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I think what you're looking at is slightly ambiguous wording, not a misstatement of facts.

Ann prefaced her Khe Sanh comment with this >>> It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam.

Iow, she was talking about where and when he got his injury and she denies that it was in combat or on patrol or in that battle. In context, her comment is not to be read as a factual misstatement. She knows he was in the the fight at Khe Sanh four days earlier, but her point is, that's not where he was wounded. She is simply refuting the Democrat myth about him having combat wounds.

I think what you're looking at is slightly ambiguous wording, not a misstatement of facts.

It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam.

This is true, a fact.

He was not in combat, he was he was not – as Al Hunt claimed – on a reconnaissance mission, and he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others have implied.

He was not in combat at the time he was injured. Cleland was part of the combat operation to retake Khe Sahn, Operation Pegasus, earning the Silver Star for his actions during ACTIVE ENEMY hostilities on 4 April. His mission on 8 April was part of that continuing combat operation.

Maybe I'm just confused about which operations during Operation Pagasus were a "routine noncombat mission" and which ones were not.

Finally, the battle at Khe Sanh was over.

I consider this to be false, factually incorrect and unambiguously so. You may disagree, in that the Khe Sanh Combat Base that had been under siege was relieved at 0800 on the day Cleland was injured. However, that was not the battle of/for Khe Sanh. The battle for Khe Sahn began at Hilltops 881N/S on 20 January and ended there on 14 April.

If Ann can be excused for getting this wrong because Jill Zuckman wrote in the Boston Globe Sunday magazine 30 years later, "Finally, the battle at Khe Sanh was over.", then I guess I'll have to shed my cynicism of "journalists" in accurately reporting current events much less historical ones.

She knows he was in the the fight at Khe Sanh four days earlier, but her point is, that's not where he was wounded.

Huh? The battle of Khe Sanh included the area of operations around the village of Khe Sanh and the Khe Sanh Combat Base. That's where he was "at" when he was decorated and injured.

Captain Cleland distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous action on 4 April 1968, while serving as communications officer of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Calvary during an enemy attack near Khe Sanh, Republic of Vietnam.