Holiday in Cambodia

Slate ^ | August 23, 2004 | Fred Kaplan

[hansel]

But now some anti-Kerry veterans are saying he was never in Cambodia. John O'Neill, who has been dogging Kerry more than 30 years, told Matt Drudge that the senator's Christmas-in-Cambodia stories "are complete lies." As evidence, he cites Kerry's own wartime diary, as quoted in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. That book—according to Drudge's account of it—places Kerry in Sa Dec, 50 miles away from Cambodia, on Christmas Eve, and seemingly at peace. "Visions of sugarplums really do dance through your head," Kerry wrote in his diary that night, "and you think of stockings and snow and roast chestnuts and fires with birch logs and all that is good and warm and real."

[hansel]

So Fred is writing that Kerry was near Cambodia on Christmas Eve. That contradicts what Hurley said on FNS that Kerry was in Cambodia in feb/March not at Christmas and that contradicts Brinkley saying that he was in Cambopdia three-four times during the late winter 1969.

Gardner was on Kerry's boat at this time, so what does he say about this?

[faithincowboys]

Kaplan is an idiot. The Kerry people already said he wasn't in Cambodia on X-Mas .

[July 4th]

Life sucks when you don't read FR. Apparently, the author missed the swift boat on this issue.

[knuthom]

Notice how he edited the Boston Herald Oct. 14, 1979 article to omit the reference to Nixon?

On more than one occasion, I like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now," took my patrol boat into Cambodia. In fact I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real.

Why does this matter? Because Kerry has used the Christmas in Cambodia story for years to illustrate how this affected his view of politics, war and foreign policy. It loses it's most important meaning if Nixon wasn't lying about him being there.