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Kerry's Cambodian links questioned Did he see action there? Candidate's staff, critics disagree By SCOTT CANON The Kansas City Star Kerry John Kerry's “reporting for duty” salute at the Democratic National Convention last month emphasized the key biographical boast of his campaign — decorated combat service in Vietnam. Now his repeated claim that he also weathered combat upriver in Cambodia has drawn harsh skepticism — driven by anti-Kerry veterans who star in a political commercial and book financed by Texas Republicans. Roy Hoffmann, a retired admiral who was a Navy captain in command of Kerry's unit at the time, said...

I began this as a reply to JohnHuang2, and it morphed into something more appropriate as a start to a thread. Please help to flesh this out with more facts pointing to inconsistencies in the Kerry claims. Official John Kerry Time-Line from the JohnKerry.com site: November 17, 1968 Upon completion of his training, Kerry reports for duty to Coastal Squadron 1, Coastal Division 14, Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam. December 1968 through January 1969 Kerry commands PCF-44 December 2, 1968 Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury.(Was this the "band-aid" wound?) December 6, 1968 Kerry moved to...

According to Newsweek's assistant managing editor Evan Thomas, "There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them . . ." (Inside Washington television show, July 10). Thomas' prediction is amply supported by the (non)coverage which the Denver dailies, like most of the rest of the media, have given to this week's meltdown of the Kerry campaign. As reported...

'My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday. That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his...

<p>Friday, August 13, 2004 - WHAT if the single pivotal event of one's life the moment that altered one's entire course, illuminating the path ahead, providing that critical psychological turning point turned out to have been an invention of one's very own?</p>

snipMedeiros is on active duty in the U.S. Army as a staff sergeant -- he's helping to train National Guard units on their way to Iraq at Ft. Bliss, Texas -- and cannot directly endorse any candidates. But he and his crew mates showed up on stage with Kerry last month at the Democratic Convention in Boston.snipKerry's boat happened to hit the shore right in front of an enemy soldier holding a grenade launcher. The soldier started running, maybe to get enough distance to be able to fire his weapon at the boat, Medeiros said. Kerry's forward gunner managed to...

O'Grady: Kerry's actions after Vietnam constituted treason ASHLEY H. GRANT Associated Press ST. PAUL - Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot who captured headlines in 1995 when he survived being shot down over Bosnia, on Friday said Sen. John Kerry committed "treason" during the Vietnam War. O'Grady, in an appearance with other military veterans coordinated by President Bush's re-election campaign, said Kerry helped push North Vietnam's proposals for the United States to withdraw at a time when the two countries were still officially at war. "I see that as treason," said O'Grady, who lives in Texas and has been speaking...

A reader recently complained that I had written seven columns in a row about John Kerry. This will be my eighth. Just consider me John Kerry's other biographer--the one who doesn't change his story. The Kerry campaign accidentally gave the Swift Boat Veterans a good deal of credibility by admitting that at least one of their accounts of Kerry's Vietnam service is accurate. Now, the Kerry camp concedes that he never was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, as the Swift boaters claimed, despite Kerry having stated in the Congressional Record that it was a moment that was ''seared -- seared...

____: Our executive editor, Susan Goldberg, asked me to respond to your recent e-mail about Sen. Kerry's wartime claims. This is a topic we have devoted several stories to during this presidential campaign. As early as January 2004, we wrote a story that touched on how Kerry's wartime experience shaped him. In February, Mercury News Washington Bureau reporter Jim Puzzanghera wrote a profile of Kerry that detailed the actions that led to his military honors. In April, after the Boston Globe began questioning the circumstances of Kerry's first Purple Heart, we ran a New York Times article saying the campaign...

Book, ads assail Kerry's military record By The Dallas Morning News and St. Louis Post-Dispatch DALLAS — Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's much-vaunted military record is under attack in a controversial television ad and a newly released book. The group behind the television attacks, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has accused Kerry of exaggerating claims in order to earn medals and Purple Hearts during his tour in Vietnam almost 35 years ago. Many members date their anger at Kerry to his anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam, saying he slandered veterans. The group has come under fierce counterattack...

MIDI - GREEN BERET John had served in Vietnam...he sent letters home to mom What was real is hard to say...from SwiftVets, help is on the way Scratches get a Purple Heart...his report was a work of art What had been real is hard to say...from the SwiftVets, help is on the way Where was he on Christmas Eve...what he says, we can't believe What was real is hard to say...from SwiftVets, help is on the way Vietnam's his centerpiece...it looks like we've all been fleeced 'Cause what was real is hard to say...from the SwiftVets, help is on...

'Twas the night before Christmas and we were afloat Somewhere in Cambodia in our little boat. While the river was lightened by rockets red glare No one but the President knew we were there...

We know that the Dems are planning to continue to politically attack the president. They are using their 527's to spend in excess of $400 million dollars to attack the President. They are also vigorously attacking the SwiftVets using Legal Terrorism This is the Big Time, Freepers. This is the time when WE must step up and support. This is not yet the march in the streets we did in Florida and outside of Dick Cheney's house in 2000. This is a battle where the mainstream media are taking their marching orders directly from the DNC. They are going to...

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." --Samuel Johnson Whoever could have imagined that four months spent as officer-in-charge of a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam would figure so largely, 36 years later, in Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign for president of the United States? The Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways. Kerry chose to make his Vietnam service, for which he was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, an issue in the campaign. On the night he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination at its convention in Boston, he welcomed to the podium...

John Kerry abandoned our husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers in favor of trade and normalization of relations with Vietnam. His actions paved the way for the further abandonment of POWs and MIAs from World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War. John Kerry, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, ordered the destruction of committee documents, blocked avenues of investigation, and misrepresented progress on the POW/MIA issue to justify lifting of the trade embargo against Vietnam.

This is my first post, so bear with me.....long time reader. I just tried to access the Swift Vets site and it appears to be hacked.

I am going to post this here because I need as many eyes to see this as possible in hopes someone will know where I can find the following PDF that was removed from Kerry's web site after only two weeks. I am crossing my fingers someone may have downloaded the following file and kept a local copy of it: Spot Reports for January, 1969 (pdf: 2.4MB)Filename should be: SpotReports_January1969.pdfOh please, someone tell me they have it!

Last Thursday, The Drudge Report touted an exclusive report that John Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley was rushing to publish in The New Yorker a corrected version of Kerry's seared memory of being in Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1968.However, The New Yorker's press release issued today for their next issue, dated August 23, 2004, contains no mention at all of the piece by Brinkley.Hmmm....still in rewrite, perhaps?

Last week John Kerry recanted the detailed and emotional story of his Christmas Eve, 1968 illegal mission into Cambodia that he has been telling for 30 years, most notably in a movie review of Apocalpse Now that he wrote for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979, in a statement on the floor of the Senate on March 27,1986, and in an AP story from 1992. Faced with mounting evidence that this brazen fabrication was crumbling, Kerry spokesmen acknowledged that Kerry wasn't in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968, but hung tough on Kerry's having been across the border on several...

LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) June 10, 2004 -- Paperless Archives (www.paperlessarchives.com) has announced the publishing of 20,000 pages of FBI Files related to Senator John Kerry. These FBI files include coverage of John Kerry's activity as a leader of the anti-Vietnam War group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. These FBI files have been the subject of great discussion and news coverage recently, yet few have actually ever seen a single page of the documents. Paperless Archives (www.paperlessarchives.com) has now made it possible for everyone to obtain and review copies of these files. Most of this material was originally released in...