I have some later quotes from a source that you're welcome to consider as suspect. :) However, they're probably not too hard to check, so I'm going to guess that they're not fabricated.
"We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol,'" Kerry told Diamond. "Everybody was over there [in Cambodia]. Nobody thought twice about it." Five years later, in a September 4, 1997, Senate subcommittee hearing on Cambodian politics, Kerry began his remarks by saying, "I first was introduced to Cambodia when I spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in a river in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict." Kerry was impressed with what he saw. "I found it to be a rather remarkable and very beautiful country which had an allure to me, and to many others," he told his fellow lawmakers, "which has been sustained through those years."
In June 2003, Kerry repeated his story to Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish, who later included it in John F. Kerry, the biography he wrote with coauthors Brian Mooney and Nina Easton. Kerry told Kranish that his adventures on December 24, 1968, began "near Cambodia," when his Swift boat was ambushed by Viet Cong. But later, Kerry said, "he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits." Kerry's incursion put him in a cynical mood. He told Kranish he had sent a "sarcastic message" to his superiors from the Navy's "most inland" unit.
no subject
"We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol,'" Kerry told Diamond. "Everybody was over there [in Cambodia]. Nobody thought twice about it." Five years later, in a September 4, 1997, Senate subcommittee hearing on Cambodian politics, Kerry began his remarks by saying, "I first was introduced to Cambodia when I spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in a river in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict." Kerry was impressed with what he saw. "I found it to be a rather remarkable and very beautiful country which had an allure to me, and to many others," he told his fellow lawmakers, "which has been sustained through those years."
In June 2003, Kerry repeated his story to Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish, who later included it in John F. Kerry, the biography he wrote with coauthors Brian Mooney and Nina Easton. Kerry told Kranish that his adventures on December 24, 1968, began "near Cambodia," when his Swift boat was ambushed by Viet Cong. But later, Kerry said, "he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits." Kerry's incursion put him in a cynical mood. He told Kranish he had sent a "sarcastic message" to his superiors from the Navy's "most inland" unit.
The complete article is in The Weekly Standard.