Posted on 05/17/2004 2:20:21 PM PDT by robomurph
Did decorated Vietnam War veteran John F. Kerry see military action in Cambodia? He says nothing about it on the campaign trail, but he stated it as fact on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 27, 1986. In that speech, Kerry accused President Ronald Reagan of leading the United States into another Vietnam in Central America, accusing the administration of Nixon-like duplicity and saying that he should recognize it because of his Vietnam experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at insightmag.com ...
What, six guys carrying a Swift Boat? LOL!!!
I love it when his words come back to haunt him. He apparently said a lot over the years that is just flat out not true. Whoever is digging up this stuff, keep up the good work.
"...In his words, "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..."
Don't forget his personal photographer...that'd be 7 except for the times he needs to roll footage to get Kerry walking around with an M16 and a dumb expression.
I think he just saw "Apocalypse Now" once too often.
Actually, still only six as Kerry wouldn't dirty his hands working.
You got me there! Can you imagine serving with a guy that kept getting purple hearts for woulds that were fixed with bactine and a band aid?
Actually, in Kerry's first assignment, at An Thoi, he, (and I, two-years earlier) were stationed at the southern tip of Phu Quoc island and our northern patrol area was very near Cambodia...we were always on alert up there because the Cambodians apparently had some very fast boats built by the frogs, and wouldn't hesitate to make our life miserable given the oportunity. They were a lot faster than our boats.
But, like everything Kerry says about his vast experience in Viet Nam, I never heard of anything happening in this area.
Ditto. That was my first thought. He's been hanging around Martin Sheen & the Hollywood crowd too much.
By Kerry standards I would have innumerable purple hearts for all the hangovers I received at the O' Club bar on Friday nights all those years ago.
Hope this doesn't violate any excerpting rule.
Built by the Frogs? And fast? Well, I guess that makes sense. You've got to be able to leave the fight in a hurry!
BWHAHAHAHAHA!! IT DOES!! LOL!
Wow, the man is a compulsive liar and has apparently been one all his life.
See my post #10...I've been in this area, but we spent very little time there...there was no reason to be in this area...the Cambodians would have killed any VC-types fooling around just as fast as they would have gone after our boats. We were warned to stay away from the sea border area of Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand.
Most vets have seen and are familiar with the Kerry Vietnam vet type...he saw a little action and embellishes what really happened every chance he gets.
What a jerk!
The thing Kerry doesn't remember (read "care about") is the TWO MILLION Cambodians slaughtered after the U.S. abandoned SouthEast Asia. His point about having allegedly seen a bit of action in Cambodia is exactly what? John Kerry seems to be the greatest case of stunted personal growth I have ever seen. His entire world view is wrong headed lessons based on 4 months in combat.
Capt Willard went hunting Col Kurtz in Cambodia on a PBR in "Apocalypse Now."
Any insight on this?
LOL!!
We were warned not to tangle with these guys...they had bigger guns and could run circles around the Swifts. When we were patroling in the northern zone, someone was ALWAYS monitoring the radar looking for a contact moving very fast.
incredulous bump!
What next?
kerry will say he did a portage before he didn't do a portage!
I thought I recognized that boat captain in the movie! It was Big John!
Do you happen to remember what class they were? Now I'm curious.
LBJ was still prez in Dec 1968.
Yeah, I guess the Cambodians might have been using them as the Frogs never meant them to be used. In combat!
There were Coast Guard PBRs in An Thoi; now that I recall, a PBR was the first boat I was on in Nam...flew in to the airbase in An Thoi, and was transported by PBR south to the base at the southern tip of Phu Quoc island.
Our boat went aground once and a PBR pulled us off a sand bar...OH the mortification, a Navy boat pulled free by the Coasties.
"LBJ was still president"
That's right! This guy is such a freakin liar. He learned from Kennedy and Clinton very well. I don't believe a word that comes out of his boring pompous mouth.
I wonder if I can submit for a purple heart. I hitched a ride from some other soldiers in Germany from a pub and just outside of my base the driver took too wide a turn because he was speeding and we did a head on with a German car. My leg was injured by the seat in front of me. It was more serious than a splinter of a piece of shrapnel from a self inflicted wound (if he didn't just shove it in his arm himself).
I really don't recall...seems we had some silhouettes of them, but can't recall what we refered to them as...possibly corvetts?...maybe smaller?? I think they were powered with twin gasoline engines.
The swifts had twin Jimmy V-12s diesels and I always thought should go faster than 22-knots wide open.
Maybe Kerry screwed wheels on his swift boat, cut a long pole and patrolled the Ho Chi Mihn trail.
I whipped out my handy-dandy copy of the ISSA's "Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook, Fifteenth Edition". Everything that the Cambodes have nowadays (thirty years on, of course) is ex-Soviet-- except for some '21 meter patrol craft', with no further details.
I wonder if they're still 'sailoring' on.
Overview map (http://rectravel.com/kmt/)
Phu Quoc / An Thoi map (http://www.vngold.com/pq/map2.html)
In short, the patrol zones in that sector were VERY near and around Cambodia, but not IN Cambodia. Kerry exhibits nothing but mendacity and flip-flop.
Nam Vet
Awesome awesome!
In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.
"Open fire; let's take 'em," Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry's Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.
When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry's crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.
On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by "friendly fire," when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.
To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.
Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. "You hope that they'll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense," Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as "a joke," because nothing made sense to him -- the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.
To his crew, Kerry was one of the most daring skippers in the US Navy, relentlessly and courageously engaging the enemy. But the battles and moral dilemmas were in shades of gray, and Kerry to this day wrestles with the scenes of death he commanded.
In an intense three months of combat following that Christmas Eve battle, Kerry often would go beyond his Navy orders and beach his boat, in one case chasing and killing a teenage Viet Cong enemy who wore only a loin cloth and carried a rocket launcher. Kerry's aggressiveness in combat caused a commanding officer to wonder whether he should be given a medal or court-martialed. (End of snippet)
From the Boston Globe not Senate floor.
Hey Nam Vet...I was in An Thoi in 1965 on PCFs 10 and 45...was on boat crew 17.
Nam Vet
Hmmm. Christmas of 1968? Well then, I assume he's talking about LBJ, 'cause Nixon didn't assume office until January 20, 1969.
http://www.archives.gov/nixon/communications_agency/video/1969_post_inauguration.html
LOL! That's what we used to say..."why did they call these things ""Swift??"" Fortunately, most of the junks and other boats we dealt with could only manage about 5-knots, so we had them beat.
I don't think the Frenchies' were corvettes...the only reference I could find described a ship that was captured by the Brits in the 1700's. Probably not the same class boat! LOL!
LOL!! Great to hear from you...I was beginning to think I was the only old goat Swifty Freeper around. Now I'll have to be careful about the big BS stories I tell.
I was in An Thoi from Dec. 1965, to about April 66, then our crew was transferred to Cam Rahn Bay. We received some of the first boats to be delivered to Cam Rahn.
Cheers from Chile
Got to run, more later.
Cheers
LOL! Probably not. I think although, that if I had my own country to rule, my Navy would have an example of something whimsical, like an Eighteenth Century corvette with a couple of huge, wicked monster engines hidden away in it. They could be tooling along at 10 knots in a good breeze under sail, then suddenly, when needed, they're planing along at 35 knots.
Man that guy can sure do a lot in 4 months! He's got my vote for sure!
He's worse than Clinton.
This should be relatively easy to find out via his military records. I'll be he's lying.
Details, details! 99% of the Sheep probably think George Washington was Prez in 1968.
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