even with Meehan's poor excuse, Kerry still lied, and lied for decades about his Cambodian excursion. As the invaluable James Lileks put it so well yesterday, this lie isn't about a political position to be abandoned later when convenient -- this lie is about a fundamental part of who he claims to be, and indeed about his entire motivation for public service. If that is false, what does it say about the man and his motivation? It says that he will say anything, do anything, embrace anything in order to get his hands on the levers of power.

The Left spent the entire campaign shouting "Bush Lied -- People Died!" as a disqualification for the presidency. Now that we've determined that Bush didn't lie, that he represented the intelligence given to him accurately, will the Left hold John Kerry to the same standard? He lied about his Cambodian missions in order to lend credence to his testimony about witnessing systematic atrocities by American servicemen in Viet Nam, leading to our withdrawal -- and the genocide that followed.

Kerry lied, millions died. Millions died.

Is that the leadership that the Left endorses?

UPDATE: Reader Vayapaso (okay, it's my mother) e-mailed me with this point about Kerry's lies that really hits home:

[I]t seems that most the salient point to his lie in 1986 was that his misrepresentation of when or if he was in Cambodia at the time he claims added to the mistrust of the government [emph mine -- CE] and the horrible greetings the men and women faced when they returned from Viet Nam. These people were spit upon, treated as through they were criminals and forced to hide the fact that they put their lives on the line for a duty to their country. It was misstatements of people like Kerry & Fonda that added fuel to an already unrest in this country that had not been seen in recent history...

Kerry and his anti-war activists protested the American government, calling them corrupt liars who abused the trust of the American people. Today's anti-war activists make much the same claims about Bush and Cheney. Doesn't it make a difference that Kerry's main motivation for his activism and later political career, the catalyst that was "seared -- seared" into his memory, was a lie all along? That he used the lie to shower hatred and enmity on his fellow servicepeople? Shouldn't Kerry's use of that lie in the Senate to undercut the support of freedom fighters abuse the trust of the American people? Or is it all just runny crap, a handy excuse for a billboard or a protest slogan?

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» Telegraphing Kerry's Changing Stories from The Key Monk
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Tracked on August 12, 2004 10:10 AM

» Kerry Lied, Millions Died from Strange Women Lying in Ponds
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» No One Died When Clinton Lied from damnum absque injuria
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