How many times & how many ways did Kerry lie about this?
Christmas in Cambodia
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
The core of the Christmas in Cambodia story as told by John Kerry contained an obvious lie from which there was no immediate recovery. According to John Kerry, President Nixon had ordered his Swift Boat into Cambodia in Christmas 1968, while Nixon was at the same time denying to the world that any U.S. military forces were engaged in Cambodia.
This, as Kerry told the story, was “seared, seared” into his memory, a key experience which caused him to realize the Vietnam war was immoral and hence his Vietnam protesting justified.
The problem was that Nixon was not president until January 20, 1969. No one in the mainstream press had ever noticed this obvious fabrication in the over thirty years John Kerry had told multiple versions of the story, all predicated on Nixon’s supposed duplicity.
Once John Kerry’s obvious lie was brought to light, his campaign had little option but to obscure the edges of the story. Perhaps he had just wandered into Cambodia as a mistake. Impossible, answered the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The U.S. Navy heavily guarded the river entry into Cambodia, preventing accidental drifting into Cambodian waters.
Then Kerry’s supporters suggested that he was near Cambodia, if not actually in Cambodia. John Hurley, Kerry’s national director of veterans, was quoted as saying: “I don’t know that anyone can actually say whether or not they were in Cambodia. It’s a very watery area. There’s no sign that says welcome to Cambodia. It is obviously dusk and getting darker, and so they were in those waters.” There were suggestions that Kerry was in Cambodia on a different mission, one with Navy Seals, but he couldn’t provide any dates. Hurley again tried to come to the rescue:” “He was five miles into Cambodia, but what’s happened is these two stories have gotten confused.” Or, again, in yet another attempt to explain the problem away, Hurley offered this: “I think he knows that he was under fire in Cambodia. I think the date is what’s inaccurate, that it was just not Christmas Eve Day.” 27
Then Steve Gardner, the Kerry crewmember who joined Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said he was never in Cambodia with Kerry. None of the crewmembers who support Kerry’s campaign came forward to support his Christmas in Cambodia story. The Kerry camp was reduced to claiming that the mission was so secret that no one but Kerry knew about it. Then, Kerry surrogates just decided to abandon the issue altogether. Kerry supporters tried to maintain that the story was not important, so what if Kerry got this thirty-four year-old story wrong?
Finally, Kerry himself may have revealed the truth in his journal in the following passage he wrote while on his final mission, quoted in Tour of Duty: “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.”
Kerry described his Christmas in Cambodia pivotal to his coming to the conclusion that the Vietnam War was immoral. As the story unraveled, so did a key pillar for Kerry’s explanation of why he became an anti-war activist. With this, Kerry’s credibility also collapsed.
Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. If you were in Cambodia, where in Cambodia? When was it? How did you get there? Who was with you?
2. If you had already been to Cambodia, why did you write in your diary that you were curious about what lay “on the other side”?
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1. Matt Drudge, “Anti-Kerry Vets Gather for Assault, Book Claims Kerry War Fabrications’”, THE DRUDGE REPORT, August 3, 2004, 21:35:02, eastern time.
2. Zachary Coile, “Vets group attacks Kerry; McCain defends Democrat,” SFGate.com, August 5, 2004.
3. “Politics as Usual,” New York Times, August 19, 2004, editorial page, 30.
4. Northern Alliance Radio Network, www.northernallianceradio.com, August 21, 2004.
5. Transcript available Online NewsHour, www.pbs.org, August 19, 2004.
6. Reported in Mark Holzer and Erica Holzer, Legal Terrorism, Front- PageMagazine.com, August 10, 2004.
7. Robert Novak, “Admiral speaks out, disputes Kerry’s account of 1st wound,” The Chicago Sun-Times, April 27, 2004.
8. Ibid.
9. “Political independent’ anti-Kerry vet Schachte contributed to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.” MediaMatters.org, August 27, 2004.
10. Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 189. The discrepancy was reported by Art Moore, “Kerry’s war journal contradicts medial claim? At least 9 days after Purple Heart, wrote he had not ‘been shot at yet.’” World NetDaily.com August 17, 2004.
11. The discussion of the third Purple Heart can be found in Unfit for Command on pages 86–89. Kerry throwing the grenade at the rice pile and being wounded in the buttocks by a fragment of his own grenade can be found in Brinkley’s Tour of Duty on page 313.
12. First reported by Art Moore in “Another discrepancy erodes Kerry’s story.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 31, 2004.
13. Unfit for Command, page 83.
14. Congressional Record, Senate, January 28, 1998.
15. The Sampan Incident is discussed in Unfit for Command on pages 53- 62. The report on the after-action report under discussion is drawn from Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney, Nina J. Easton. John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 136.
16. Tour of Duty, 269-270.
17. Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, “John Kerry’s Mysterious Combat ‘V’” published in FrontPageMagazine.com, August 20, 2004.
18. Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, “John Kerry’s Puzzling Silver Star Citations,” published in FrontPageMagazine.com, August 24, 2004.
19. Ibid. Parenthesis added for explanation.
20. Ibid. Parenthesis in original.
21. Thomas Lipscomb. “Kerry citation a ‘total mystery’ to ex-Navy chief.” Chicago Sun-Times, August 28, 2004.
22. Ibid.
23. “William Rood’s first-person account,” published in the Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2004.
24. Ibid.
25. For a fair analysis of the Rood controversy, see: Joseph Farah, “Kerry Supported by Viet comrade. ‘Unfit’ author sees little contradiction between swiftboat book, new report.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 21, 2004.
26. “Kerry Defender Rood Contradicted by Crewmate,” NewsMax.com, August 21, 2004.
27. “Kerry camp: Candidate ‘inaccurate’ on Cambodia. Says senator mistakenly thought it was Christmas trip when he crossed border.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 12, 2004.
28. This section was drawn from Jerome R. Corsi, “John Kerry’s Secret Meeting with the Enemy,” WorldNetDaily.com, October 8, 2004.
29. Michael Kranish and Patrick Healy, “Kerry spoke of meeting netotiators on Vietnam,” Boston Globe, March 25, 2004.
30. Scott Swett, “Yesterday’s Lies: Steve Pitkin and the Winter Soldiers.” WinterSoldier.com, September 15, 2004. A film clip is archived on WinterSoldier.com showing John Kerry conducting a preliminary interview with Steve Pitkin, coaching him prior to Pitkin’s testimony in Detroit.
31. Ibid.
32. Affidavit of Stephen J. Pitkin, State of Florida, County of Palm Beach, September 15, 2004. Archived on WinterSoldier.com.
33. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry Into War Crimes. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972, 161.
34. Speech of Steve Pitkin at the “Kerry Lied” Rally, held by the Vietnam Veterans for the Truth in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2004. Speech arrived at WinterSoldier.com.
35. “Navy Tells Judicial Watch It Will Not Release Additional Kerry Documents,” JudicialWatch.org, September 16, 2004.
36. Ann Gerhart, “The Political Guns of August Are Firing.” Washington Post, August 27, 2004.
37. This section draws extensively from Jerome R. Corsi, “John Kerry and the Politics of Betrayal,” which appeared on WorldNetDaily.com, October 1, 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by John E. O’Neill and Jerome L. Corsi |
