Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Kerry's Boston Globe reporter finally ackowledges dispute about Christmas in Cambodia

Michael Kranish:

Senator John F. Kerry is disputing an allegation made by a group of veterans opposed to his presidential candidacy that he never operated inside Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

In a just-published book, "Unfit for Command," the veterans said that "Kerry was never in Cambodia during Christmas 1968, or at all during the Vietnam War" and that he "would have been court-martialed had he gone there."

But the Kerry campaign said that the group, which calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is wrong and that Kerry was inside Cambodia to drop off special forces on one mission and was at the border on other occasions.

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For years, Kerry has said he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. He gave a detailed view of that experience in an article he wrote for the Boston Herald in 1979. "I remember spending Christmas Eve five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas," Kerry wrote. "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." A similar recollection by Kerry was mentioned in a Globe biography of the Massachusetts senator published earlier this year.

The anti-Kerry veterans have said Kerry's recollection does not make sense because Nixon was not inaugurated until January 1969. But Kerry campaign spokesman Meehan said Kerry was referring to a range of time that included when Nixon was president-elect and president. During the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon opposed a change in US policy that would allow "hot pursuit" of enemy forces into Cambodia; in March 1969 he authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia, which was followed by the 1970 invasion of Cambodia.

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Michael Medeiros, who served aboard the No. 94 with Kerry and appeared with him at the Democratic National Convention, vividly recalled an occasion on which Kerry and the crew chased an enemy to the Cambodian border but did not go beyond the border. Yet Medeiros said he could not recall dropping off special forces in Cambodia or going inside Cambodia with Kerry.