A reader of Virginia Postrel’s blog attempts to explain away Kerry’s “Christmas in Cambodia” lie by claiming that it’s possible that Senator Kerry simply confused “Christmas” and “Tet” in his mind an explanation which, given the number of times that Kerry’s told the story over the years, simply does not stand up to elementary logical analysis unless you believe that John Kerry is dumber than the media used to claim Dan Quayle to be. To put it mildly, it’s extremely difficult to believe that anyone, under any conditions, would confuse December 24th /25th with February 17th, especially when they only spent four months in Vietnam and claimed, at considerable length, that the memory of what happened was “seared” into them.

In any case, the record doesn’t state where Senator Kerry’s Swift Boat was on February 16th or 17th in 1969, so the only way we’ll know for sure is if the Senator consents to release his complete military records.

Now, I suppose that someone will seize upon the gap in the record (PCF’s last recorded action before February 18th comes on the 14th) as proof for this claim, to which I say: if that is so, why doesn’t Kerry release records of this, why doesn’t he have someone come forward and confirm this, and why didn’t anyone else claim this? It can’t be that the mission is “too secret” to talk about, because Senator Kerry’s been talking about it for at least twenty-five years even if he has (in revision six of the story) suddenly gotten the date wrong by two entire months.