ANGKOR WHERE?:

Vets say Kerry made up Cambodia story: Has used account as evidence of war crimes, to attack U.S. policy (WorldNetDaily.com, August 7, 2004)

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."

This is all terribly confusing--isn't he supposed to be proud of his service over there?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2004 7:19 AM