> “McCain has certainly allowed the perception to persist that he chose to refuse early release out of his own sense of devotion to the other men and his personal integrity. Hence his alleged heroism. He never disavowed or corrected this perception or said, to my knowledge, that he was following an order from Stockdale.”
Your summary is spot on. Yours is precisely the point that McCain has done nothing to limit the hero worship that has sprung up around him. True heroes, if alive, would never allow such a thing.