SwiftVets.com

[stupson]

Good Read.

CAMBODIA: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JOHN KERRY

By: Phil Brennan

This whole Swift Boat controversy boils down to one single issue: Was John Kerry in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968? Was he really there or is the whole thing a bald faced lie?

The answer is now clear. It's a lie, a whopper of the first magnitude and that fact alone should call into question everything the Massachusetts senator says about his experiences in Viet Nam and just about anything else he tells the American people.

If it weren't a deadly serious matter the ever changing alibis, the shuffling around the core of the question which has marked the Kerry campaign's reaction to the fact that Kerry was not where he said he was on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968 would be nothing short of hilarious. As they wiggle and struggle to evade the issue, his spokesmen come across as something out of a Laurel and Hardy skit from the 30s.

Lets start at the beginning.

As Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute wrote in Tuesday's Washington Post, the big Cambodia lie was born back in 1979 when Kerry wrote it in a letter to the Boston Herald, and has since repeated it at least eight times.

Wrote Muravchik "The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras."

Arguing that providing aid to the anti-Communist contras would lead to deeper involvement a la Viet Nam despite Reagan administration denials that it would, Kerry recited similar denials regarding Vietnam from presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

He went on to make this claim.

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by 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."

When Kerry continued to tell this whopper the Swift Boat veterans retaliated by releasing statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat ever entered Cambodia. Moreover, none of Kerry's band of brothers came forward, as they had on other issues, to back up his claim which was apparently too absurd even for them to swallow.

Oops! It was all a mistake, his spokesmen said with a straight face. He really wasn't in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968 after all. And as he had during that Bronze Star incident Kerry himself fled the scene and left it to his spokesmen to explain the inexplicable.

The first explanation was that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. As Muravchik wrote sardonically , "there is no between; there is a border."

Having lost that excuse, a new spokesman told the media that Kerry had been "near Cambodia," evading the fact that, as Muravchik wrote "Kerry's 1986 Senate speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was 'in Cambodia,' as he had often said he was. If he was merely 'near,' then his deliberate misstatement" gave the lie to the entire speech.

Now comes historian and Kerry fan and biographer Douglas Brinkley trying to pull the fat out of the fire and salvage his reputation as a legitimate historian and not merely just another Kerry flack. Brinkley admitted to the London Telegraph last week that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions."

And while Brinkley uses almost 100 pages of his book to what Kerry was up to in January and February, and cites the locations of various battles, often locating Kerry near Cambodia, he never once writes about Kerry going into Cambodia.

Then along comes another Kerry campaign statement that cuts the spongy ground out from underneath Brinkley by suggesting that Kerry had really visited Cambodia on just one single occasion, date unknown.

In the face of all this obfuscation, at least two members of the Band of Brothers who are supporting Kerry and another one who isn't deny their boat ever crossed the border.

Unfortunately, Kerry's own journal written while he was in Viet Nam and partially quoted in Brinkley's book says "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side."

Wrote Muravchik "His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission."

It's important to remember that "seared" in Kerry's memory was that Christmas Eve in 1968 when he was five miles inside Cambodia getting shot at by a lot of hostiles. No qualifications, no evasions. Just a flat out statement - he was there and can never forget the horror of it. It was Christmas after all - you never forget an occasion like that. Especially when you are being shot at.

But he wasn't there. John Kerry is a proven bald-faced liar and that's all you need to know about him

[gewehr98]

I have to agree totally. The lie of J'effingK is really himself it appears. He has built himself a cushy persona to flail in public like some martyr.
Seriously he must have alot of issues to think these conjured tales of heroism and fact bending won't be questioned or see the light of day....he really must have some serious self delusions akin to the soon to be former governor of NJ. My time in uniform did give me the chance to meet many a varied man of this country , and rarely a flat out story teller , let alone of wealth .
It's a sad day to think such a man has gotten as far as this ...but then again he has been under Ted the swimmer Kennedy's wing for many years. That alone should make him suspect for some form of mental frailty.

[jaxinman]

"This whole Swift Boat controversy boils down to one single issue: Was John Kerry in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968? Was he really there or is the whole thing a bald faced lie? "

I disagree. "This whole Swift Boat controversy boils down to one single issue" all right, but the one single issue is whether or not John Kerry is "Unfit for Command"... that is the issue.

Cambodia is merely an example of John Kerry's propensity to fabricate for effect and personal, political gain. It is also an indictment of the willing press to let him get away with it. John Kerry is indeed UNFIT FOR COMMAND.

BTW: I was in Cambodia a couple of times, and during the same time period (Nov 1968-early 1969) in the Central Highlands. On both occasions it was unintentional (i.e. not a result of an order) and took hostile fire. But the rules of engagement from our chain of command was NOT TO BE THERE and certainly NOT TO RETURN FIRE.

Occasion 1 sometime in November of 1968 we helped evacuate a fire base close to the Cambodian border that was receiving fire from a base located across the border in Cambodia. They found that they could fire upon US troops with impunity (using recoiless rifle) and also fire at helicopters attempting to support them. In frustration, the troops on the fire base were forced to evacuate by hiking down the opposite side of the hill they were on for extraction. We personally did not take fire that day because we extracted them from behind the hill beyond range of the ricky rifles, but the grunts on the hill certainly did.

Occasion 2 around the same time was on a snoopy mission along the "tri-border" of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Snoopy missions were "on the deck" in hilly, jungle terrain and at times could stray out of the Area of Operations. We did so on one mission and encountered a large contingent of enemy troops who were heavily armed. We were fired upon with heavy weapons, suspected to be 12.5mm automatic. Not knowing our actual location we called in airstrikes but when our location was determined to be over the border, the airstrikes were denied! It was very frustrating to know that the enemy was assembling so close and we could not do anything about it.

So I can attest personally to the official position re visiting Cambodia during the 1968-69 timeframe, and with the exception of perhaps covert operations of which I have no knowledge, regular operations were forbidden to participate in any action across the border even when action would have been justified.

In my opinion, John Kerry's Cambodia stories are a "bald faced lie".

That along with many other reasons makes him UNFIT FOR COMMAND!

.jax
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.jax

[rb325th]

jax, Welcome Home and well said!!
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U.S. Army 1983-1995, 11C1P/11H2P NBTDT