Add one more problem…

Add one more problem with Kerry’s “Christmas in Cambodia” story. Now, the Kerry campaign has said that maybe just the timing’s wrong, but before he left in March of 1969 he was in Cambodia. But there’s still another problem even being in Cambodia as late as that.

Kerry said his boat took fire from Khmer Rouge forces, the Communist army under the direction of Pol Pot.

The Khmer Rouge were unheard of in 1968 and 1969 and began their guerrilla campaigns to topple the Cambodia government in 1970, even then with only a handful of soldiers numbering perhaps 3,000, according to a variety of historians who have chronicled Pol Pot’s eventual genocidal reign.

It was not until 1975, following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army, consisting mainly of teen-age peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh April 17 and effectively seized control of Cambodia.

Kerry’s speech from the floor of the Senate on March 27, 1986, specifically mentioned the Khmer Rouge. This is yet another embellishment of a supposedly “seared” memory that just keeps unravelling the closer you look at it.

The big question, of course, is how much of what he says can we believe? This story isn’t just some tale he’d tell to war buddies over drinks; he’s been making political points with these claims for 3 decades. And now he’s handing us the ultimate embellishment. He’s taking a war in which he was “ashamed of and hated”, where the war there was a “mystical war against communism”, where he didn’t think America’s national interests were involved, and now he’s casting it as a war in defense of America so he can use applause lines like, “I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President.”

He embellished then, and now he’s telling tall tales that would make Baron Munchausen blush, and all surrounding an event that he’s made the centerpiece of his campaign. Is this the kind of guy you want running the country: Senator John F. Munchausen (D-Moon)?

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