Posted on 07/22/2015 7:11:35 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
I do realize that everyone from Charles Krauthammer to the recently escaped Mexican drug lord, El Chapo, is piling onto Donald Trump for his straight-forward remarks. Well, being the contrarian that I am, I am going to come down on the side of Mr. Trump!
Do I like him? No. Never have. I don't like his swagger, his cockiness, his arrogance. And I certainly don't care for that mop of comb-over fake hair. But they say the difference between egotism and self-assurance is the ability to produce. By any measure, he certainly wins that contest, both at home and abroad. True, he was born with a silver spoon, but he, and he alone, turned it into gold!
The first thing he did after declaring his presidential candidacy was to observe that Mexico was not sending their "best and brightest" across our southern border. Instead, in Mr. Trump's opinion, they are sending their gang members, their druggies, their serial felons and killers. Certainly, the tragic instance in San Francisco, and others elsewhere, have borne out the truth of his statement.
But the Honorable Senator John McCain (R-AZ) picked a fight by calling him, and others like him, "crazies" for criticizing Mexican immigration. I guess when you are worth $10 BILLION of your own making, you feel free to take issue when a politician calls you crazy!
So The Donald retaliated with the statement that getting yourself captured doesn't necessarily make you a hero. "He's a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren't captured." With that, all hell broke loose in the mainstream media, as well as the Karl Rove dominated Republican establishment -- and the gaggle of GOP presidential wannabes.
But it might behoove us at this point in time to wonder just why would getting captured make you a hero? And why would remaining in captivity make you a military expert, and thus qualified to currently fill the roles of chairman of both the Senate Committee on Armed Services and Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. And one might ask, how has his leadership in both these strategic positions of responsibility been working out for ya'?
Since Mr. Trump expressed his opinion, there is now a whole group of Vietnam veterans who have come forward with statements that highly question the Senator's preferential treatment as the son and grandson of Navy admirals, and his loyalty to his country while in captivity. Some even place him in the Jane Fonda category. Among the allegations are:
John McCain was a below average student, getting into the Naval Academy due to his father's and grandfather's influence and naval careers. Both were admirals. McCain was a boozing, smoking, womanizing party animal, graduating fifth from the bottom of his class at Annapolis.
John McCain's arms were broken not from being tortured by the North Vietnamese, as he has claimed, but when he improperly ejected from his plane over North Vietnam. According to his fellow prisoners, he was never tortured by the North Vietnamese.
John McCain's nickname among his North Vietnamese captors was "Songbird," as he was eager to tell them anything they wanted to hear to avoid torture. It is claimed that he made 32 propaganda videos for the North Vietnamese in which he blamed the United States for targeting schools, temples, orphanages, and hospitals. McCain has admitted to making one propaganda video.
And from a US Navy Aviator who served with McCain: "His "shoot down" was self-induced, as he DISOBEYED ORDERS and flew well below the 'floor,' getting himself shot down. There were several other jets on that particular mission and he was the only one shot down, because the others obeyed their orders."
But if you think these opinions of Senator McCain are somewhat negative, try this one by Theodore Shoebat, Communications Director for Rescue Christians, an organization that is on the ground in Muslim lands, rescuing Christians from persecution, and the author of two books, For God or For Tyranny and In Satan's Footsteps: The Source and Interconnections of all Evil.
"John McCain is a giant bag of scum; his mouth is a continual sewer of bile, his heart is a decayed rot of dung, his mind a river of filth, and his soul is amongst the damned. He is nothing but a murderous scumbag. His evils are so great, that the words of Trump don't even bother me. McCain is a demon incarnate. His service in Vietnam does nothing to justify the evils he has supported and pushed for."
The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it well: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." Mr. Trump expressed his opinion, twice, apparently based upon ample facts.
Was it the politically smart thing for him to do? Perhaps not, but isn't it refreshing, for once, to see a candidate for political office speaking his mind, instead of having his thoughts evaluated by a panel of political analysts before expressing them?
At least Trump is now branded as a no-holds-barred fighter, a type of leadership our country desperately needs at this time -- and could certainly have used in the recent Iranian nuclear negotiations. Can you imagine the outcome had he been there instead of "Swiftboat" Kerry?
The GOP needs for someone to break away from the pack of wilting violets currently running for the 2016 candidacy, and Trump may have just done it! As I write this, the liberally reluctant Washington Post poll shows Trump leading by 24%, followed by Walker at 13, Bush at 12, Huckabee at 8, Rubio at 7, etc., etc.
Fasten your seat belts folks, we ain't seen nothing yet!
The writer is either lying, or is hidden under a rock unaware of the truth.
In either event, why read further?
Indeed. The stories about him in Nam have been around for a long time. Collaborator was the term most often used.
I have never liked McShamey. I believe Jeremiah Denton was the REAL hero
>> The writer is either lying, or is hidden under a rock unaware of the truth. <<
So are you saying he' lying and actually does like his hair, or that it's a mop of comb-over Real hair?
Actually you should read further...because most of the article is anti-McCain, and Not anti-Trump.
His feet stink, and he doesn't love Jesus.
Bingo. I'm sick to death of the free passes that turd has been given because of military service. There is NO linkage. Present day crimes are not excused because of events of 45 years ago.
Repeat after me...Keating 5. John Glenn got his share of free passes because he had been an astronaut. Again, no linkage.
That Christian rescue outfit mentioned in the article sounds like a good charity to give to. The Director’s comments re McCain are priceless.
I am not a McCain supporter, far from it.
But, this post simply repeats the same rumors that anti-McCain forces, mostly very liberal Dems, have repeated about him for years.
There is only one on-the-record comment about McCain from anyone who would know, and that is from Vice Admiral Stockdale. Stockdale would know. He was SOP and McCain’s cellmate in the Hanoi Hilton.
He said all the McCain stories about “songbird” are BS, and McCain served honorably. So much of the other is what communist reporters say he said. Who do you trust, a MOH-winning American or communist reporters?
He laced them up and served. I did a RVN tour, and I know few real ‘Nam vets (other then REMFs, like guys that sat around safe bases in safe places like Thailand and effed the local $2 hooch mamas every night) who would criticize his military service, or the service of anyone who spent time in the HH with a broken arm that was never treated. How bad was that broken arm? He still can’t use it 45 years later.
Again, I hate McCain’s politics, but if we just repeat the same unverified “war stories”, are we any better the DU faggots?
Dislike his stupid RINO politics all you (we) want. But lay off the BS military stuff. I left some good parts of my knee over there, and going after another’s service, with nothing but unverified rumors is sacred ground to many of us.
How did McCain improperly eject from his plane?
IBNC
The fact that McCain conspired with John Kerry to hide MIA and POW records negates any hero status he might have had.
P.S., and with all respect to your Blue Zoomie service, you (and all of us real mil vets here) know better than to repeat war stories.
We are ALL better than this.
And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner-of-war record of a man who was near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison 1967: both arms broken, left leg broken, left shoulder broken by a civilian with a rifle butt.
He was eventually taken to the same rat-infested hospital room I had occupied two years earlier, and, like me, he had surgery on his leg. By then the Vietnamese had discovered that his father was the ranking admiral in the Pacific Fleet, and he received an offer that, as far as I know, was made to no other American prisoner: immediate release, no strings attached. He refused, thereby sentencing himself to four more years in a cell.
George "Bud" Day and Orson Swindle, fellow POWs, told PolitiFact that POWs sometimes were forced to talk when they were tortured, but they tried to tell lies to mislead their captors.
"We were all tortured and we wrote confessions under the pressure of torture," said Swindle, who was a cellmate with McCain and is active in his campaign. "John McCain never collaborated with the enemy. He, like every one of us, submitted to severe torture. John McCain did nothing dishonorable. He was heroic."
[...]
[On the original flyers slandering McCain:]
Day, a Medal of Honor winner who also is supporting McCain's campaign, said the flyer is "the most outrageous f------ lie I've ever heard."
Stories about McCain’s actions as a POW have long circulated in the media. I am sure Trump has learned of them. The truth is, McCain’s conduct as a POW violated The Code:
Consisting of six articles in simple language, the United States Military Code of Conduct orders American military personnel to resist capture at all cost and if captured; to attempt to escape, to give the enemy no information other than name, rank, serial number and date of birth, to take charge if senior, to obey orders of the seniors, to accept no favors from the enemy and to make no written or oral statements disloyal to the United States.
“A lot of people don’t know… that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity,” wrote American blogger John Aravosis. The reason such information does not come out is that McCain’s “hero” perception is too well established to be upset by the information filtering out that speaks otherwise.
ON Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press began quoting him giving specific military information. One report read, “To a question of the correspondent, McCain answered: ‘My assignment to the Oriskany, I told myself, was due to serious losses in pilots, which were sustained by this aircraft carrier (due to its raids on the North Vietnam territory - VNA) and which necessitated replacements. From 10 to 12 pilots were transferred like me from the Forrestal to the Oriskany. Before I was shot down, we had made several sorties. Altogether, I made about 23 flights over North Vietnam.’” In that report, McCain was quoted describing the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the order of which his attack was supposed to take place.
A declassified DOD document reports an interview between POW McCain and Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist who was living in Cuba at the time. The interview was published in the Havana Granma in January 1970.
According to the DOD report, the meeting between Barral and McCain (which was photographed by the Vietnamese) took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi. During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with his interrogator.
While talking with Barral, McCain seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by failing to evade answering questions “to the utmost” of his ability when he, according to the DOD report, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in school.
1999 - March 25, 1999, The Phoenix New Times: Ted Guy and Gordon “Swede” Larson, two former POWs, who were McCain’s senior ranking officers (SRO’s), at the time McCain says he was tortured in solitary confinement, told the New Times that while they could not guarantee that McCain was not physically harmed, they doubted it.
“Between the two of us, it’s our belief, and to the best of our knowledge, that no prisoner was beaten or harmed physically in that camp ,” Larson says. “. . . My only contention with the McCain deal is that while he was at The Plantation, to the best of my knowledge and Ted’s knowledge, he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp. It was the camp that people were released from.”
Mr. Shoebat has a beautiful gift for words.
http://conservativebyte.com/2015/07/fact-checking-the-trump-mccain-fight/
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2013/05/29/john-mccain-war-hero-or-something-less/
http://polidics.com/ethics/fellow-pows-say-john-mccain-was-a-coward-and-a-traitor-in-viet-nam.html
http://www.vvof.org/mccain_hides.htm
http://antiwar.com/blog/2008/09/27/mccain-betrayed-viet-pows/
http://takimag.com/article/judas_mccain_guy_somerset/print#axzz3gOCRtr7x
Ross Perot's running mate?
Steve Ritchie, the only USAF ace in SEA, said Bud Day was the “realest of the real deals”
Why? Because you would find that the article is not critical of Trump, but of McCain -- and brutally so.
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