Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Kerry Campaign Rocked by Swiftvet Cambodia Questions
NewsMax: Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign was scrambling Monday night to deal with new charges that he fabricated claims he was dispatched to Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Confronted by Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron over the top Democrat's earlier accounts that he was in Cambodia in December 1968, the Kerry campaign at first denied their candidate had said any such thing.
But after Cameron produced Kerry quotes from the Congressional Record and the Boston Globe, campaign officials retreated, telling the Fox reporter they'd have to get back to him.
In 1986, Kerry told the Senate:
"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."
But in excerpts from the upcoming new book "Unfit for Command" first obtained by the Drudge Report, Swift Boat veteran John O'Neill writes:
"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 ... he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia."
The charge that Kerry lied about being in Cambodia could be particularly damaging, since at least three of Kerry's "band of brothers" crewmates back up the Swiftvet critics.
Reports O'Neill:
"At least three of the five crewmen on Kerry's boat, Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner, deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia."
NewsMax: Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign was scrambling Monday night to deal with new charges that he fabricated claims he was dispatched to Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Confronted by Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron over the top Democrat's earlier accounts that he was in Cambodia in December 1968, the Kerry campaign at first denied their candidate had said any such thing.
But after Cameron produced Kerry quotes from the Congressional Record and the Boston Globe, campaign officials retreated, telling the Fox reporter they'd have to get back to him.
In 1986, Kerry told the Senate:
"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."
But in excerpts from the upcoming new book "Unfit for Command" first obtained by the Drudge Report, Swift Boat veteran John O'Neill writes:
"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 ... he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia."
The charge that Kerry lied about being in Cambodia could be particularly damaging, since at least three of Kerry's "band of brothers" crewmates back up the Swiftvet critics.
Reports O'Neill:
"At least three of the five crewmen on Kerry's boat, Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner, deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia."
