Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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As many of you saw this evening, Fox News' Carl Cameron asked the Kerry campaign about his tale of spending Christmas 1968 across the border in Cambodia. Apparently, the Kerry campaign tried to assert Kerry had only said he was "near" Cambodia. "Campaign Carl" confronted them with the Boston Herald interview and Kerry's remarks in the Congressional Record (don't these people read Instapundit?) , in which Kerry claimed he was in Cambodia. The campaign didn't have an answer for why Kerry said on those occasions he was in Cambodia, still asserting he was just "near," and didn't get back to Carl by airtime.

Instapundit has more thoughts. As one of his readers points out,

"When Kerry brought up Cambodia, he was always doing it in the context of presidential lying — i.e. "I was in Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops in Cambodia".

With this re-write, it becomes "I was *near* Cambodia, listening to the president say we had no troops *in* Cambodia, which, okay, was true as far as I could tell, but if I'd been just, like, sixty miles further west, it would've been a LIE!"

I hestiate to make big predictions, but if it turns out Kerry was never in Cambodia, and he's been talking about a trip that never happened for years to illustrate his views on presidential lying, I think his campaign will be hurt badly. I suspect that for much of the campaign, many of his "soft" supporters have concluded, "well, he may not have a sparkling personality, maybe he flips and flops on some issues, but he's a genuine war hero and he demonstrated honor and integrity in that." Now, if it turns out he's been making up stories for years, his war record gets tarnished.

But maybe Kerry can explain all this.

[Posted 08/09 10:14 PM]