Posted on 08/11/2004 6:41:38 AM PDT by kristinn
In an interview this morning on Fox and Friends, Kerry spokeman Jeh Johnson backed off of Democrat presidential nominee Senator John Kerry's repeated statements that he had spent Christmas 1968 on a secret mission in Cambodia.
Fox's Brian Kilmead asked Mr. Johnson whether Sen. Kerry would release the action report from January 20, 1969 regarding purported action in Cambodia.
Mr. Johnson said, "I believe you're referring to an incident that happened near Cambodia. Okay, well John Kerry has said on the record that he had a mistaken recollection earlier. He talked about a combat situation on Christmas Eve, 1968, which at one point he said occurred in Cambodia. He has since corrected the record to say it was someplace on a river near Cambodia and he is certain that at some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia. My recollection, my understanding is he was not certain about that date.
Mr. Kilmead brought up Sen. Kerry's 1986 floor speech in the Senate where he talked about spending Christmas in Cambodia as being "seared---seared" in his memory.
Mr. Johnson replied, "I believe he's corrected the record to say it was someplace near Cambodia, but he is not certain whether it was actually in Cambodia but he is certain that there was some point subsequent to that that he was in Cambodia."
Mr. Johnson also repeated Sen. Kerry's canard that he left Yale in 1966 and turned down all options to further his education by choosing to serve his country. As was (barely) reported in March of this year, Sen. Kerry asked for and was denied a one year deferment to study in Paris.
My pleasure. Your son in law will come around eventually, glad he's seen through John Kerry. I got thinking the other day about how the "Iran-Contra" hearings helped tip Congress into Republican hands.
Nicaragua was to be abandoned to the wolves, according to the so-called Democrats in Congress who liked to think they controlled US foreign policy. From Jackson Browne to Johnny Carson, the entertainment industry empty cans criticized US opposition to the Sandinistas.
Eventually (after Frontline on PBS documented the Sandinista genocide campaign in the interior among other things, and after the Sandinistas realized they couldn't win) there were internationally observed elections in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas lost, and retired to their fortified estates (formerly of the Somozas). The rest of Central America's guerrilas were gradually starved out of existence or beaten to death, but slowly emerged from that state here and there (Chiapas, Columbia) during the Clinton years.
Technically, this is a true statemnet because - as a senator - Kerry visited Cambodia several times.
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Isn't that the truth!
Kerry LIED, POWs DIED
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...
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On second thought, his lies service is all he has. I mean, marrying for money doesn't qualify one to lead the greatest country on Earth.
True. But the liberal media still thinks he's a saint, just like Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy.
but being in cambodia subsequent to christmas, 1968, is just as much of an impossibiilty as being in cambodia ON christmas 1968.
When exactly did Kerry correct the record on this? Yesterday?
Memo to the Kerry campaign and the old time media:
We may be partisan, but, we're not stupid.
If you want your head to spin like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist-try squaring the Chinese acrobat explanation by the Kerry camp vs all the interviews he has given over the years.
Kerry says he was ordered on many clandestine missions into Cambodia.
He was in Cambodia running ammo to anti communist forces in Cambodia.
He ran CIA operatives into Cambodia to search enemy encalves.
He was actually not in Cambodia, but, returned fire into the Cambodian side.
He was no where near Cambodia, but, 55 miles away in a firefight.
He was on base, writing in his diary.
It depends on what the meaning of Cambodia is.
The Note at abc.com:
"Last night, Kerry adviser Michael Meehan responded to the claims in an interview with ABC's Stu Chamberlain."
"The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968,
hr was in fact on patrol
in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.
He was ambushed, they fired back,
he was fired upon from both sides, from the Cambodian side and the Vietnam side during that day in 1968."
"What I've seen in this book is a bunch of people lying about John Kerry did.
John Kerry actually did command a boat in Vietnam, ran patrols along the border in the waters,
on behalf of the United States in 1968 and 1969."
"Was John Kerry in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968? If so, why does Doug Brinkley's sympathetic "Tour of Duty" recount what seems to be an entirely different incident?"
"The Cambodia incursion story is not included in Tour of Duty.
, Kerry replaces the story with a report about a mortar attack that occurred on Christmas Eve 1969 "near the Cambodia border"
in a town called Sa Dec, some fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border.
Somehow, Kerry's secret illegal mission to Cambodia, which he recounted on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1986,
is now a firefight at Sa Dec and a Christmas day spent back at the base writing entries in his journal."
"We tried to reach Douglas Brinkley, the historian-author of "Tour of Duty," but he was vacationing and unavailable for comment."
Here's what he told the AP as late as 1992: "We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol.
Everybody was over there (in Cambodia).
Nobody thought twice about it,' Kerry said.
"One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss,
involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
'I can remember wondering,
'If you're going to go, what happens to you,' Kerry said."
I found these from some blog links last night:
US News and World Report
Mission to Cambodia
by Kevin Whitelaw | May 08 '00
"Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces."
" When he returned last week, the mission was official, but dicey nonetheless..."
Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By JOHN DIAMOND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Navy Lt. John Kerry knew he had no business steering his Mekong River patrol boat across the border into Cambodia, but orders were orders.
Um... Meehan needs to look at a map of Vietnam and Cambodia.
The Mekong river doesn't run parallel to the two countries, it crosses the border at almost a 90 degree angle. It's impossible for Cambodians to be firing from one side from Cambodia, and Vietnamese to be firing from the other, from inside Vietnam.
I just love this stuff, don't you?
I knew I should have read the rest of the thread first... you beat me to it.
If 55 miles from Cambodia as the crow flies,I wonder how many "river" miles that would be.
I have read so much about this in the last 24 hours, and I'm a bit confused. What would be the problem with Kerry being in Cambodia in 1968????? (I was not born yet, and I am NOT a Vietnam War history buff.) Is the only issue here that Kerry lied about the date of being in Cambodia? Is it also an issue that Kerry may or may not have been in Cambodia at all?????
So now they are saying Kerry was in Cambodia .. just not on Christmas Eve of 1968????
It's like smacking at gnats, very easy to knock 'em down.
If he's against innocent deaths, next time tell the doofus that there were 4,000 abortions today, almost 862,000 this year in the US. Get his priorities straight.
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