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.
and he was not in the battle of Khe SanhI 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.
If that is the factual inaccuracy you object to, I have no argument. I have no idea how that battle went.
According to one account here at least, Cleland was 15 miles away when he was injured, certainly he was not in battle, and that is the key point Ann made. We all agree to that, and Cleland has said as much many times.
It's not always easy to fix when a battle is "over" (unless one side is annihilated). I actually lived once on a part of the Manassas battlefield -- though I was nine miles away! The battle continued as the armies disengaged and there were many skirmishes after 2nd Manassas was "over" in the eyes of historians. The battleground I lived on got named the battle of Chantilly, but it was definitely part of 2nd Manassas.