but being in cambodia subsequent to christmas, 1968, is just as much of an impossibiilty as being in cambodia ON christmas 1968.
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.