Sound of Crickets Chirping

[billroper]

This column by Larry Simoneaux (who I know nothing about other than what I just read in the linked-to column) does a fine job of encapsulating my feelings about the utter silence from the mainstream press in trying to determine what's the truth of the situation with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I've watched stories on the Internet for the past week since I first heard about Senator Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" on Fox News Channel. That's the only place I can get any information, because none of the mainstream press that should be interested in getting to the truth has reported on it at all that I can find. Just to pick on my hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune hasn't mentioned it at all in their news pages. The Chicago Sun-Times has referenced it twice on the editorial page, here and here. But I'm not really interested in editorializing on the subject. What I want are facts.

I can find blogs like Captain's Quarters which have assembled an impressive recitation of what they say are the facts. But are they telling the truth?

I don't know that. But I'd like to believe that the mainstream press would pursue this story with the same kind of dogged persistence that they've chased after President Bush's National Guard Service Records.

Because I'd like to know the truth.

I really would.

Comments

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Okay, I guess I lied above. I have to say something.

Why, precisely, are you scared of Kerry because of this story?

No baiting, no bullshit, nothing regarding Team Dubya. Sincerely. What about the Christmas In Cambodia story makes you scared of Kerry "in much the same way that some of [your] friends become scared when Bush talks of trying to do God's work"?

[billroper]

Because it makes me very nervous that -- if the Christmas in Cambodia story is false -- Senator Kerry may have based his entire career on a lie. And from a number of the articles that I've read, he may believe it.

I'm not talking a "Manchurian Candidate" thing here. I'm saying that his experience in Vietnam might have been ugly enough and traumatic enough in some way that his mind constructed something in self-defense. And then he came back to the U.S. and accused -- if I understand his testimony correctly -- the vast majority of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam of atrocities as a way to expiate his own guilt.

And that would be very, very sad. And it would be very, very scary.

It's also possible that he doesn't believe any of these things and constructed them all for his political advantage. That wouldn't be sad, but it would still be scary.

Or it's possible that he's telling the truth, but I'm having trouble seeing exactly how. I understand that memories get confused with time, but he's been telling this story for a very long time -- the earliest citations I've seen go back to 1979. And it was apparently very important to him.

I just don't know.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm....

From this analysis by Kevin Drum (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004487.php), with plenty of citations, it sounds as if he might've crossed the border during an incident. How might he have done this? In an area that they had, shall we say, very fluid maps of?

Definitely he-said-she-said stuff, and not "bas[ing] his entire career on a lie".

Which brings us back to neither of us changing the other's mind. :)