Posted on 08/11/2004 12:02:30 PM PDT by Brian Mosely
KERRY/CAMBODIA UPDATE: I promised a while back to see if I could get a look at the Boston Herald story -- where Kerry says he remembers spending Christmas, 1968 in Cambodia and hearing President Nixon deny that troops were there -- in original form. The quote's genuine, and here's an image. Sorry it's a bit hard to read: it's a scan of a fax of a photocopy of a microfilm, sent to me by a helpful reader who works at the Herald.
But what's really interesting is the context -- see the full scan here -- which is all about Kerry's Vietnam experiences as they relate to Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Unlike Al Gore and Love Story, Kerry doesn't claim that the movie is about him -- but he sure draws parallels. In fact, the passage that everyone has been quoting actually reads like this, when you include the prior sentence that people haven't been including:
On more than one occasion, I, like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now," took my patrol boat into Cambodia
In fact, I remember spending Christmas Day 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 nowhere in "Apocalypse Now" did I sense that kind of absurdity.
So Kerry's Vietnam experience was like Apocalypse Now, only it was more so.
How much this adds to the debate isn't clear to me -- but in case anyone was doubting the provenance of this particular quotation, well, I'm satisfied now that its authenticity, if not its veracity, is pretty clear.
Presumably, some big-time journalists are even now interviewing people and combing the records to see if this version of Kerry's 1968 Christmas was correct. (For other, inconsistent, versions, click here.) And for those -- apparently unclear on my age and suspecting me of draft-dodging -- who want to know where I was spending my Christmas in 1968, it was in Heidelberg, Germany. I got a train, and an SST model kit.
Never get out of the boat....never get out of the boat!
Vietmanese celebrating Christmas???
Since the Cambodia story has been proven a lie, this additional information at the very least reinforces doubts about Kerry's honesty, and at the very worst brings up questions about his mental stability.
Couldn't recall which FReeper came up with it first.
Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran who commanded a high-speed patrol boat on the Mekong River for six months and at one point entered Cambodia, made several visits to the country as a Democratic Senator from the state of Massachusetts.
Cached Yahoo/AP Story: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:FCWk9WMWz6UJ:asia.news.yahoo.com/040804/ap/d84889eo0.html+Kerry+Cambodia&hl=en
Good catch.
Oh, that's good. Can I steal it and change it around for a tag line? Thanks....
UPDATE: Reader Garnet Girl emails:
If Kerry really wants to avoid talking about Cambodia, he probably ought to take the word out of the meta tag on his service page.
And sure enough, if you go here and click "view source" you'll see this:
meta name=target content="military record, cambodia, vietnam, military service"
Bizarre.
. Billions were taken from ordinary Americans and handed, in tax cuts, to the richest 5 per cent. The Reagan regime helped create the Taliban and supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons. An anti-apartheid sanctions bill was passed in congress only after Reagan tried to veto it. Above all, it was Reagan's secret, illegal and murderous attacks on Central America, one of the world's poorest regions, for which he ought to be remembered. The Observer writer Paul Harris did make a passing reference to the Iran-Contra affair and the "public row" that "claimed some notable scalps". Reagan, however, "survived" - unlike tens of thousands of his victims. For most of his two terms in the 1980s, Reagan secretly approved an onslaught on El Salvador and Nicaragua. In El Salvador, the CIA funded, trained and directed a jack-booted, black-helmeted National Guard which, together with death squads it controlled, murdered thousands, especially moderate reformers: those like Jose Viera, president of the El Salvador Land Reform Institute, and Archbishop Oscar Romera, who was shot dead as he held up the chalice at Mass, having made the mistake of preaching that the enforced poverty of his flock was not God's will, and they should resist the American-sponsored terror regime. On rubbish tips outside San Salvador, morning after morning, I saw bodies killed by Reagan's clients, including pregnant women. In its attacks on Nicaragua, Reagan's "contra" forces specialized in slitting the throats of midwives and children as they slept. In charge of this terrorism was John Negroponte, US ambassador to Honduras, who, reported the Baltimore Sun, created and directed a military unit that "used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."
Hint: Viera and Romero were both killed BEFORE Reagan took office.
Geez, a Yale graduate and a Navy Lt. doesn't know that it is court martial, as in martial, like in military, like the Navy in which he was an officer?
As if the drivel he is writing isn't bad enough.
We should call for a Physchological evaluation on this guy, I mean what if he really has a split personality disorder or dementia or something.
Also 'Epoxylips Now.' Difficult to pry the truth from between his teeth.
Next he will be telling it was all the fault of those mess boys who ate the quart of strawberrys.
Kerry's tearful appeal to the good citizens of America to forgive his wanting to be a real hero. He will be accompanied by his crew members and all the out of favor retired Generals/Admirals, with a large contingent of DAVs.
It will probably be simulcast by all networks.
Around 10% of the south Vietnamese (former French colony) were Catholic. Diem was Catholic. Nearly a million Catholic Vietnamese migrated south around the time of the Tonkin Gulf resolution.
And in truth, he's more like Martin Sheen in the Dead Zone.
It's a case of Nixon being president before he was president. After all, Hanoi John was in Cambodia before he wasn't.
I heard somewhere that he deliberately changed his name so that he could have JFK's initials.
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