PaulT
08-13-2004, 06:13 AM
Tale Of Xmas Mission To Island of Misfit Toys
'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
The harrowing story of a daring foray to the North Pole has long been a staple of Kerry's Vietnam biography. In 1970 as a 26-year-old veteran, Kerry testified to a Senate Committee that he and other US soldiers had participated in atrocities against indiginous Misfit Island toys, "including rape, torture, dismemberment, firecrackers, and other so-called 'reindeer games.'"
"Christmas '68, I remember it as if it were yesterday," Kerry is quoted in a 1985 interview with the Boston Globe. "There was Linus, and me, and Herbie the Elf, dodging tracer fire from reindeers and misfit toys alike, and unloading .50 caliber rounds into the Abominable Snowman. Herbie got taken out by AW fire from a spotted elephant. He was just a damned kid, who only wanted to get back stateside and study dentistry."
In the interview, Kerry said the episode scarred him, turning him against the war and for truth in government.
"It was completely surreal," recalled Kerry. "We we taking clay fire left and right, and styrofoam shrapnel, and meanwhile the President was all over CNN claiming we weren't even there. It was then I finally realized that Ronald Reagan's Vietnam adventure was nothing but a lie."
In a later recollection during a 1991 Senate floor speech denouncing the Gulf War, Kerry said he was recruited for the secret holiday mission during a Bob Hope USO Christmas special.
"Hope was Nixon's shadow CIA station chief in Saigon," said Kerry. "During a skit with Phyllis Diller, he blinked a morse code message that I was to take his covert bikini go-go girl assassination squad to the Arctic to take out the a nest of Khmer Blanc."
The illegal mission was "seared, seared into my memory," said Kerry, who used it as an example of how war corrupts government officials.
"There I was, strafing helpless misfit toys with Joey Heatherton, Jill St. John, Lola Falana and Raquel Welch," said Kerry. "Our fire dispersed the insurgents, and I could have shot several of the fleeing toys in the back, but I didn't. Down in Saigon they say, my small heart grew three sizes that day."
In a 2003 Washington Post profile, Kerry even displayed a souvenir from the mission.
"Who told you about this? Even my friends don't know about it," said Kerry, pulling a musty fur bikini top from a secret compartment in his attache case. Kerry said it was "a good luck charm" given to him by covert CIA agent Nancy Sinatra.
Putting on the bra, Kerry formed his hands into pantomime guns.
"Pow! Kapow! k-k-k-k-brrrudda brrrudda shpeww!" he added, blowing imaginary smoke from his fingertips.
In his recent biography A John Kerry Christmas, the candidate seemed to back off his earlier claims, saying that he and his crew were only "near the Arctic." However, he provided biographer Douglas Brinkley additional background details of the mission.
"I can only speculate why Bob Hope recruited me," said Kerry. "I know he was concerned that his ex-partner Bing Crosby had been 'flipped' by Viet Cong agent David Bowie when they taped that 'Little Drummer Boy' duet."
After returning from the mission, Kerry told Brinkley that Hope offered him a co-starring role in the secret CIA musical comedy 'Road to Cambodia,' but he was determined by then to speak out against the war.
"There must have been some magic in that old Vietnamese silk hat I found," said Kerry. "For when I put it on my head I began to change around."
'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
The harrowing story of a daring foray to the North Pole has long been a staple of Kerry's Vietnam biography. In 1970 as a 26-year-old veteran, Kerry testified to a Senate Committee that he and other US soldiers had participated in atrocities against indiginous Misfit Island toys, "including rape, torture, dismemberment, firecrackers, and other so-called 'reindeer games.'"
"Christmas '68, I remember it as if it were yesterday," Kerry is quoted in a 1985 interview with the Boston Globe. "There was Linus, and me, and Herbie the Elf, dodging tracer fire from reindeers and misfit toys alike, and unloading .50 caliber rounds into the Abominable Snowman. Herbie got taken out by AW fire from a spotted elephant. He was just a damned kid, who only wanted to get back stateside and study dentistry."
In the interview, Kerry said the episode scarred him, turning him against the war and for truth in government.
"It was completely surreal," recalled Kerry. "We we taking clay fire left and right, and styrofoam shrapnel, and meanwhile the President was all over CNN claiming we weren't even there. It was then I finally realized that Ronald Reagan's Vietnam adventure was nothing but a lie."
In a later recollection during a 1991 Senate floor speech denouncing the Gulf War, Kerry said he was recruited for the secret holiday mission during a Bob Hope USO Christmas special.
"Hope was Nixon's shadow CIA station chief in Saigon," said Kerry. "During a skit with Phyllis Diller, he blinked a morse code message that I was to take his covert bikini go-go girl assassination squad to the Arctic to take out the a nest of Khmer Blanc."
The illegal mission was "seared, seared into my memory," said Kerry, who used it as an example of how war corrupts government officials.
"There I was, strafing helpless misfit toys with Joey Heatherton, Jill St. John, Lola Falana and Raquel Welch," said Kerry. "Our fire dispersed the insurgents, and I could have shot several of the fleeing toys in the back, but I didn't. Down in Saigon they say, my small heart grew three sizes that day."
In a 2003 Washington Post profile, Kerry even displayed a souvenir from the mission.
"Who told you about this? Even my friends don't know about it," said Kerry, pulling a musty fur bikini top from a secret compartment in his attache case. Kerry said it was "a good luck charm" given to him by covert CIA agent Nancy Sinatra.
Putting on the bra, Kerry formed his hands into pantomime guns.
"Pow! Kapow! k-k-k-k-brrrudda brrrudda shpeww!" he added, blowing imaginary smoke from his fingertips.
In his recent biography A John Kerry Christmas, the candidate seemed to back off his earlier claims, saying that he and his crew were only "near the Arctic." However, he provided biographer Douglas Brinkley additional background details of the mission.
"I can only speculate why Bob Hope recruited me," said Kerry. "I know he was concerned that his ex-partner Bing Crosby had been 'flipped' by Viet Cong agent David Bowie when they taped that 'Little Drummer Boy' duet."
After returning from the mission, Kerry told Brinkley that Hope offered him a co-starring role in the secret CIA musical comedy 'Road to Cambodia,' but he was determined by then to speak out against the war.
"There must have been some magic in that old Vietnamese silk hat I found," said Kerry. "For when I put it on my head I began to change around."