Monday, August 16, 2004
Kerry's Quagmire In Cambodia
The pivotal moment in Kerry's life, according to his many testimonials on the subject, was Christmas of 1968, when, he has said, he was in Cambodia. This experience was central to his later becoming a war protester and to his lighting out on a political path destined to culminate in a rise to the U.S. presidency.
Kerry Made False Cambodia Claim 50 Times
It won't be all that easy for John Kerry to revise his demonstrably false claim that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia, since he's on the record more than 50 times making the assertion, according to former Vietnam Swift Boat commander John O'Neill.
"There are more than 50 occasions on which he said he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1968," O'Neill told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg on Sunday. "More than 50 - as recently as last summer."
The Kerry campaign has commissioned presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley to adjust his Cambodia claims to make them comport with the known facts in an upcoming report in The New Yorker magazine.
But O'Neill said it will be hard to palm off Kerry's previous accounts as mere inadvertent misstatements.
"It wasn't some casual memory," he told Malzberg. "He said his entire life changed that evening, because he realized the United States government was operating illegally. ... He defamed everybody in our unit by claiming he had been illegally ordered there."
O'Neill said some of Kerry's 50 references to spending Christmas '68 in Cambodia include speeches on the Senate floor, quotes in articles and on-the-record interviews with reporters.
He cited a 1992 Associated Press report and a July 7, 2004, account by the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish.
"We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol,'" Kerry said in the 12-year-old AP interview. "Everybody was over there [in Cambodia]. Nobody thought twice about it."
In July 2004, reporter Kranish said that Kerry had told him his assignment in Cambodia was the catalyst that turned him against the war:
"[Kerry] himself would say that you really have to look at a lot of his thought process as what was happening during Vietnam," he told the Fox News Channel.
"And in one short anecdote I'll tell you, that in Christmas of 1968, he was on a small boat with his men, basically in Cambodia at a time when Richard Nixon was telling the American public that we're not in Cambodia," Kranish said. [Editor's note: Richard Nixon was not sworn in as president until Jan. 20, 1969.]
"And he basically became skeptical. Well, the government is saying this, but he knew himself that wasn't true. And it's also why he says he came back to protest the war that he had served in."
Read more on this subject in Related Hot Topics:
Washington Times
Kerry's Cambodia Confusion
Washington Times
Fact & Fiction About Cambodia
Rocky Mountain News
Cambodia Troubles Ignored
Townhall
Kerry's quagmire
The pivotal moment in Kerry's life, according to his many testimonials on the subject, was Christmas of 1968, when, he has said, he was in Cambodia. This experience was central to his later becoming a war protester and to his lighting out on a political path destined to culminate in a rise to the U.S. presidency.
Kerry Made False Cambodia Claim 50 Times
It won't be all that easy for John Kerry to revise his demonstrably false claim that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia, since he's on the record more than 50 times making the assertion, according to former Vietnam Swift Boat commander John O'Neill.
"There are more than 50 occasions on which he said he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1968," O'Neill told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg on Sunday. "More than 50 - as recently as last summer."
The Kerry campaign has commissioned presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley to adjust his Cambodia claims to make them comport with the known facts in an upcoming report in The New Yorker magazine.
But O'Neill said it will be hard to palm off Kerry's previous accounts as mere inadvertent misstatements.
"It wasn't some casual memory," he told Malzberg. "He said his entire life changed that evening, because he realized the United States government was operating illegally. ... He defamed everybody in our unit by claiming he had been illegally ordered there."
O'Neill said some of Kerry's 50 references to spending Christmas '68 in Cambodia include speeches on the Senate floor, quotes in articles and on-the-record interviews with reporters.
He cited a 1992 Associated Press report and a July 7, 2004, account by the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish.
"We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol,'" Kerry said in the 12-year-old AP interview. "Everybody was over there [in Cambodia]. Nobody thought twice about it."
In July 2004, reporter Kranish said that Kerry had told him his assignment in Cambodia was the catalyst that turned him against the war:
"[Kerry] himself would say that you really have to look at a lot of his thought process as what was happening during Vietnam," he told the Fox News Channel.
"And in one short anecdote I'll tell you, that in Christmas of 1968, he was on a small boat with his men, basically in Cambodia at a time when Richard Nixon was telling the American public that we're not in Cambodia," Kranish said. [Editor's note: Richard Nixon was not sworn in as president until Jan. 20, 1969.]
"And he basically became skeptical. Well, the government is saying this, but he knew himself that wasn't true. And it's also why he says he came back to protest the war that he had served in."
Read more on this subject in Related Hot Topics:
Washington Times
Kerry's Cambodia Confusion
Washington Times
Fact & Fiction About Cambodia
Rocky Mountain News
Cambodia Troubles Ignored
Townhall
Kerry's quagmire
