I don’t get it Sam the written record is of no earthly value when it confirms his story, but is of supreme importance when it contradicts his story?
He may have thought he was in Cambodia and wasn’t. Maybe the other guys didn’t realise they were in Cambodia. I am not seeing physical geographic features that mark the border on the maps I am looking at between Cambodia and Vietnam. I don’t think they spray painted the border. GPS wasn’t available technology.
What would it matter if he was mistaken or even lying, (although I will admit I would prefer he didn’t stoop to that). We were in Cambodia. Trying to disrupt the supply line of the Ho Chi Mihn trail was a concern throughout the war. When even the 11th grade US history text book The Americans* (McDougal Little, vetted by the texas school board association) says that we were in Cambodia I don’t think there is much in the way of contraversy there.
Why don’t you ask him? That’s all he’s running on. John Kerry is the one who decided to make his Vietnam service the focal point of his qualification for President. That makes questioning that service record fair. In fact, if that’s what he offers for your consideration of his qualifications, then examining is is reasonable and prudent.
Neither Bush attempted to use their military service the way Kerry has. Bush Sr. was a hero. Had they invoked their service as a major qualification, I would expect it to be examined.
I don’t think it would possible be accidentally think you were Cambodia being shot at by the Khmer Rouge, when you know the river entries are guarded and you’re supposed to be fifty miles away. Fifty miles on the river is a pretty good distance.
But we shall see. I think this question has enough meat on it that someone will ask Kerry flat-out if he was in Cambodia, and then he’ll give an answer.
Funny that lots of other US troops had no trouble getting around the blockades. We DID go into Cambodia, you know. It’s not exactly breaking news.
As for questiong Kerry’s service record- the offical account looks solid to me and no one has offered credible evidence that it is incorrect in any way, nor have any of these Swifties for Bush made any attempt to petition the Navy to correct anything. If they know that the record is in error then why haven’t they informed the navy about it?
This is truly comic. Yes, how modest of Shrub, how egoless of him, how quietly confident that he does not flaunt his selfless service in defense of Texas and almost Alabama. A duty he volunteered for, when he easily could have taken the easy way out and gone to where the war was. A lot of guys might try to exploit that for personal gain, but not GeeDubya, nosiree. You’ll never see him strutting around in a flight suit trying sell himself as some sort of war hero- nope- not Shrub.
The oath of an officer? A code of silence? According to good old DA Pam 600-2 (Dec 29,1960) The Armed Forces Officer, the oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and to faithfully discharge the duties of the office, all without mental reservation. Period, the end. I remember something about obeying the lawful orders of officers appointed over me, but that’s about it. Nothing in there about blindly supporting the policies of the government, not testifying before congress or keeping your mouth shut lest you embarrass the government. Nothing about being a traitor to my class or similar Edwardian stiff upper lip stuff. Forget the oath approach to the problem, Sam, it does not scour.
I thought we were arguing about the accuracy of the metal citations. Where did this Cambodia stuff come from. It is hardly a secret that US Forces were operating over the line into Cambodia. Do you remember the Kent State Massacre – you will recall that and other disturbances were occasioned by the disclosure that the war had been expanded into Cambodia. It doesn’t look to me that Senator Kerry violated any official secretes act by disclosing that Navy as well as ground forces and air forces had been shooting up Cambodia. You will also recall that the central government had been denying up and down the line that US forces had been in Cambodia until the situation got to the point that the denials were no longer possible.
Let’s just wait and see. The government has admitted operations in Cambodia - they started in 1970. Just not Kerry’s boat. But we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out over the next few days.
Where did this story come from? The same Swiftboat Vets for Truth book. It’s one of the charges they make against him.
Damn, those campaigns change their main theme fast. Last time I checked, it was all about Bush hatred because nobody likes John Kerry anyway. And now it’s all about 'Nam. My head spins.
Indeed. The Amerian public would be very prudent to demand an answer to the pressing question about Kerry’s savage killing of kittens while he supposedly served in Vietnam. What? No kittens? How about puppies, we never asked about puppies, right? Would be only prudent to ask about puppies.
I could swear he mentioned a few other things in his acceptance speech, but maybe I was thinking of another Democratic nominee for President.
You would think he would have noticed that a lot of people have lost their jobs. And some of those that have jobs don’t make enough to feed their kids. The funding for “No child left behind” was cut. I heard a rumor that some people can’t afford insurance, much less a hospital or medication. And there has been something in the newspaper about a war and terrorist threats. And there is this stupid notion that there is strength in numbers and maybe we should keep our allies after all. Oh, and it seems that some scientists think that they might be able to relieve a lot of suffering if there is federal funding for stem cell research. I wonder who the man was who talked about these things.
Hmm. Can’t remember if I used this sig earlier in this thread…Just in case:
DtC, I think and hope that most voters from both sides do care about integrity and about what happened 35 years ago. I’m not naive. I don’t know of a President that hasn’t been less than candid. But it matters.
If John Kerry is elected President and is as deceptive and secretive as the Bush Administration has been, that will drag our country down even farther. It is crucial that we have an intelligent and straight forward person in that office for the next four years.
o this is your source? Your only source? Do you have any other sources for the impregnable blockade of all entrances into Cambodia? Do you have any other sources for the multiple retellings over time that you have kept repeating?
Or are you simply the SDMB conduit for the Swiffers and their message?
John Kerry’s official Biography, Tour of Duty. Page 209:
His biography has a story which flatly contradicts the story he gave on the floor of Congress in 1986, and which he has repeated on numerous occasions since.
Oh, and Nixon wasn’t president when Kerry claims to have been sitting in Cambodia upset that President Nixon said he wasn’t there.
From what you’ve posted I don’t see the flat contradiction. If anything bio supports congress speech. I.e. by morning he was near the Cambodian border, heading in that direction on a vessel capable of crossing 5 miles and back in a few hours.
Now it may be that the bio says “we stopped” or " we spent our whole day…" etc. From what you’ve posted though, I maintain it adds plausibility to Kerry’s story, not the contrary.
He doesn’t actually say Nixon was president at the time, just that it would have been absurd to be killed in a country Nixon claimed there were no troops in.
I don’t see the contradiction either. It just confirms that he was close enough on that date to have slipped over the border and come back in a relatively short amount of time.
Guys, ‘an hour away’ from Cambodia is about twenty or thirty miles. On a heavily patrolled river. With the entrance to Cambodia guarded and blocked with concrete pilings. Of his five crewmembers, three have said they were not in Cambodia that night, and two refuse to comment. The records say he wasn’t there. The other Swiftboat officers say that at that time, anyone would have been arrested who tried to run the blockade, and incursions into Cambodia would have been punishable by court-martial.
But here’s the troubling part for Kerry’s story - if he was really in Cambodia, as he had been saying for 30 years, why didn’t he say that in his biography? Why did he change in the story? The answer would be because when it came time to write an official biography in a campaign season, he realized that the Cambodia story would see just a little too much light, and wouldn’t stand up. So it was left out.
Doesn’t the way the Kerry campaign has responded so far trouble anyone? They haven’t responded factually to any of the criticisms. What they have done is threatened TV stations with lawsuits, filed three FEC actions to shut the Swifties up, and sent a ‘brown book’ of dirt and smears to their operatives to use against the Swiftie. Today they released the big revelation that the co-author of the book has said nasty things about Muslims on internet message boards. But about the actual charges - nada.
This story is getting bigger. The mainstream media is slowly picking it up. We’ll have to see if it turns into anything. It might not. And I’m still not convinved the Swiftees charges are all valid.
But the Kerry campaign had better be careful with their smear job - these guys are fellow veterans, some of them with more decorations than Kerry, ranks from Seaman to Admiral. Dragging them through the mud too harshly, especially if they start really digging into their private lives instead of the allegations, could backfire.
As I’m typing this, they just showed the SwiftVets ad in full on Hardball.