Vets say Kerry made up Cambodia story

Over the the past three decades, John Kerry has used a story of being ordered to illegally enter Cambodia during his Vietnam service as proof of war crimes and to argue against U.S. foreign policy, but a new book by Naval colleagues of the Massachusetts senator charges the account is false.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, March 27, 1986, for example, Kerry attacked President Reagan's actions in Central America, charging they were leading the United States into another Vietnam. He claimed he could recognize the adminstration's errors because he had firsthand knowledge that the Nixon administration lied about American incursions into Cambodia.

In a Boston Herald story, Kerry is quoted as saying, "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."

But in "Unfit for Command," scheduled for release Aug. 15, John O'Neill, who took over Kerry's swift-boat command, and co-author Jerome Corsi say there are two problems with Kerry's claim.

The second, they say, is that during Christmas 1968, "he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia. Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there."

At the time, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo, which had a patrol areas extending to Sa Dec, about 55 miles from the Cambodian border.

All of the surviving officers in Kerry's chain of command deny he was ever ordered to Cambodia: Joe Streuhli, commander of Costal Division 13; George Elliott, commander of Coastal Division 11; Adrian Lonsdale, captain USCG and commander Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi; Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115; and Rear Adm. Art Price, commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116.

Also at least three of the five crewmen on Kerry’s PCF 44 boat -- Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner -- deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia. The remaining two crewmen declined to be interviewed for the book.

The authors say the Cambodia incursion story is not included in Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty." Instead, Kerry told of a mortar attack on Christmas Eve 1968 "near the Cambodia border" in Sa Dec.

Lets Make This Kerrys "Last Night On The Town"

Wright's first claim was that as his former commanding offcier, Wright frequently had to confront Kerry over willful disobedience to orders aboard Swift Boat patrols.

On frequent occasions Wright stated that Kerry would randomly fire at "things he thought were moving" along the shoreline. Wright stated that the protocol was only to fire when the unit was receiving hostile fire. Wright explained that part of the Swift Boat patrol's goal was to develop contacts with non-combatants living along the rivers being patrolled.

Wright's boldest claim was that after Kerry had in fact received his third purple heart, Wright along with two other ranking officers basically flat out asked Kerry to leave Vietnam. The reason being his behavior continually put the group in greater vulnerability and danger.

According to Wright, Kerry claimed he would not leave, "but was out of there by morning."

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/kmc/

South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas... There are (or were) Christians in the country, but this sounds really odd, particularly considering the source.

Actually, it's not odd. I was there at the time, although in a different part of the country. It looked like the 4th of July.

But if I recall correctly, the fireworks took place at midnight on Christmas Eve/early Christmas morning. Everybody let loose, just for fun. It was quite a show! Same thing on New Year's Eve. The South Vietnamese seemed pretty indiscriminate where they were aiming as long as it was away from themselves. I suspect even the other side got caught up in the spirit of the moment. After all, there was supposed to be a cease-fire (yuk-yuk!) on for Christmas Day.

Most of what was shot was tracer (small arms, but there was probably some .50 and 40mm duster also) and mortar and artillery flares. I seriously doubt if anybody was shooting into Cambodia with artillery, as Kerry implies. But then again, I wasn't sitting in Cambodia. He was - or claims he was...

BG 7 part series on hanoi john

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.

In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.

"Open fire; let's take 'em," Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry's Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.

When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry's crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.

On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by "friendly fire," when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.

To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.

Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. "You hope that they'll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense," Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as "a joke," because nothing made sense to him -- the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.

I found this through the link you posted

Kerry was asked to leave Vietnam

The image Americans were asked to believe, at the Democratic National Convention, of a John Kerry who "defended this nation" as a soldier in Vietnam and "will defend this nation" as its commander in chief has hit a snag.

The soldiers he served alongside of don't really believe that he did defend his country very well. And as one of his former commanding officers told my radio show on Wednesday, Kerry's chain of command was so fed up with his actions, they asked him to go home after he received his third purple heart.

Retired U.S. Navy officer Thomas Wright served our nation for 21 years. He also served as one of Kerry's superiors in the tough assignment of SWIFT boat (Shallow Water Inshore Fast Tactical) patrols on the southern tip of Vietnam. Lt. Wright frequently experienced trouble with Kerry.

According to Wright, Kerry frequently broke protocols of engagement for SWIFT boat commanders.

When you're in a group (of boats on patrol) you don't open fire unless the person in charge tells you to or unless you are defending yourself from an immediate attack ... I'd have problems because we'd be running on a river and Kerry would see something off in the distance and he'd take a pot-shot at it, to see what happened. And that wasn't the way we were trying to run the patrols.

We were trying to get in and find out what was going on, and hopefully make contact and begin to work with some of the people that lived there ... And you don't get to go shake their hands when you're shooting at them.

I asked Wright how Kerry would respond to the necessary correction that would follow such unilateral actions.

Well, during the mission you just continue to issue the orders that you expect people to follow and, if they don't do them, you would continue to press until you got the results that you need.

After a mission, is generally when you work out the more difficult problems. And those are done in private.

I'd go talk to John Kerry and I'd tell him that I was unhappy with his opening fire, or pulling out of a column when he wasn't supposed to, or failing to communicate when he needed to ... And I'd always get an excuse. I wouldn't get a direct answer.

I'd get "I didn't hear that," or "We thought we saw something" or "My radio was on the other side of the boat" or "I didn't have time." It was always an excuse. After three or four times ... I went to the division commander, told him about the problems I [had] been having and told him [the commander] that he needed to take steps to correct it.

That brought me to the shocker of the interview. To hear John Kerry speak about his time in Vietnam is to hear a self-personified story of heroics. Lt. Wright remembers what happened after Kerry's third purple heart quite differently.

When he got his third purple heart, that evening, and we didn't particularly care what it was for, we knew that he had three. That evening, I and two other people went in and told him that we felt that he should go home. It was something that he could do ... He told us that he didn't want that, it was his intention to serve his country, and the next morning he was gone. And we were happy and didn't worry about it.

John Kerry was barely able to endure four months on SWIFT boat detail. Since I am sure the War on Terror will endure a bit longer than that, the idea of him commanding our troops with his unsteady hand is making me ... well ... seasick.

Kerry was asked to leave

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