McCain: Don't Probe Kerry's Atrocities

NewsMax.com ^ | 5/11/04 | Carl Limbacher and the newsmax.com staff

[kattracks]

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who says the Bush administration needs to come clean about the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal as quickly as possible, said Monday that he didn't think it was a good idea to investigate Sen. John Kerry's admission that he committed war crimes in Vietnam.

"I just hate to keep going back and revisiting the Vietnam War over and over again," McCain told radio host Sean Hannity, when asked if Kerry and his supporters weren't being hypocritical in calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal over the Iraq prison flap.

"The very people who are so up in arms who are calling for Don Rumsfeld's head are supporting a guy who admits to burning down villages of innocent civilians," Hannity pressed. "So, I mean, is there an inconsistency there?"

McCain responded meekly, "I'm sure that there is."

After listening to audio from a 1971 interview where Kerry admitted he violated the Geneva Convention in Vietnam, McCain said he didn't think the issue was worth investigating given the strife it would cause.

"There's still so many of our veterans who feel so emotional about this issue that it digs up all of this controversy," he explained.

The Arizona Republican was far less timid about questions on whether Secretary Rumsfeld knew that Iraqi detainees were being abused at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Asked if he didn't agree that Rumsfeld had been a strong defense secretary, McCain equivocated.

"I agree with all of that but there is one strong caveat, OK," he told Hannity.

"And that is let's find out what the chain of command was, who gave the orders, who, if anybody, instructed these guards, what was their relationship with the interrogators, what was the story with the private contractors - all of those things have to be cleared up."

[pepperhead]

What makes McCain a hero?

You forgot he divorced his wife to marry a rich woman.

[Condor51]

Sean asked the wrong guy about Kerry's self-confessed war crimes. There's something really weird between these two, if I didn't know better, I'd think they were lovers.

Also, do NOT ever forget that McCain and his butt buddy Kerry were the Senators who personally quashed the investigation into POW's still being held by Communist 'Vietnam'. They said in effect, nothing there, no POW's, let's move on.

Shortly thereafter Kerry's brother-in-law closed a huge deal with the Communists. It put millions in his pocket!

And who knows, maybe the two John's swap wives? Lotta perv's in Congress. That much we found out from the Chandra Levy murder - Condit wasn't 'playing alone'. Other Congress-critters were doing 'it' with him.

(too bad she couldn't didn't name names)

[TexasCajun]

I've said it before.

Having John McCain around is like having a permanent case of hemorrhoids!

[Hildy]

McCain is just being consistent on this matter. That's all.

[Gone_Postal]

mccain must be having 2nd thoughts about VP slot

[LADY J]

"What makes McCain a hero?"

Good question. Maybe a FReeper has that answer.

How many planes did he crack-up and what's the story on his coming out of the concentration camp with gained weight - while others came out like skeletons.

[bondjamesbond]

How many planes did he crack-up...

I believe he made "Ace"... for the other side.

[mrustow]

Please forgive me for the interruption and for the typeface, but we need all FReepers, their friends, lovers, enemies, relatives, spouses, exes, acquaintances, strangers, debtors, creditors, colleagues, bosses and subordinates to sign The Federalist's petition to save Don Rumsfeld! There are currently 73,284 signatures, but we need at least 250,000, and ideally one million more.

Thank you!

RUMMY Petition

We now return to the regularly scheduled, McCaveat thread.

[iconoclast]

Can someone stick a probe into McPain's head and see if he actually has anything in there???

Have you had such treatment?

[Deb]

With all this fuss about Vietnam, I'm sure McCain is terrified that at some point the tape he made as a POW denouncing his country will surface. He shouldn't worry. Harold Ickes has it in a safe place and it will stay there as long as the good Senator keeps walking out on speeches by James Inhoff and keeps undermining the president on the war.

[cajun-jack]

we would probably find out kerry paid a "look alike" to go in his place and he never went to nam at all.

[LADY J]

What a sordid bunch our 'hate America first' politicians have become. Each day is like reading a tragedy of our country.

[FR_addict]

Thanks for the information on McCain's first marriage.

As far as the weight gain, I've heard that story before and tend to believe it, but I don't know where it originated from. Perhaps his medical records. If you have any source for the weight gain while he was a prisoner, I sure would appreciate it. He and Kerry seem to have similar personalities.

I think the abuse by the Americans was atrocious, but I don't think it was as widespread as they are claiming. Others evidently said they were given an order to soften the prisoners and refused to do it. The ones that did are claiming they were only following orders, but there are pictures of the soldiers having sex with each other. Do they want us to believe that they were ordered to have sex with each other?

The videotape and story of the beheading of the American captive puts the whole story of the soldiers abuse in perspective.

We in no way approve, but the terrorists are happy and excited about their barbarianism. It took 5 slices to the neck to behead the man. Evidently, his screams can be heard on the tape.

Kerry said he committed war crimes and I want it investigated. We need to find out if he commited horrific acts or if he is just a liar.

Why didn't Congress investigate at the time?

[Deb]

It's absolutely disgusting.

[PhiKapMom]

I am with you -- personally think his time as a POW is suspect -- something is wrong when other POWs do not like John McCain. He also should never have been a pilot as he kept crashing planes!

Will `Ace' McCain Flame Out Again?
By Kelly Patricia O Meara

Over the years he's played many roles and worn many titles, including Navy aviator, prisoner of war, hero, congressman, U.S. senator, Washington insider, maverick outsider and, now, presidential candidate. But the one title of which few are aware is that of "service ace."

John Sidney McCain III is known among many of his Vietnam flight buddies as "Ace" McCain. This title has not been bestowed upon McCain because he destroyed five enemy aircraft. On the contrary: It was five on our side - in fact, five of his own. Since throwing his hat into the presidential ring, the fact that McCain was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy nearly at the bottom of his class has been publicized. His star-crossed flying, on the other hand, remains unknown to most.

Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about Annapolis graduates and their tours in Vietnam, wrote that McCain "learned to fly at Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it." Timberg counts himself a friend of McCain and has written a McCain biography.

It wasn't long after arriving in Pensacola that McCain racked up the first of his five crashes, beginning in 1958, on his way to becoming a "reverse ace." As told by Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom."

There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft. According to one of McCain's former flight instructors, "The engine was removed from the aircraft that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller installed. [It] was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So the theory of engine failure was proven false."

The instructor added that McCain was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a number of Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head even as a junior naval officer."

The second of McCain's crashes occurred while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula," reports Timberg, "he took out some power lines [reminiscent of the 1998 incident in which a Marine Corps jet sliced through the cables of a gondola at an Italian ski resort, killing 20] which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."

Crash three occurred when McCain was returning from flying a trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. According to Timberg, McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout." He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet, he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."

By 1967, McCain was ready for battle and assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting for takeoff, a freak accident occurred when a rocket slammed into the exterior fuel tank of McCain's plane. Miraculously, McCain escaped from the burning aircraft, but dozens of his shipmates were killed and injured in the explosions that followed.

McCain's final downing came just three months later when his A-4 Skyhawk was hit by antiaircraft artillery over Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi, North Vietnam. McCain spent the next five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and, upon return to the United States in 1973, like the other returning POWs, McCain became an instant hero. The POWs had been treated abominably, yet stood up to their torturers and were deserving of the accolades they received. But some questioned the number and types of medals bestowed upon "Ace" McCain, the son of the admiral commanding in the Pacific as well as the grandson of another admiral.

"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs - the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys - grunts on the ground - who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

"John McCain," says another Navy pilot and acquaintance of that era, "was the kind of guy you wanted to room with - not fly with. He was reckless, and that's critical when you start thinking about who's going to be the president." The old pilot laughs, and then continues: "But the Navy accident rate was cut in half the day John McCain was shot down."

On a more serious note, however, there has been no discussion of what actions were or were not taken in dealing with McCain after each of the aircraft losses. Neither McCain's senatorial nor campaign offices returned Insight's calls on these matters. But a Navy insider notes that "after every such incident an inquiry is conducted to conclude the cause of the crash. If it were anyone other than the admiral's son, his wings would have been pulled. But that's where that kind of father comes in handy."

"Thank God not all pilots are like McCain," jokes another pilot, "or the government would be buying a hell of a lot more planes."

[festus]

Is it possible to throw this guy out of the GOP ?

If so how do we start ?

[dalebert]

I think McCain still thinks he was owed the presidency just because of his military career. Wonder what Kerry has promised him?

[Denver Ditdat]

4Q, McStain.