One of the neat things that the government of Alberta does with the money it steals from me is conduct surveys and post the results on the web for free. For example, there's WageInfo, the 2003 Alberta Wage and Salary Survey.
This year the survey includes "skills shortage information." They're trying to project a vacancy rate in each job category, and also to determine how difficult it is to fill these positions.
I had some fun looking at my current job description -- "Software Engineer". Apparently software engineer positions are pretty easy to fill -- only 6% of employers report difficulty.
If the software market crashes, I could always get a job in the field I trained for -- I could be a chemist. But check out that vacancy rate -- 0%. Maybe not.
Unfortunately you can't search the database by hiring difficulty or vacancy rate -- at least not yet. But I played a hunch and tried "journalist". Look at that! Vacancies at 4%, 50% of employers report hiring difficulties. It must be a great gig to be a journalist! Or maybe not.
Yesterday I found and read this article in Slate. Today my liberal friend (see, I have at least one!) sent me a link to the same article.
That basically resolves my "dumb lie" problem with Cambodia. My current opinion is that all these things happened to Kerry -
But they didn't all necessarily happen on the same day. A year or so later, when he started thinking about it again, it turned into a good story -- 'there we were, Christmas eve, taking friendly fire, in Cambodia, and the president said, "There are no US troops in Cambodia"'. A story which was not exactly all true in the sense that it all happened on that day, but more or less true.
I can certainly see how such a thing can be "seared - seared" in one's memory, even if it didn't all actually happen that way.
So basically I have downgraded the Christmas in Cambodia story from a "dumb lie" to a "dumb mistake" on the same order as some campaign aide claiming that Kerry was vice-chairman of committee X when it was actually Bob Kerrey. Stupid mistake, but not a completely brainless attempt to deceive.
I would have rather that he fact-checked himself before he read it into the congressional record in 1986, but I can see how if I was in his position, with that strong (though partly false) memory, I would feel there was no need to re-check the facts.
I would have hoped that before he decided to run for President, he or someone else would have gone back and rechecked this sort of thing. But these things do fall through the cracks.
But I no longer think (as I used to) that the Christmas in Cambodia thing was a blatant, pointless, easily refuted lie for political benefit. I now think it was caused by basic human failings like an error of recollection and pride in wanting to tell a good story and in not wanting to back down early.
(The article doesn't mention this, but a swift boat's top speed is 32 knots, so it would have been about an hour and half from the base to the Cambodian border, and another hour and a half to come back.)