My Bold Prediction - No Brinkley/New Yorker Article

My Bold Prediction is that, contra Drudge, there will not be a New Yorker article by Douglas Brinkley describing John Kerry's "January in or near Cambodia", which was previewed to the Telegraph.

Why not?

(1) It will simply call attention to a story that mainstream media is ignoring;

(2) It will make Brinkley look less like an objective historian and more like a Kerry flack;

(3) Serious reporters will squirm at this weird selective disclosure - the January after-action reports are not at Kerry's website, but Brinkley can miraculously rely on after-action reports and Kerry's own War Notes to present Kerry's story? Someone in the press may rebel and ask for both the already-promised after-action reports and access to Kerry's notes (ask for December and March 18/19 after-action reports, while you are at it. And the paperwork for the controversial first Purple Heart).

(4) Brinkley will not have a good explanation for his decison to leave it out of the book in the first place. Possible explanations, none appealing - (a) Running covert operatives to Cambodia makes John Kerry look like a macho man of mystery and danger, and that was not the picture Brinkley wanted to paint; (b) Brinkley didn't want to suggest that Kerry was involved in Nixon's secret war, or that Kerry broke international law by violating Cambodia's border (except when he did); (c) it doesn't square well with Kerry's own account of his March 18 mission near Cambodia, as excerpted in Brinkley's book, where Kerry made it clear that violating the Cambodian border was a Big Deal.

The campaign will conclude that it is safer to let this drift away. Well, that's my guess. I hope I'm wrong.

MORE: OK, this is brutal, but how big is the San Francisco Examiner?

UPDATE: Props to the Captain - evidently, "served under Kerry" is a slippery concept. MORE: Oops! Read the comments! The Captain has good evidence that Alston left, but no real evidence that he did not return. Lots of good research being done by Lori from Texas, however. I'd love to get her to compare the Feb 20 action described at Kerry's website (which seems to blame the helicopters for wanton destruction) with the Feb 20 after-action report. (Actually, that would just be a warm-up...)

UPDATE 2: From the Bear, we see the Seattle Times and Knight Ridder, neither known as right-wing apologists, picking up the "Christmas in Cambodia" story.

Comments

[antimedia]

Kerry's March 18th story is a lie. He left Vietnam on the 17th. He wasn't there.

[Joanna]

I think you are right on about this. I posted elsewhere that if they actually do do a story about this for The New Yorker, Kerry is an idiot, just fanning the story's flame's instead of letting it die through want of air. Unfortunately, the fire's already out of control and doesn't matter what he does, his political life is over -- that's my bold prediction. His lifetime of lying--including lying to his supporters in the Democratic party, and the knive are coming out--is now catching up to him.

Et tu, Michael?

[TM]

Joanna, I appreciate your manners and restaint, but shameless self-promotion is a key part of blogging - give us a link to your post, please.

[John Weidner]

The SF Examiner has in fact shrunk to a free tabloid, a shadow of its former self (the first of the Hearst newspapers). Still, as a San Franciscan, I savored it.

[Frank G]

"It will make Brinkley look less like an objective historian and more like a Kerry flack"

kinda late to worry about that, eh?

[leah]

Unless a disgruntled Kerry staffer and/or MSM reporter gets fed up with the fudging, I don't share Joanna's optimism. I can't recall such a concentrated media effort (TV, films, broadcast, print, music) to sink this administration. Not that serious, well-informed voters can't discriminate. But how many of us are there? Not to mention the confidence builder these media conglomerates and their 527's provide. And the money? Have the Republicans even scratched the surface of their fund-raising capability. I find this whole Information Ministry of Oceana scenario that's unfolding unnerving, chilling. HoldmeI'mfrightened!!

[GT]

Wow tha SFE article borders on proof of drug use!

Has this woman checked the polls lately?

Imploding?

Kerry is ahead in EVERY SINGLE Gore state and several of the Bush states (NH, WV, FL,MO,OH).

And if you combine the internals with the historical fact that undecideds break for the challenger several other states, like TN and AR, are in play.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

I see GT has time to whistle while he passes the graveyard, but not to explain to me how it is that Kerry's boat could hit a mine, lift 2 feet in the air, and sustain nothing like the damage to PCF-3. Nor to tell me if he believes it's Kerry or Rassman lying about how Rassman ended up in the water.

Oh well. Here's a singular irony for a vet from Ohio:

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/local/9260626.htm

--------------quote--------------
BOSTON - David Kolbe's service in the Army during the Vietnam War was well-documented.

His file includes a list of honors and accomplishments, and just one bad mark -- a notation for one excess day of leave he took on Jan. 27, 1968. Kolbe recalls how he was deducted a day's pay for the incident -- it was taken out of the $3,000 annual salary he was paid for his service with the 1st Air Cavalry of the Army Airborne.

There is such thorough documentation of the minor incident in his file that Kolbe, an Ohio delegate to the Democratic National Convention, can only wonder why records of President Bush's military service can't be located.
-------------endquote------------

Or the original paperwork for Kerry's medals.

[Byron]

Hertzberg at The New Yorker would certainly like to do anything possible to help Kerry and hurt Bush. Whether Brinkley will follow through might depend on incentives. A nice sinecure at The New Yorker would be nice; so would some kind of position in the Kerry Administration. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Hold on to your Kerry-Edwards campaign memorabilia, folks, especially if they're signed:

http://www.galleryofhistory.com/archive/8_2004/politicians/131804-THOMAS-EAGLETON.htm

Of course, the big difference is that the Sen. from Missouri had ALREADY HAD his electroshock therapy. Kerry just looks likely to need it soon.

[TexasToast]

Has anyone seen a poll about how this whole business is playing with the true undecideds? I hacvent read any post on this blog from such a person. Seems that we are just adding more alligators with teeth to the moat that divides us.

[ParseThis]

I predict the blogosphere will blow things all out proportion, exult over its anointed significance, throw a temper-tantrum when people don't pay enough attention and commiserate about being misunderstood. (All right, only the last one is a prediction.)

[Joanna]

Dear TM

Maybe I misspoke? Maybe it wasn't a "post", only a "comment"? Deeply embedded in a Captain's Quarters thread of which I can remember neither the title nor date. But the topic was Kerry's plans for a New Yorker story. I find the Captain's archives difficult to navigate, so couldn't find it, but words to the effect:

I thought this story [Christmas in Cambodia] was going to die through lack of air.

Now he's going to keep it alive.

Fat in the fire.

The man's an idiot.

As for the knives coming out, I posted just a few lines about that elsewhere too, Right Wing News as I recall where I use a pseudonym. Having a hard time navigating those archives too. Commented something short about the Democrats gonna be really angry at Kerry for losing this election for them. Et tu, Michael? (Starting to see signs of it already.)

Another thing, if Kerry does do a story in "The New Yorker", Mr. Kranish and "The Boston Globe" are going to look really silly:

Heroism, and growing concern about war

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/16/2003

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.

In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest...

www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

Don't you just love it?

As for shameless self-promotion :-) I'm just setting something up. Very preliminary.

http://heartseye.blogharbor.com/

You should find it easy reading. :-)

[Joanna]

>Kerry is ahead in EVERY SINGLE Gore state and several of the Bush states (NH, WV, FL,MO,OH).

Yep, a lot of people are going to be scratching their heads when Bush wins by a LANDSLIDE. And I KNOW he is going to because GOD told me so. So there. :-p

[Joanna]

Oops I left out the silly part in the Kranish story:

"To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit."

[Paul Zrimsek]

You forgot
(5) Nobody cares. People would rather hear about Kerry's secret plan for peace with honor than about a third-rate burglary. Kerry's The One!

[TM]

Kerry's The One, indeed. If he wins, at least I can chant that to my lefty friends for four (eight?!?!?) years. Well, my lefty friends who remember Nixon, anyway.

Joanna, keep us posted.

[wizard61]

Why did Kerry retract the Christmas in Cambodia through a spokesperson- does he have a problem admitting mistakes?

[Cecil Turner]

What mistake? Whaddya mean "he fell down"? He was pushed, dammit!

While I agree the Kerry camp would be idiots to add fuel to the fire, I'm not sure that's a good argument they wont. I'm still trying to figure out what they were thinking when they decided "band of brothers" and "we still know how to fight for our country" was the proper theme for the national defense portion of the nomination acceptance speech. (And simultaneously pointing at Max Cleland seems particularly inapt.)

If the goal was to distract from the candidate's murky position on Iraq and the WoT, it might make some sense. But the obvious downside is that it invites attention to his VVAW activities that would otherwise be old hat.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

The Boston Globe published the Christmas Eve entry in Kerry's journal last year:

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/journal_day2.shtml

Reading it makes very clear that Kerry knew exactly where he was that night, and it wasn't Cambodia.

[ter0]

Why did Kerry retract the Christmas in Cambodia through a spokesperson- does he have a problem admitting mistakes?

The Kerry campaign is working overtime to catch up with the blogosphere and craft a response that will pass the laugh test. If they can ignore it they will, but in the interim they need time and an opportunity to regroup.

Coincidentally, their candidate will be hiding out in Ketchum, Idaho the next 4 days for a little R & R and just "being."
KBCI-TV">http://localhost/apwirefeed/d84ftbgg0.xml&NewsSection=StateHeadlines">KBCI-TV

If all else fails, he can always blame the snafu on his speechwriters, I mean biographers. Look for somebody to fall on their sword if this gets out of hand.

[Greg F]

He does it again, Kerry takes page from Gore play book.

[mifune]

The New Yorker, though it has a former Carter speech writer as its chief political commentator, still has the best fact-checking department in the magazine business. It won't run a story that it can't verify.