[link|http://www.townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/mc20040402.shtml|Dick Cavett got it wrong, too]

Excerpt 1, the Big Lie:

On this subject, O'Neill, who had served in the same unit as Kerry, though not at the same time, was loaded for bear. He noted that he had served in Vietnam for 18 months, in contrast to Kerry's four, and had seen nothing to "shock the conscience." He demanded to know if Kerry had personally committed war crimes. Kerry squirmed. O'Neill persisted.

Kerry elected to say that, well, he had participated in burning the huts of noncombatants, which qualifies as a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

O'Neill replied that when he had been in the region, their unit had received heavy fire from all directions. What O'Neill did not say, but might have, is that it was often difficult in that frustrating and murky war to tell the soldiers from the civilians. That was in large part because the Vietcong dressed as civilians and used civilians as human shields.

Still, burning down someone's straw hut, while not exactly polite, is far from the sort of war crime Kerry had conjured in his Senate testimony. As for all the soldiers Kerry had quoted, the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview all 150 of them to get names, dates and places. What they discovered, as B.G. Burkett unveiled in his groundbreaking book "Stolen Valor," is that many of those so-called Vietnam Vets had never even been to Vietnam. Among those who had, many had never seen combat but had technical or service jobs. None was able to sign an affidavit attesting to actual atrocities.

I say:

An astroturf campaign against defending South Vietnam?

Kerry Lied!!!! (TM)

...anyone?

Excerpt 2: the Lesson Unlearned:

Kerry did make a provocative point when he asked whether it was fair to continue the war when we had already decided to withdraw (the United States was then engaged in the "Vietnamization" policy, which was intended to transfer war fighting gradually to the South Vietnamese). Some soldier, Kerry said, "is going to be the last guy to die for an admitted mistake." What Kerry failed to see, and still fails to see, judging by his votes regarding the Iraq War (he voted for the war but against the funds to see it through), is that there are consequences to cutting and running in ignominious fashion.

Cavett attempted to remain neutral, but it was ultimately too much for him. Not only did he agree with Kerry, but O'Neill tried his patience by interrupting repeatedly. With barely concealed sarcasm, Cavett said: "Nobody believes that there will be a blood bath if we withdraw. That was a cliche we used to hear a lot. Neither of you believes that do you?" Kerry's answer was emblematic of the antiwar left. He said he thought it was a "baiting argument" by the pro-war side since "there'd be no interest on the part of the Vietnamese to start massacring people after people (the United States) had pulled out."

Following America's withdrawal and Congress' decision to cut off every penny for Southeast Asia, there was a terrible genocide in Cambodia, so terrible that it overshadows the horror of what befell Vietnam. Roughly 800,000 boat people chose to take their lives in their hands rather than remain in communist Vietnam. Some 65,000 were executed, and this does not include those who slowly starved in concentration camps.

I say:

If it's fair game to blame Bush for every death in post-Saddam Iraq, then by the same token, it's fair to blame Kerry for the massacre in Cambodia nad the plight of the boat people. So if Dubya is a war criminal, then Kerry is a few orders of magnitude more of a war criminal.

But never mind logic. That won't stop the loons on the Left from trying to have it both ways. Never did.

Oh, and why don't the squishy left's hearts bleed for the victims of Kerry's policies?