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.
He was elected, but not in office yet.
LOL- the speech he's giving (which you can read on Area51's locked thread) is actually about the Contras--and he's trying to explain why he's voting for the Contras before voting against them!!!
Next, Kerry will be comparing himself to the Martin Sheen character in "West Wing". What a wingnut - he's in as much of a fantasy world as was Clinton.
How about this (from the Swiftvets):
On March 27, 1986, during a speech opposing President Reagan's policy in Central America, Senator John Kerry had this to say:
"Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -— seared -— in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible in order to avoid that kind of conflict." [see Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594]
And again, in a 1992 article by the Associated Press:
"But for Kerry, who spent six violent months [sic] commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
"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.
As recently as May of 2000, U.S. News and World Report stated that, "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."
Interestingly, Kerry's Cambodian sojourn, though "seared" into his memory by 1986, somehow failed to rate a mention in Kerry's own contemporary journal.
In "Unfit for Command," authors John O'Neill and Dr. Jerome Corsi document the impossibility of Kerry's story:
Despite the dramatic memories of his Christmas in Cambodia, Kerry’s statements are complete lies. Kerry was never in Cambodia during Christmas 1968, or at all during the Vietnam War. In reality, 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.
During Christmas 1968, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo. Coastal Division 13’s patrol areas extended to Sa Dec, about fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border. Areas closer than fifty-five miles to the Cambodian border in the area of the Mekong River were patrolled by PBRs, a small river patrol craft, and not by Swift Boats. Preventing border crossings was considered so important at the time that an LCU (a large, mechanized landing craft) and several PBRs were stationed to ensure that no one could cross the border.
A large sign at the border prohibited entry. Tom Anderson, Commander of River Division 531, who was in charge of the PBRs, confirmed that there were no Swifts anywhere in the area and that they would have been stopped had they appeared.
All the living commanders in Kerry’s chain of command—Joe Streuhli (Commander of CosDiv 13), George Elliott (Commander of CosDiv 11), Adrian Lonsdale (Captain, USCG and Commander, Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi), Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann (Commander, Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115), and Rear Admiral Art Price (Commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116)—deny that Kerry was ever ordered to Cambodia. They indicate that Kerry would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialed had he gone there. 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 this book. Gardner, in particular, will never forget those days in late December when he was wounded on PCF 44, not in Cambodia, but many miles away in Vietnam.
As part of the supporting documentation given to station managers for our television ad, "Any Questions?" we provided this regarding John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia":
The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.
John Kerry was never shot at by Khmer Rouge and Cambodians. He never took CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves. In fact, John Kerry's boat never came within 50 miles of Cambodia at any time.
You'll get no argument from me.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/journal_day2.shtml
ohn Kerry's Vietnam War journal
Excerpt from a type-written journal kept by John F. Kerry during his tour of duty in the Vietnam War:
...It's cool now and the evening has closed around you to become full night. The night for once is comforting and you take a coke and some peanut butter and jelly and go up on the roof of the cabin whit your tape recorder and sit for a while, quietly, watching flares float silently through the sky and flashes announce disquieting intent somewhere in the distance. You call down to one of your men and ask him to draft a message to the Admiral in Command of all Naval Forces in Vietnam and also to the Commander of Market Time. IT says "Merry Christmas from the most inland Market Time unit." You hope that they'll court marshal you or something because that would make sense. But the night soothes everything and the people and things that are close to you dart through the mind and bring the only warmth and peace that there is. Visions of sugar plums really do dance through your head and you think of stockings and snow and roast chestnuts and fires with birch logs and all that is good and warm and real. It's Christmas Eve.
What a self loving psychpath Kerry is.....
30 footers were PBRs - patrol boats, riverine. Essentially Jacuzzis on water. Would love to get my hands on one today, but they were all left behind in RVN. Also - Martin Sheen did not drive the PBR into Cambodia - the "Chief" did. Sheen was a USA captain, not a navy ossifer.
What a self loving psychopath Kerry is.....
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.
Leave aside for the moment the very important point that he is saying Nixon was saying on Christmas Eve of 1968 that no troops were "in a country" and that that is absurd since Nixon was not president, let's think what country that would be.
Would Nixo, or anyone, for that matter, claim that there were "no American troops" in *Vietnam*? Of course not. Kerry is referring to the preceding assertion that he was "five miles across the Cambodian border" and is clearly then saying he was *in* Cambodia (though he really wasn't).
See?
But Kerry said "President Nixon" on multiple occasions. He was not President.
I love the smell of Democrats imploding in the morning.
Kerry's Vietnam war years will be on the big screen in a movie titled "Apoplexy Now!"
Geeze ya think the Dims are wishing this clown never happened?
We've already had a sociopath (Klintoon) at 1600.
We sure don't need a psychopath now.
On Fox & Friends this morning they had a Kerry campaign spokesman on saying that Kerry has taken back what he said about being in Cambodia at that time and chalked it up to a "mistaken recollection."
Here is a thread on it from this morning.
And a "president-elect" is not in a position to run covert missions, such as sending the likes of John Kerry secretly to Cambodia (gads) then, as Monsieur Kerry would have it, lying to the U.S. about this big bad secret.
But just think of the mistrust and loathing the Kerry stirred up in the country every time he told this tale.
What a vile creep.
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