Debunk: Christmas in Cambodia ...

[lanparty]

Ok, so I've taken the disturbing tactic of subjecting myself to Rush and Hannity lately. I want to see how easily I can rebut their claims.

One I couldn't rebut is the claim that John Kerry claims he was in Cambodia for Christmas of 68, or something to the sort. My guess is it's part of their misrepresenting Kerry's activities in the Vietnam veteran's group. The Swiftboaters Against Kerry clan claims that they were forbidden from entering Cambodia and that Kerry would never have received such an order.

Any specific info????

[seabeyond]

1. oneil had a taped call to nixon

saying he had been in cambodia. i think everyone "knows" they were going in. and has been well documented and confirmed over the years. just not officially

rush doesnt know shit, doesnt know what the orders were, and they did not "follow" all the rules in that war

[Rambis]

2. I was in cambodia sir

O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.
O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.



http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/003260.html

[tandot]

3. Well, John O'Neill himself told Nixon that he was in Cambodia

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/26/swift.boat.author.ap/index.html

"I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border," O'Neill is heard telling Nixon in a conversation that was taped by the former president's secret recording system. The tape is stored at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, O'Neill did not dispute what he said to Nixon on June 16, 1971, but he insisted he was never actually in Cambodia.

"I think I made it very clear that I was on the border, which is exactly where I was for three months," O'Neill said of the conversation. "I was about 100 yards from Cambodia."

<snip>

He either lied to President Nixon or he is lying in his later interview and book. Either way, once a liar always a liar. Which story would you believe? He immensely hates Kerry for his anti-war stance and testimony after he came back from Vietnam.

All stories in John O'Neills book have essentially been disproven by records and eyewitness testimony. That book should be sold under the heading "Fiction"

[LynnTheDem]

7. O'Neill doesn't care about Kerry's antiwar stance

When Kerry was antiwar, O'Neill didn't even know Kerry's name, or who he was, until Nixon thru Colson hired O'Neill to trash Kerry.

Yet people insist O'Neill hates Kerry because of Kerry's antiwar stance.

I don't think that's true; O'Neill smears Kerry because Nixon hired O'Neill to smear Kerry...and bush now hires O'Neill to smear Kerry. O'Neill proved he was available for hire 3 decades ago.

O'Neill was a big nothing; Nixon raised O'Neill up to a bigshot who got to sit in the Oval Office next to the president.

After O'Neill was denounced for a liar, fool and total idiot back then, and all his lies & smears exposed for the total bullshit that they were (and still are), he retired to Texas to play with the Big Rich Powerful Rethuglicans.

Damn addictive company for a nobody nothing like O'Neill.

And for over THREE DECADES O'Neill NEVER SAID A WORD against Kerry.

Until now.

It ain't hate for Kerry's antiwar stance behind O'Neill's lying smears; it's hired politics and the hope of being a bigshot sitting in the Oval office next to the president again.

[lanparty]

8. After reading the article ...

... I remember that the other charge posed by Hannity was that John Kerry claimed Nixon was president in 1968. The funny thing about these right wingers is that they RARELY use the original quotes.

As he told to the Boston Herald 1979
"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 killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real. "

So here we have another time/title distortion tactic. The same one they're using on Lt Gov Ben Barnes who wasn't Lieutenant Governor at the time pulled strings to get GW Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.

No President Nixon was NOT president at the time of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia. But by 1979, Nixon had repeatedly denied that there were no US troops in Cambodia.

So the statement is clearly of Kerry looking back and noting Nixon's absurd statements since there were US troops in Cambodia both BEFORE and AFTER Nixon took office. Though, I don't think that Kery should have dished out criticism to Johnson as well.

[displacedtexan]

4. O'Neill told Nixon that HE was in Cambodia. It's on tape.

From the Nixon tapes :


O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

[lanparty]

9. O'Neill has a strange definition of "in" ...

Investigator: Were you in the girl??

O'Neill: Yes.

Investigator: Then you must have raped her because she gave no consent.

O'Neill: No, I was 12" from her.

Investigator: But you said you were inside her.

O'Neill: I meant it in the sense that I was "near" her.

Investigator: Then you won't mind if I put my foot in your ass???

O'Neill: Just let me prepare by taking my foot out of my mouth.

[zulchzulu]

5. Here's some info

John O'Neill, who was a Nixon operative at the time, had claimed that no one was allowed in Cambodia. But it turns out O'Neill was...drum roll please...LYING.

"I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border," said John E. O'Neill in a conversation that was taped by the former president's secret recording system. The tape is stored at the National Archives in College Park, Md.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040004

Freepers will say that Kerry was in Vietnam and left in 1969, a year before the US officially invaded Cambodia. One issue about all this was that there aren't state line signs in the Mekong Delta at the height of war. And if you look at these book titles, you see that Cambodia was in US targets for a while:

"Cambodia, Secret Bombing of, United States campaign during the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Conducted under the direct orders of President Richard Nixon, it began in 1969 and continued until 1973.
© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

From The Eyewitness History of Vietnam 1961 - 1975
Associated Press, Library of Congress. 1983
Chapter 11, Cambodia and Laos, Page 141

Another snip from another site shows it was certainly possible for Kerry to have been in Cambodia.

An entry in a monthly summary of engagements for December 1968 reports that on Christmas Eve, "PCF-44 fired on junk on beach. Results: 1 sampan destroyed."

The entry was made by then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann (one of the SBVFT), the overall commander of Swift boats and now one of Kerry's most vocal critics. There is no written location for the engagement, but it contains a coordinate used by the military to plot locations. The coordinate points to an area about 40 to 50 miles south of the Cambodian border, near an island called Sa Dec.

The entry also notes that the incident took place about 7 a.m., which would have given Kerry's boat another 12 hours to make it to the Cambodian border by nightfall. At a cruising speed of 23 knots, the boat could have covered the distance in about two hours.

http://www.gregsopinion.com/archives/004854.php

The main point is that Kerry suited up while Chimpy weasled out.

[JDPriestly]

6. I can't tell you where I read it.

But, I believe I read that Kerry had admitted being wrong about the date, but right about being in Cambodia.

Kerry's error is probably due to the "fog of war" problem. Dates and places and memories fuse to some extent when a person is under extreme stress. Kerry's mistake is understandable.

The "fog of war" is, however, no excuse for Bush's failure to remember that he did not serve in Alabama or in Massachusetts, and that he used his socially privileged status to avoid complying with some of the requirements of his Guard duty.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. That was a different type of fog Bush was in

self induced fog of some type.