John Kerry is looking weakest on the election battleground he chose

WHERE did John Kerry spend Christmas of 1968? Vietnam, it seems. Which is not what he has been saying for 25 years.

The Democratic contender for the White House has claimed repeatedly that on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day 1968 he took his swift boat into Cambodia on a covert and illegal mission. He said he got shot at by Vietnamese, Khmer Rouge and Cambodians or by “our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas”. The memory of this Cambodian Christmas, Kerry wrote in 1979, “is seared - seared into me.”

But it can’t be. Douglas Brinkley’s book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, a book supportive of Kerry and written with his help, says he was on patrol 50 miles from the Cambodia border on Christmas Eve 1968 and he spent Christmas Day writing journal entries back at his base. All those still living who were higher up in Kerry’s chain of command deny that he was in Cambodia. Three of his boat crew deny it and two others have declined to comment.