Posted on 12/24/2011 9:33:36 PM PST by rabscuttle385
SOMERS POINT — Master Commandant Richard Somers will have to wait a little longer to come home, if it happens at all.
Efforts to repatriate the remains of the city’s namesake and U.S. Naval hero — killed with his crew aboard the USS Intrepid in 1804 in Tripoli Harbor during the First Barbary War — date to the 1840s.
Spurred by this year's political upheaval in Libya, the movement seemed to finally have the congressional backing it needed to order the Department of Defense to take action regarding the return of the bodies of Somers and his men to the U.S.
However, the language in an amendment to the 2012 Defense Authorization bill that ordered the return of the bodies was changed at the last minute in favor of a diluted order for the issue to be further evaluated.
And this was done, supporters of the measure say, at the request of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy prisoner of war.
“Sen. McCain told our group, told the families, that he had no problem with the amendment, which appeared to have unanimous, bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. Then literally at the last minute, in the cloakroom of the Senate, he stood up and opposed it,” said Michael Caputo, coordinator of the Intrepid Project, which is spearheading the repatriation effort. “We were at the top of the hill. This was the furthest the families had ever come toward repatriation, and then Sen. John McCain, ‘Mr. Veteran,’ sucker-punched us and knocked us back down the hill.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pressofatlanticcity.com ...
Billions for bailouts, but not a penny to bring home your fellow American sailors who died on foreign shores and were abandoned in shallow graves over two hundred years ago.
FUJM! We should have let you rot in Vietnam along with the poor bastards you left behind. Traitor!
More proof of McCain's hatred of U.S. veterans and their families.
This man admitted on the convention floor that the Viet Cong broke him.
And it still is proof today. Along with all his injuries, he has no spine.
They had years and years to brainwash him. They knew his father was CINCPAC so that he wasn’t the run-of-the-mill POW.
John McCain Losing His Cool YouTube
Vietnam Veterans Against McCain YouTube video
The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides Former POW Fights Public Access to POW/MIA Files - Sydney SchanbergAnother bill gutted in 1996
And then there is the Missing Service Personnel Act, which McCain succeeded in gutting in 1996. A year before, the act had been strengthened, with bipartisan support, to compel the Pentagon to deploy more resources with greater speed to locate and rescue missing men. The measure imposed strict reporting requirements.
McCain amended the heart out of the statute. For example, the 1995 version required a unit commander to report to his theater commander within two days that a person was missing and describe what rescue and recovery efforts were underway. The McCain amendments allowed 10 days to pass before a report had to be made.
(snip)
Chilling effect cited
One final evisceration in the law was McCain’s removal of all its enforcement teeth. The original act provided for criminal penalties for anyone, such as military bureaucrats in Washington, who destroy or cover up or withhold from families any information about a missing man. McCain erased this part of the law. He said the penalties would have a chilling effect on the Pentagon’s ability to recruit personnel for its POW/MIA office.
McCain does not deal lightly with those who disagree with him on any of these issues or who suggest that the evidence indeed shows that a significant number of prisoners were alive and cached away as future bargaining chips when he came home in the group of 591 released in 1973.
Over the years, he has regularly vilified any group or person who keeps trying to pry out more evidence about MIAs. He calls them “hoaxers” and “charlatans ” and “conspiracy theorists.” He decries the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists” and describes them as “individuals primarily who make their living off of keeping the issue alive.” Before he died last year of leukemia, retired Col. Ted Guy, a highly admired POW and one of the most dogged resisters in the camps, wrote an angry open letter to the senator in an MIA newsletter. In it, he said of McCain’s stream of insults: “John, does this include Senator Bob Smith and other concerned elected officials? Does this include the families of the missing where there is overwhelming evidence that their loved ones were ‘last known alive? ’ Does this include some of your fellow POWs?”
That's also what the POW/MIA families and most everyone following the issue thought in 1993, but the twisted little backstabber proved them all wrong.
As if any more were needed. He is a real psychotic - and his hatred goes back a long time. Recall the story - I think it was during the Krinton regime - that he and the arrant quisling John Kerry together ordered the destruction of all of the original records of [post VietNam] MIA sightings and related intelligence reports then being maintained by the CIA in its Bangkok office. Not good at all.
Some of that is in the story “The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides” that I linked above.
McCain is no “maverick.” He is a renegade.
Succinct and to the point.
VERY peculiar....
bttt
I do remember that he and traitor Kerry declared that there were no more MIA or POW’s in Viet Nam.
That had to be declared in order to have trade with Nam.
Immediately after that happened, Kerry's brother started trading with Viet Nam and within a few short weeks was making millions of dollars.
Trading Money---for Honor.
Kerry and McCain have money, but no honor. Despicable.
Can we have a few moments of silence for the Conservative voters of Arizona, a dying breed.
Thanks a lot Arizona voters.
Five more years of this rat bastard! Five fricken years!
Commie MF bastard traitor! May you rot in Hell!
Matthew Fuller, USAF Veteran, 1964-1968.
Psychotic back stabber pretty much describes him.... a victim of North Vietnamese torture and interrogation. Because they messed with him he figures he has liscence to behave any way he wants. What kind of psych meds is he on and regular meds (pain meds perhaps) that warp his mind?
He is one of the lowest of the low people on this earth.
When he was running for President, the more I found out about him the more I despised him. Being a veteran myself It was hard to vote for him, but the choice between him and the community organizer, I had only one choice, and that was to hold my nose and vote for the creep. The creep MCLAIM not that other creep. 2008 we had no choice and 2012 is looking very similar.
Anyone who was around the 04 elections when we Nam Vets, the Swift Boat members and others, worked tirelessly to expose that FRAUDULENT, self-admitted traitor, and bottom-feeding, anti-war/military, scumbag, (John "The Rat Bas-turd" Kerry) for who and what he was (AND THE IRREPERABLE HARM HE CAUSED MILLIONS OF NAM VETS) only to have Juan stand up and not only defend his good "Bud" but had the temerity to "lecture" us and in so many words, suggested we should all just "shut up and get over it!"
When you couple that with his (and again Kerry's) DESPICABLE and ABHORENT conduct towards the families of the MIA's while pretending to hold hearings on the missing, all the while, being complicit in a complete whitewash/coverup of this subject, none of this comes as any surprise.
The only reason I voted R last election was because Sarah was on the ticket and was opposed to Dear Leader.
While I salute McPain's service, he (like Kerry) is NO "Brother" of mine as well as many other Nam Vets who likewise despises this SOB.
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