# Posted 1:00 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHAT WILL KERRY SAY ABOUT CAMBODIA? After dismissing the Kerry/Cambodia story as "pointless", I received a flood of critical e-mail. So now I've gone back and read up some more on the issue, and am going to back off my "pointless" comment, at least for the moment.

Now where to start? Both RS and ES take me to task for relying exclusively on Kevin Drum's account of the story, which I did. Kevin's main point is that Kerry has consistently told the exact same story about his experiences in Cambodia ever since he first told it in 1979. So why doubt what Kerry says?

This time around, I decided to click through on all of Kevin's links to see what evidence his account relies on. As a result, I think I've noticed something strange: Kerry himself hasn't made a clear statement about Cambodia in more than twelve years.

In June 1992, Kerry explicitly told the AP that his commanding officers sent him into Cambodia. The next document Kevin cites is a brief US News & World Report article from May 3, 2000 [subscription only] that mentions Kerry's mission in Cambodia but mentions no source for the claim.

Next, Kevin links to an article from last year's WaPo, in which Kerry pulls out his secret good luck hat and says it was "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia." However, this quote doesn't seem to be from the same interview that the WaPo conducted for the article, since it is preceded by the following caveat:

Asked about [the secret hat] on several occasions, Kerry brushed it
aside. Finally, trapped in an interview, he exhaled and clicked open his case.

"An" interview? Which interview? It's a small question but an important one, since this quote is the only indication that Kerry still stands by his earlier account. Of course now that Instapundit is all over the story, I'm sure that Kerry himself will have to clear up the mess.

So what will Kerry say? Ann Haker suspects that Kerry wants the clamor to get as loud as possible. Once it does, he'll pull out evidence to support his position and make his critics look like fools.

That would be pretty impressive, although I don't think it's going to happen. Mark Steyn says that Kerry's own Vietnam diaries show that he clearly wasn't in Cambodia when he says he was. (Kevin Drum disagrees. I'm not sure.)

If Kerry doesn't confirm the story or tries to evade the question, we'll have a scandal on our hands. But will it be an important one, or just a one-day affair? In other words, so what if Kerry lied about or just creatively imagined his time in Cambodia?

As JB puts it, "Senator Kerry's candidacy is based on his resume and the stories he tells." JF, formerly a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne, writes that

Kerry made his Vietnam service central to his campaign for President. [But] I feel it goes even deeper than that. He has always portrayed his Vietnam service as the bedrock of who he is as a person and as a politician. If he “created” events that serve as that bedrock, it calls into question everything about him (to me).

A solid point. But what's harder to know is whether one fib about Cambodia will do all that much damage to Kerry's otherwise impressive war record. If Kerry stopped telling the Cambodia story back in 1992, I think he'll be safe. But if he told it more recently or tries to tell it again (without evidence to back it up), he'll be in a lot of trouble.


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