Posted on 08/25/2004 5:15:00 PM PDT by ambrose
Swift boat author tells Nixon he was in Cambodia, later clarifies statement
ELIZABETH WOLFE, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
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(08-25) 15:57 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
The chief critic of John Kerry's military record told President Nixon in 1971 that he had been in Cambodia in a swift boat during the Vietnam War -- a claim at odds with his recent statements that he was not.
"I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border," said John E. O'Neill in a conversation that was taped by the former president's secret recording system. The tape is stored at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, O'Neill did not dispute what he said to Nixon, but insisted he was never actually in Cambodia.
"I think I made it very clear that I was on the border, which is exactly where I was for three months. I was about 100 yards from Cambodia," O'Neill said in clarifying the June 16, 1971, conversation with Nixon.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Same AP story, different headline...
the AP isnt worth bat guano
John O'Neill isn't running for President. Nice try Leftard Press.
The border is the border is the border, is it not?
Kind of like the WaPo changing their headline after it was proven to them that the Swift Boat account wasn't "flawed".
This would make me laugh if it weren't so dangerous to this country.
Why doesn't the crack staff at the AP apply their skill at digging up inconsistent statements made by ACTUAL PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES?
It's not like John O'Neill said the memory was seared... SEARED into his brain and was the turning point of his life 50 times in public.
> Same AP story, different headline...
Yep. The first headline was actionable, which you don't
do when the subject of the libel is a lawyer.
"later clarifies"
by the way, means
"in his next sentence"
Paraphrasing Kerry: This tells us all we need
to know about the AP.
Saying " I worked along the border" like O'Neill did
and saying I went ACROSS the border on secret CIA missions like Kerry did
ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS
The quote is pointless, has no correlation to Kerry making up being sent illegally into Cambodia on a secret mission while Nixon denied it. Frankly, O'Neil's wording is little more than a verbal tic, impossible to tell from the one sentence whether he meant to say "in" or "along." Like saying "I was in East Germany, Sir, I did guard duty along the Berlin wall."
Kerry wasn't anywhere near the border.
O'Neill explained it on H&C yesterday, that at the time Kerry was there, they were patroling on the Mekong river, which was at least 50 miles from the Cambodian border.
Then later, they patroled on a different river, which was right at the Cambodian border.
Besides, the issue is not where O'Neil was, but where Kerry was or wasn't.
Also, Kerry was the one who claimed that was a life-changing experience for him, being in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968, which was seared, seared into his memory.
When is the next SwiftVet ad running?
So O'Neill operated near Cambodia sometime during the year following kerry's 4 months there. What's the point? A lot of things can change in a year's time. IIRC, there was a time that we didn't bomb in Cambodia and there was a later time that we did.
O'Reilly on now giving advice to a Dem operative for Kerry to give press conference during Republican convention. She counters with "Bush AWOL in Alabama" B.S. And also she defends the 527 ads favoring Kerry, puts down Swifts. Crazy world and O'Reilly sure has lost a LOT of his former (marginal) credibility.
The thing they won't tell you was he was stationed on a different base and patroling different rivers than the one Kerry was on.
This was after he was restationed and part of his patrol was a river which actually ran noth and south and formed a part of the Cambodian border.
So he had Vietnam on one side and Cambodia on the other, but you can bet the alphbet networks will never mention it was a completely different river.
A "Smear-a-Vet" alert is warranted here.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The Cambodian border is miles long. A person stationed in Maine is not going to cross the border into Canada, at Washington state. O'Neill was near the border "out west." Kerry claimed to have crossed the border "out east."
The center line of the stream, river or lake in the border.
That is just the fact of the matter!
O'Neil is correct, but has had problems with the explanation being understood.
according to Kerry he had a dog named VC on his boat. did VC commit atrocities? did VC medal? what did the other boat mates think of VC? was there really a VC or did kerry make him/her up too?
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