Posted on 08/06/2004 1:00:31 PM PDT by Awestruck
I just saw Shep Smith on Fox, talking about the Swift Vets, and saying "hardly any of these guys actually served with Kerry, I mean they were in the same war..." He also has "experts" on the pro-Kerry side and no one on the other side...what's going on with Fox on this issue???
Shep,
I have to take a difference with you on the honorable vets who have come forth to challenge John Kerry. These are all his PEERS and COMMANDING OFFICERS. You are right that most of the few who served under him for a month or so & have been part of his campaign & support staff payrolls over the years continue to support him - HOWEVER all of the people pictured in the photo he loves to show alongside all those others who served alongside and together in those days ARE NOW COMING FORWARD against him.
Please take a simple challenge - read below & get the footage of Senator Kerry before the Senate and reconcile that with the following - it's very simple to ascertain who is telling the truth here. If you believe Richard Nixon was actually serving as president in 1968 THEN YOU'RE STUPID! Otherwise Kerry is a LIAR and the vets are telling the truth.
Regards,
Mr. & Mrs. Steven W.
---------------------------------
Christmas In “Cambodia”
Vietnam, December 1968
JOHN KERRY’S STORY
If there is one story told over and over again by John Kerry since his return from Vietnam, it is the heart-wrenching tale of how he spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day illegally in Cambodia. From the early 1970s, when he used the tale as part of his proof for war crimes in Cambodia, through the mid-1980s and the 1990s, Kerry has spoken and written again and again of how he was illegally ordered to enter Cambodia.
On the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 27, 1986, Kerry launched one of his many attacks against President Reagan—this time charging that President Reagan’s actions in Central America were leading the United States into yet another Vietnam, claiming that he could recognize the error of the administration’s ways because he had experienced firsthand the duplicity of the Nixon administration in lying about American incursions into Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Kerry charged that he had been illegally ordered into Cambodia during Christmas 1968:
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.
Kerry also described, for example, for the Boston Herald his vivid memories of his Christmas Eve spent in Cambodia:
I remember spending Christmas Eve 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.
As recently as July 7, 2004, Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe repeated Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia story on FOX News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes, indicating that it was a critical turning point in Kerry’s life. Kranish had no knowledge, even after his extensive study of Kerry, that he was simply repeating a total fabrication by Kerry. And Kranish was right: Study of the Christmas in Cambodia story is central to understanding John Kerry.
The story is also in the pages of the 2004 biography written by Krahish and other Boston Globe reporters. As we have come to expect, the story is twisted at the end to provide justification for yet another of Kerry’s political ruses, this time used to justify what Kerry portrays as his noble and continuing distrust of government pronouncements:
To top it off, Kerry said later that he had gone into Cambodia, despite President Nixon’s assurances to the American public that there was no combat action in this neutral territory. The young sailor began to develop a deep mistrust of the U.S. government pronouncements, he later recalled.
Even without minimal investigation, a critical press should have been able to spot the story as a total fabrication: Richard Nixon did not become president of the United States until twenty-six days after John Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: CHRISTMAS IN VIETNAM
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.
The Cambodia incursion story is not included in Tour of Duty.
Instead, Kerry replaces the story with a report about a mortar attack that occurred on Christmas Eve 1968 “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. The truth is that Kerry made up his secret mission into Cambodia.
Much like Kerry’s many other lies relating to supposed “war crimes” committed by the U.S. military in Vietnam, the lie about the illegal Cambodian incursion painted his superiors up the chain of command—men such as Commander Streuhli, Commander Elliott, Admiral Hoffmann, and Admiral Zumwalt, all distinguished Naval heroes and men of integrity—as villains faced down by John Kerry, a solitary hero in grave and exotic danger and forced illegally and against his will into harm’s way.
The same sorts of lies were repeated over and over in Kerry’s antiwar book, The New Soldier, a book filled with preposterous, false confessions of bogus war crimes committed by the participants (who were often not even real veterans) against their will and under orders from dishonest superiors. Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia typifies the sort of lie upon which Kerry has built a false persona and a political career.
The story of Christmas 1968 has one final chapter. When refueling his PCF near Dong Tam, Kerry and his crew were told that the Bob Hope USO show was at the Dong Tam base. So Kerry decided to leave his station on the river and go searching for the Bob Hope Christmas show. Unable to find the show, he risked boat and crew by unknowingly blundering into one of the most dangerous canals in Vietnam, a canal that to those who knew the area was notorious for Viet Cong ambushes. Given the easy navigation by radar and map of the rivers involved—not much more difficult than driving a car—Kerry had just performed a feat of reverse navigation worthy of Wrong Way Corrigan.
There is, of course, no record that Kerry ever informed anyone of what he did, where he was, or where he was going—all required by regulations for the safety of the boat and crew. He did, however, record the Bob Hope adventure in his journal so he could be sure to share it in Tour of Duty.
Also, Jim Rassman was a Army Green Beret
If Joe Scarborough ever finds his brain .. I'll go back to watching his show
I'm not looking for a left or right opinion .. I am looking for the Truth
I think there is a lot of internicine politics going on at Fox right now. The libs against the good guys, and the guy running the programming just endorsed Kerry.
I gotta work the next ten days in a row I'm going home and have corona with a key lime.
I guess it is good to use the preview.
What will happen is viewers will drop off.
Just as the networks lost the male viewers, fox will loose their regular viewers.
I have not "boycotted" or "stopped" watching fox news sunday. I just don't care about it anymore to go to the effort of recording or taking my time to see it.
It just makes more efficient use of my time to get the most salient points from FR and Rush as work permits.
Oddly enough while channel hoping, I came acrossw CNN Headline News and they had some political analyst from NPR on to discuss the ad.
I think Hell must be frozen over because the NPR guy on CNN defended the ad and said Bush has been killed by 527 being led by Soros and no one asked Kerry to denounce.
Fox is against, CNN reports an unbiased view. Is it the end of the world as we know it?
There's a difference between advising and telling, mom.
The fix is in and the new liberal president will be shoved down our throats.
Orwellian society? What Orwellian society?
The fix is in and the new liberal president will be shoved down our throats.
Thats exactly what I have been thinking lately and it scares me to death.
Sean is also sticking with it
I'm turned off to Fox since they put in Chris Wallace on Sunday morning: the THUD heard 'round the world.
What NPR guy was that, Red? I have to say PBS has given better coverage to our soldiers than any other network.
I respect and believe the 18 veterans who have come forward with the truth. But I think the information (and the men) has been ill-used as an advertisement. It instantly puts them in the partisan category rather than the truth-telling category. They should have tried to get interviews for the guys.
I fear the ad is backfiring in a bad way . . .
When you add up all the libs, it doesn't sound far off. How about Major Garrett? I always thought Coomes was the odd man out, but now I'm thinking it's Hannity.
I think Greg Kelly, Rick Leaventhal, and Kelly Wright are conservative, though I could be wrong. Wendell Goler and "Campaign" Carl Cameron are way left. I really don't know about most of the women, though I've heard Kiran Chetry is left, and E.D. Hill is obviously liberal. Brenda Whatshername is undoubtedly a lefty and not very attractive to boot. I wish they would have dropped both her AND E.D. when they went on Maternity leave.
Hmmm...maybe CNN is actually trying to become more like Fox used to be to get ratings? The only reason I watch fox is for John Gibson and Sean Hannity. I don't know what the deal is with O'Blowhard. He used to be a genuine populist, but success seems to have gone to his already swelled head.
"I think Hell must be frozen over because the NPR guy on CNN defended the ad and said Bush has been killed by 527 being led by Soros and no one asked Kerry to denounce. "
Holy S#%T!!!!! Say it ain't so!! Although...come to think of it- CNN Headline News seems to have a different approach- they often just report the news.
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