A conservative blogger PSA

I would like to take this opportunity to ask the right side of the blogosphere to get over the Kerry in Cambodia story. It seems for the last two weeks all I read on various conservative blog sites is about how Kerry is a liar because he went into Cambodia later than he initially claimed and this makes him unfit for the presidency.

I admit when I first see the story unfold I was a bit interested in the whole thing. But to allow this to be your lone obsession is a bit unhealthy. It is clear that there are two sides to this issue, and, as the nonpartisan Factcheck.org points out, "The veterans who accuse Kerry are contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen. ... 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth."

Instead they seem to delight in the fact that Kerry claims he received a hat from a CIA agent he claims to have ferried across the border, but have no proof that he is lying.

They claim these attacks are warranted because Kerry has made his service in Vietnam a centerpiece of his campaign. In reality, it is these bloggers who are struggling to make it an issue.

Why is the media not picking it up? Liberal bias, they say. But I have seen the Swifties all over the news programs. I have seen O'Neil on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. Media Matters points out the Swifties news coverage. And every time I watch it boils down to one sides claims against another.

So let resolve this issue for everyone here. Republicans will say Kerry lied about Cambodia and that he did not deserve some of the medals the Navy awarded him. Democrats will defend Kerry's claims with facts and continue to remember that Kerry bravely volunteered to serve his country in a time of war. Independents will get bored with the story and what to hear more about the issues facing America today, and not those that arose thirty years ago.

Please, conservative bloggers, for my sanity and for yours, let this thing go.

*UPDATE*
Kevin Drum thinks I let the conservative bloggers off too easily. Or rather, he would if he knew I existed:

Let's review:

-Kerry has said several times that his Swift Boat crossed into Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968. The most recent time he told this story was over a decade ago.

-The story is wrong. Kerry crossed into Cambodia at least once, but it was in January, not December.

-I agree that Kerry deserves a slap on the wrist over this. He seems to have embellished this particular war story because Christmas sounded better than Tet (or something). But that's about it.

In other words, there's just not much there, and I gather that the Kerry campaign has already admitted that the Christmas embellishment was untrue.

The second part of the story, questioning whether Kerry earned his medals, is even more repellent. A bunch of guys who hate Kerry's guts because of his anti-war activities 30 years ago have now gotten together and announced that Kerry never deserved the medals the Navy awarded him. But not only are their stories contradictory, they're also completely unverifiable and they know it. They can say anything they want and it's impossible to prove that they're lying.

So since there's no actual news hook on which to justify coverage of this smear campaign, we're supposed to believe that the mainstream media should desperately look for some reason, any reason, to make sure everyone knows about this. Just report the he-says-she-says story! Write a story about medal inflation! Write a thumbsucker about whether we ever sent people into Cambodia! Write anything, as long as it provides an excuse to put the smear story against Kerry on the front page.

The story about George Bush's National Guard record managed to get a couple of weeks of attention from the mainstream media, but only because there was documentary evidence to back it up. It was initially kicked off by a mysteriously torn retirement record and then finished off by payroll records released by the White House. Without those, the story would have gone nowhere.

Conversely, the Swift Boat smear has no documentary evidence at all. It's just a bunch of guys making things up and knowing they can't be called on it. Why should the mainstream press get suckered into giving them a platform?