Kerry's Cambodian Problem

LGF ^ | 8/16/04 | Michael Kranish

[risk]

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. “Where is the enemy?” a crewmate shouted.

In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo — and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.

“Open fire; let’s take ‘em,” Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry’s Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.

When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry’s crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.

On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by “friendly fire,” when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.

To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy’s “most inland” unit.

Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. “You hope that they’ll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense,” Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as “a joke,” because nothing made sense to him — the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.

[risk]

In June 2003, the Boston Globe’s Michael Kranish wrote about John Kerry’s (nonexistent) Christmas in Cambodia—including a lovely story about shooting down a civilian: John Kerry: A Candidate in the Making.

---

Interesting comments from LGF. Was Kerry collecting memories to use against the US government? Didn't he know that the UCMJ permits officers to disobey orders that they consider imoral and unlawful? Why didn't he protest then and there, if he believed he was being ordered to conduct unresonable missions.

[thegreatbeast]

What the fudge? I thought they explained this away, no?

[risk]

more "memoirs" speculation - why was Kerry accumulating all of this informatino without acting on it during his command? If he was incapable of raising was warning about what he believed to be imoral back in his in-country service, how can we trust him to have moral courage in 2004?

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Washington Post 8/21/04

"Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published
Kerry's full military records on their Web site
(with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year),
they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records.
A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information.
A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan,
said he was not authorized to release the full file,
which consists of at least a hundred pages. "

TRANSCRIPT: 8/26/04
Steve Gardner, Foregunner, PCF44:
http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg

"I spent more time on John Kerry's boat than any other crewmember.

John Kerry hasn't been honest - he has been deceitful.

John Kerry claims that he spent Christmas, in 1968, in Cambodia.

And that is catagorically a lie. Not in December. Not in January.

We were never in Cambodia on a secret mission. Ever."

Ramsey Clark to Join Panel for Saddam’s Defense

arabnews press release 25 August 2004

NOTE :
Ramsey Clark is pictured below with Kerry and
Vietnam phony vet Al Hubbard
Who was head of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War movement.


Al Hubbard Sgt., 22 Troop Carrier Squadron Aug. ’65-June ’66
- Al Hubbard, proven fraud who never set foot in Viet Nam.
The only Vietnamese he ever met was
when he was collaborating with the North Vietnamese in Paris
on the American Communist Party's nickel.

John Kerry's explanation:
"He (Hubbard) simply exaggarated his particular position.
But nobody knew it at the time. And those things happen."

NEW:
FReeper smith288 has an online version of
Kerry's "The New Soldier"
You can read it without downloading pdf files!
CLICK HERE

The New Soldier, (46 pages)
By John Kerry
and Vietnam Veterans
Against the War
PART I (pdf file)
PART II (pdf file)
PART III (pdf file)

Kerry hopes everyone
in the USA gets this book!

NEW:
“Without question,
we were held captive longer
because of the anti-war people,
the Kerrys, the Fondas and Haydens,
the names we knew over there -
they encouraged the enemy to hang on.”
Excerpt from “Stolen Honor” website
- Leo Thorsness
Former Vietnam POW
CLICK HERE

Jane Fonda tells the student audience at the Michigan State University in 1969;
"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope,
you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communist."

Joe Moore, Can Tho Airfield 550th Signal Company

Copy and paste the links to everyone you know.

Send this url for the Steve Gardner video

http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg

Send this url for the online version

http://ejsmithweb.com/fr/newsoldier/

Send this url for the Stolen Honor website

http://www.stolenhonor.com/

Print this out (46 pages) and disribute it,
especially to the liberals you know.

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Inro.pdf

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier.pdf

http://nomayo.mu.nu/archives/New%20Soldier%20Epilogue.pdf

[RJL]

at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief.

I believe this much of Kerry's story.

[SAMWolf]

Bump.

[highlander_UW]

If Kerry wrote in his Vietnam journal about being in Cambodia when he wasn't there, then how can he now try to pass off his lie as a bad or mixed memory from 30 plus years ago? It wasn't 30 plus years ago when he was there writing out the lie in his journal!

[risk]

All pro-military Americans have just cause for asking these questions. He hasn't exactly backed away from his claims that we couldn't fight communism, that we were the ones continually guilty of atrocities, and that our missions were unjust. Even if President Bush feels uncomfortable with our outcry, Kerry should remember that he's asking to be our president as well as his supporters. If he is truly a unifying candidate, why can't he explain his mistakes in the VVAW with a true, heartfelt apology? I'm not buying any notions that he has returned to the fold of patriotism. He's still a patriot for the country of Kerry, himself. He wants to become president of KerryLand.

[Dolphy]

Why didn't he protest then and there, if he believed he was being ordered to conduct unresonable missions.

I can think of three explanations. First, it didn't happen. Second, he holds the US Military in contempt. Third he was serving someone other than his country. Maybe together these make a single explanation since I can't quite convince myself that any of them are wrong.

[smoothsailing]

The last I heard Kerry was in orbit around the moon on Christmas Eve 1968 with the Apollo 8 astronauts.

I really need to keep up with breaking news.

That Kerry guy sure gets around, makes you wonder how he ever found time to type.

[risk]

What's more, the young Kerry could have persuaded himself that he was a "winter patriot" for doing all of the above. Moral equivocation, all the way. When has he shown us otherwise?

[nopardons]

Good grief! Just how many different versions of Christmas '68 has Kerry put out there,over the years?

[T'wit]

They got attacked with mortars from a machine-gun nest? So they wipe out one civilian, kill or drive off all the bad guys, get their rudder snarled in a lily pad, and drift 50 miles into Cambodia, ducking friendly fire?

I hate bad fiction. I can't follow the plot.

[flashbunny]

[PhilDragoo]

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

We need for somebody to get the make/model typewriter John boy was using. May help explain who actually wrote some of those self glorifying spot reports and other paperwork the lad swings about like a cudgel.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Damn, Forest Gump lives.

[Plutarch]

...and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry’s crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.

Serves them right for being drunken Bhuddists celebrating Christmas and shooting at Lt. Kerry.

[piasa]

I think I just busted a gut.

Do I get a medal?

[flashbunny]

Sorry, I can't just hand out medals. But if you keep asking around and make your story sound more dramatic, I'm sure you can find someone to give you a medal.