Posted on 08/07/2004 3:16:39 PM PDT by Kaslin
Has used account as evidence of war crimes, to attack U.S. policy
Over the the past three decades, John Kerry has used a story of being ordered to illegally enter Cambodia during his Vietnam service as proof of war crimes and to argue against U.S. foreign policy, but a new book by Naval colleagues of the Massachusetts senator charges the account is false.
On the floor of the U.S. Senate, March 27, 1986, for example, Kerry attacked President Reagan's actions in Central America, charging they were leading the United States into another Vietnam. He claimed he could recognize the adminstration's errors because he had firsthand knowledge that the Nixon administration lied about American incursions into Cambodia.
In a Boston Herald story, Kerry is quoted as saying, "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
But in "Unfit for Command," scheduled for release Aug. 15, John O'Neill, who took over Kerry's swift-boat command, and co-author Jerome Corsi say there are two problems with Kerry's claim.
One is simply that Nixon had not taken office yet.
The second, they say, is that during Christmas 1968, "he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia. Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there."
At the time, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo, which had a patrol areas extending to Sa Dec, about 55 miles from the Cambodian border.
All of the surviving officers in Kerry's chain of command deny he was ever ordered to Cambodia: Joe Streuhli, commander of Costal Division 13; George Elliott, commander of Coastal Division 11; Adrian Lonsdale, captain USCG and commander Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi; Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115; and Rear Adm. Art Price, commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116.
Also at least three of the five crewmen on Kerry’s PCF 44 boat -- Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner -- deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia. The remaining two crewmen declined to be interviewed for the book.
The authors say the Cambodia incursion story is not included in Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty." Instead, Kerry told of a mortar attack on Christmas Eve 1968 "near the Cambodia border" in Sa Dec.
Let's see if we can come up with the media's response. Total silence. Or guestRATs spinning like mad so viewers can't hear anything. Or the line: Who cares anyway. That was then. This is now, and besides, it's all Bush's fault.
Probably all the above
Perfectly normal thing for Buddhists to do.
There are (or were) Christians in the country, but this sounds really odd, particularly considering the source.
Well, if we are lucky we'll have paid biographers who cling to their "reporter" title claiming that none of the men actually claim they weren't in Vietnam at that time.
In a related story by our friends in the objective media, we'll learn that members of the Nixon administration now DENY that Nixon was not President in Christmas 68.
His life endeavors are based on Vietnam.
His politics are based on Vietnam.
His children understand Vietnam.
He acquired many friends because of Vietnam.
He acquired many enemies because of Vietnam.
He is decorated because of Vietnam.
His medical records are in demand because of Vietnam.
A former prisoner of Hanoi Hilton, now a Senator now brings up Vietnam because of Kerry.
Kerry protested our endeavors in Vietnam and discarded his medals because of our Vietnam endeavors.
I, because of Kerry, have heard more about Vietnam than I heard about Vietnam back in '69.
Do you 'spose he is diverting attention from a present day war that is going well just for political reasons?
If by the source you mean Kerry, then you are correct. However if you mean the Boston Herald, which is a conservative paper then you you mistake it with the liberal rag, the Boston Globe
Kerry lied, again!
I'm shocked....
Kerry lied, while real men died.
Kerry gave aid and comfort to the communists killing Americans in Vietnam, and gave the enemy hope to carry on until Kerry and his communist allies in the world wore down the American public via a media controlled by the "Most Trusted Man in America" ... that lying leftist bastard Cronkite..
I REMEMBER, I KNOW what happened, and I vote..
Semper Fi
My brother, US Army MP, and I, US Navy Riverboats, both went into Cambodia in 1970 - 1971.
Rice boats a'comin' Mr. Kerry .. Look out! ;-)
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., waves as he departs his campaign train in Lamar, Colo. on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2004. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch)
VAN SUSTEREN: Michael, did he cooperate at all with this or participate or sit down for interviews?
MICHAEL KRANISH, KERRY BIOGRAPHER: Well, sure. We did a series last year. It was a seven part series that ran 14 pages in the newspaper and he sat down for about ten hours of interviews for this series.
The book was written during the time when he was still running for the nomination right at the height of the Super Tuesday primaries and so forth, so our material for interviews was from the series.
To go back to your question you asked Nina, you know, he's also a skeptic of government. So, you ask why does he go, some people say flip- flop, other people would say why does he question things the way that he does?
A very short anecdote, he was in Vietnam and he was in Cambodia as part of a mission. I don't know if he intended to go but that's where he was but the government that was running the war knew that troops were in Cambodia but Nixon, President Nixon at the time was telling the American public, "We're not in Cambodia."
So, from a very early time, John Kerry is skeptical of government and he came back to protest the war that he participated in, so this is where some of this inner belief comes from. He does -- he did serve but he also questioned.
O'Neill's book shoots this out the water. Besides the fact that Nixon wasn't President at the time (Dec 1968), which is an obvious misstatement, O'Neill points out that:
"During Christmas 1968, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo. Coastal Division 13’s patrol areas extended to Sa Dec, about fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border. Areas closer than fifty-five miles to the Cambodian border in the area of the Mekong River were patrolled by PBRs, a small river patrol craft, and not by Swift Boats. Preventing border crossings was considered so important at the time that an LCU (a large, mechanized landing craft) and several PBRs were stationed to ensure that no one could cross the border. A large sign at the border prohibited entry. Tom Anderson, Commander of River Division 531, who was in charge of the PBRs, confirmed that there were no Swifts anywhere in the area and that they would have been stopped had they appeared.
Bless you and your brother for your service.
Why are you telling me this?
I appreciate your post and service to our country and it is very interesting, however my feeble mind has lost connection with the purpose your reply.
VBR, please elaborate, my interest is fiery now. : )
Could be, but Kerry was talking about XMAS Eve, 1968. I gather you were on a PBR.
Hey! He coulda been ....a contender.
source=kerry
Do you 'spose he is diverting attention from a present day war that is going well just for political reasons?Yes I do. And the fact he spent 19 years in the Senate and accomplished virtually nothing.
Look at his life... the only significant thing is the Viet Nam war and it's aftermath.
It is amazing to me that we have someone running for POTUS basing most of his campaign on something that happened over 30 years ago.
It's even more amazing that, if the polls are to be believed, almost 50% of the fine folks in this country think what he did way back then is significant.
You know what? I'm convinced that if The Prez is reelected, which, as of right now is anybody's guess, it will be because of the Veteran's having the 'nads to stand up, tell the truth and dish out the red meat that has been lacking in this campaign for too long. GOD BLESS ALL THE VETS. KEEP HOLDING HANOI JOHN'S FEET TO THE FIRE. We are our only hope for victory on November 2. Many in the GOP are really starting to become somewhat lukewarm in their support of The Prez b/c of the immigration thing and a few other issues. HANG TOUGH VETS; HANG TOUGH!!
I for one want to see a certified photo of Kerry's buttocks.
Giving him the opportunity to confront his accusers an / or giving them their opportunity to tell the story of how he slandered and tainted their service for the country could be a monumental made for television event.
Town Hall - BIG TIME.
I am writing all tv networks, anchors, and execs whom I can find addresses for. I would think they would take advantage of this opportunity to send their viewer ratings through the roof for an evening. Then again, telling the truth about a politician may not be something they would wish to do especially a liberal politician ...so far it appears not.
Not to be confused with Braveheart syndrome, which he also has ("I am William Wallace").
Wright's first claim was that as his former commanding offcier, Wright frequently had to confront Kerry over willful disobedience to orders aboard Swift Boat patrols.
On frequent occasions Wright stated that Kerry would randomly fire at "things he thought were moving" along the shoreline. Wright stated that the protocol was only to fire when the unit was receiving hostile fire. Wright explained that part of the Swift Boat patrol's goal was to develop contacts with non-combatants living along the rivers being patrolled.
Wright's boldest claim was that after Kerry had in fact received his third purple heart, Wright along with two other ranking officers basically flat out asked Kerry to leave Vietnam. The reason being his behavior continually put the group in greater vulnerability and danger.
According to Wright, Kerry claimed he would not leave, "but was out of there by morning."
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/kmc/
Actually, it's not odd. I was there at the time, although in a different part of the country. It looked like the 4th of July.
But if I recall correctly, the fireworks took place at midnight on Christmas Eve/early Christmas morning. Everybody let loose, just for fun. It was quite a show! Same thing on New Year's Eve. The South Vietnamese seemed pretty indiscriminate where they were aiming as long as it was away from themselves. I suspect even the other side got caught up in the spirit of the moment. After all, there was supposed to be a cease-fire (yuk-yuk!) on for Christmas Day.
Most of what was shot was tracer (small arms, but there was probably some .50 and 40mm duster also) and mortar and artillery flares. I seriously doubt if anybody was shooting into Cambodia with artillery, as Kerry implies. But then again, I wasn't sitting in Cambodia. He was - or claims he was...
I went in on a VN Navy Alpha boat out of Dong Tam in 1970. What were you on?
Most of the US participation in Cambodia and Laos is public knowledge now. Depending on your reasons for not discussing it, if it was because it was classified, those reasons are long gone.
Well either Kranish is a liar, or Kerry suffers from amnesia. Nixon got elected in 68 but he did not get into office until the following January in 69
CHEMTRAILS! CHEMTRAILS! Look above Kerry! The Aliens are controlling him. It is official!
/tinfoilhat off
Thanks for clarifying that
The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.
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.
I'm trying to figure out what Kerry is going for on this one. Is he trying to get people to identify with the movie and think wow, they went through allot. I don't have to imagine it though, I saw the movie. Or is he trying to have people think of him in Martin Sheen's place.
Haha, check out my profile.
Most true hero's don't.
Your mindset is commendable and your service is greatly appreciated.
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: [still] #1
Kerry was asked to leave Vietnam
The image Americans were asked to believe, at the Democratic National Convention, of a John Kerry who "defended this nation" as a soldier in Vietnam and "will defend this nation" as its commander in chief has hit a snag.
The soldiers he served alongside of don't really believe that he did defend his country very well. And as one of his former commanding officers told my radio show on Wednesday, Kerry's chain of command was so fed up with his actions, they asked him to go home after he received his third purple heart.
Retired U.S. Navy officer Thomas Wright served our nation for 21 years. He also served as one of Kerry's superiors in the tough assignment of SWIFT boat (Shallow Water Inshore Fast Tactical) patrols on the southern tip of Vietnam. Lt. Wright frequently experienced trouble with Kerry.
According to Wright, Kerry frequently broke protocols of engagement for SWIFT boat commanders.
When you're in a group (of boats on patrol) you don't open fire unless the person in charge tells you to or unless you are defending yourself from an immediate attack ... I'd have problems because we'd be running on a river and Kerry would see something off in the distance and he'd take a pot-shot at it, to see what happened. And that wasn't the way we were trying to run the patrols.
We were trying to get in and find out what was going on, and hopefully make contact and begin to work with some of the people that lived there ... And you don't get to go shake their hands when you're shooting at them.
I asked Wright how Kerry would respond to the necessary correction that would follow such unilateral actions.
Well, during the mission you just continue to issue the orders that you expect people to follow and, if they don't do them, you would continue to press until you got the results that you need.
After a mission, is generally when you work out the more difficult problems. And those are done in private.
I'd go talk to John Kerry and I'd tell him that I was unhappy with his opening fire, or pulling out of a column when he wasn't supposed to, or failing to communicate when he needed to ... And I'd always get an excuse. I wouldn't get a direct answer.
I'd get "I didn't hear that," or "We thought we saw something" or "My radio was on the other side of the boat" or "I didn't have time." It was always an excuse. After three or four times ... I went to the division commander, told him about the problems I [had] been having and told him [the commander] that he needed to take steps to correct it.
That brought me to the shocker of the interview. To hear John Kerry speak about his time in Vietnam is to hear a self-personified story of heroics. Lt. Wright remembers what happened after Kerry's third purple heart quite differently.
When he got his third purple heart, that evening, and we didn't particularly care what it was for, we knew that he had three. That evening, I and two other people went in and told him that we felt that he should go home. It was something that he could do ... He told us that he didn't want that, it was his intention to serve his country, and the next morning he was gone. And we were happy and didn't worry about it.
John Kerry was barely able to endure four months on SWIFT boat detail. Since I am sure the War on Terror will endure a bit longer than that, the idea of him commanding our troops with his unsteady hand is making me ... well ... seasick.
Supposedly, Kerry made a speech in the Senate in 1986 spouting this nonsense that he was in Cambodia on XMAS Eve. The speech was in connection with the Sandaistas in Nicaragua and how the situation was analagous to guess where--Vietnam of course. For Kerry, no matter what the subject is, it is related to Vietnam and his four month experience there.
Maybe the 3rd Purple Heart was the best solution to their problems, figuring Kerry would take it and split.
The media need to call him on this stuff. Kranish didn't even pick up on Kerry's reference to Nixon as being untrue. Even a cub reporter would do a better job of questioning what Kerry said. Kranish and Eason don't want any contradictory information because it destroys the myth they have built up around Kerry. They also have a vested interest since they have written Kerry's biography. They are very nervous that O'Neill has so easily poked holes in Kerry's stories. If they were real journalists, they should have done that.
As I recall the South Vietnamese were predominantly Roman Catholics while the north was more tradional Buddhists so this part of the story may not be that odd. The Indo-China War that resulted in the French leaving southeast Asia had religious overtones.
Good pick. Kerry is locked into this fantasy story along with the Boston Globe reporters, Let's hear what Kerry and his band of brothers have to say about this.
My husband was there the same time you were. He was in special op's. He doesn't like talking about it either.
When he came back from one of his tours in VN, he came in via San Francisco. He was spat on as he walked through the terminal. When he got home and told me about it, my heart broke. It still makes me cry.
THANKS for your service!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How was Christmas '68 in Cambodia?
Maybe people will start asking what it means.
This is a VERY important story. For those who've followed Kerry over the years, it's the bedrock of every nuanced position or posture he's taken over the years, from his tainted war testimony in the 70's to the Senate floor speech supporting the Butcher of Managua (Daniel Ortega) against Reagan in the 80's, to his determination to undermine the US Intelligence apparatus in the 90's to his over-the-top rhetoric about war and lying at the heart of his campaign in this year's presidential election. The story is at the core of his being, he said the experience was "seared" into him ... yet it's obviously, proveably FALSE!
"Republican backed attack." THEY NEVER ASK KERRY TO RESPOND. It's unbelievable. Let him go on 60 Minutes, like Clinton did, and clear it up. Is that asking too much??? But these alleagations will haunt him, not matter what he does.
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