Occam's razor and Christmas in Cambodia

Okay, I've decided to apply a little logic to this bullshit game of he said he said.

I saw some guy named Steve on Scarborough Country talking about how he killed a child because of Kerry's negligence. They then took a VC man and wife taken into custody or something.

Steve says he has an after action report that said they killed like 4 VC and handled 2 CIA (captured in action).

Steve says Kerry made this report. Steve says Kerry is lying. Steve isn't particularly wellspoken, but he has the designation of being the only member of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth that was actually on Kerry's boat. This makes him important.

He also says John was lying about spending Christmas in Cambodia. Fine.

This rigamarole happened 35 years ago. Barring a miracle or a time machine, there will be no forensic or archival evidence to corroborate this story one way or the other.

So it's one guy against another guy . . . who is backed up by some other guys.

I ask this: is it more likely for one guy's recollection, perhaps over time and through the gradual erosion of memory by personal bias--whatever--is it more likely for one guy to get the story wrong, or is it more likely that there be a collective dellusion in which only one guy--out of a group of ten or so--is left telling the truth?

Further, assuming one of these groups is actively lying, or has been coerced to lie, is it more likely that one man would decide or be persuaded to falsely slander another, or more likely that an entire group of men would decide or be persuaded to falsify events to prop up that same person?

Let's apply occam's razor here and draw conclusions from there, since it's pretty damned obvious that there will never be conclusive proof. All we'll ever have is one group's word against another's.

I'm sick to death of these unimportant satelite issues monopolizing the discourse. It's driving me insane.

The problem now, though, is that neither side can comfortably back away from this issue, even if they wanted to. The disgruntled veterans have the entire process over a barrell. If Kerry trys to switch focus to what he should be talking about, things like the current war and the unimpressive economic conditions in America--which is what all the polls suggest people really care about--he'll be painted as a liar who got caught and is trying to distance himself.

Likewise, if Bush comes out against the veterans, he risks alienating a segment of his base that is vital to his reelection, the veterans, who are apparently abandoning the Kerry ship in droves.

So I think we'd better content ourselves to listen to this crap for a while, it's not going anywhere.

"The integrity of Mr Kerry is absolutely--he has none . . . that's absolutely, categorically yes" --jeenyus Steve Gardner, graduate of the George W Bush School of Public Speaking.