Posted on 01/10/2005 4:54:32 PM PST by GoldenOrchid
Defense officials say that the Donald H. Rumsfeld-John McCain relationship, never the closest or friendliest, really soured at a private meeting the two had last summer. The strong-willed defense secretary and the equally hard-nosed Republican senator from Arizona, both ex-Navy pilots and hawks on Iraq, were supposed to make peace over two nagging issues. Mr. McCain did not believe Mr. Rumsfeld was adequately paying attention to, or disclosing information about, the Boeing tanker lease scandal Mr. McCain took to the Senate floor Nov. 19 and read e-mail excerpts and called the Boeing deal "a case of either a systemic failure in procurement oversight, willful blindness or rank corruption." Several defense officials now say that Mr. McCain has been correct to press the Pentagon on making more public disclosures on the Boeing deal. A Bush administration official said last week that the basic disagreement is that Mr. McCain believes the scandal is broader than the actions of Mrs. Druyun and that culpable Pentagon officials should be fired, while the Department of Defense does not at this point.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
That's all well and good, but how can you justify McCain holding up Pentagon appointments during wartime????????
http://www.usvetdsp.com/mcprsrel.htm
Presidential candidate John McCain's pledge to release "all 350 pages" of his medical records is not enough . . .
McCain's POW files must also be released
Candidate McCain claims his experience as a prisoner of the communists for 5 1/2 years (three of which he spent in solitary confinement) better qualifies him to be President of the United States. He has forged that experience along with his military record deeply into his campaign.
McCain has admitted that his Vietnamese captors considered him a "special prisoner," the "crown prince" of U.S. POWs, because his father, Adm. John McCain, was commander of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam.
He has admitted that because he was considered such a "special prisoner," he was targeted for intense indoctrination sessions by Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban intelligence apparatuses operating in U.S. POW camps.
According to McCain, the indoctrination sessions included nonstop brutal beatings and threats to withhold medical attention if he did not cooperate.
McCain admits that on his fourth day of captivity, he broke and began cooperating with the communists.
"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Pages 193-194, Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain.
How much more cooperation did POW McCain give his communist interrogators?
It is incumbent upon presidential candidate McCain to prove to the American people that the 5 1/2 years he spent at the mercy of communist interrogators did not make him mentally unstable and that the Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Cubans have nothing in their secret files about his behavior as a prisoner they could use to blackmail a President John McCain.
Candidate McCain must explain why, during a May 1993 meeting with Vietnamese officials in Hanoi, he and former POW Pete Peterson (now U.S. ambassador to Vietnam) asked the Vietnamese to keep "Vietnamese files in their possession pertaining to American POWs who were released in 1973 available ONLY to Defense Intelligence Agency researchers."
Garnet Bill Bell, special assistant to Gen. Thomas W. Needham, commander of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting, was present at that meeting along with several other Americans.
The Vietnamese, according to Bell, agreed to keep the files, which were apparently extensive, confidential but threatened to release their files on former POW Marine Private Robert Garwood if he continued "to say bad things about them and accuse them of holding living American prisoners of war."
Candidate McCain must explain why he wants those files kept secret.
Candidate McCain is a strong advocate for bringing Bosnian and Yugoslavian war criminals before a war crimes tribunal, but is opposed to any kind of war crimes investigation of the Vietnamese. Investigations and subsequent trials could bring to justice the Vietnamese torturers known by the American POWs as "the Bug, Slopehead, the Prick, the Soft Soap Fairy, Rabbit, the Cat, Zorba" and many others that were responsible for the murder of at least 55 U.S. POWs and the brutal torture of hundreds of others.
Candidate McCain must explain why he refuses to ask for a war crimes investigation of the Vietnamese, his former captors.
In November 1991, when Tracy Usry, the former chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, he revealed that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. Sen. McCain became outraged, interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets."
Yet, former U.S. POW Laird Gutterson, who was held with McCain, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that McCain told him the Soviets were involved when McCain needed special medical attention as a result of his shootdown in 1967.
Former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin testified under oath before the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that the KGB interrogated U.S. POWs in Vietnam.
Gen. Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a "high-ranking naval officer," who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television.
Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war, he had the authority to "read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly.
Sen. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he rushed forward to the witness table and warmly embraced Col. Bui Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.
Candidate McCain must answer whether or not he had any contact with the Soviets while he was a prisoner of the communists.
Candidate McCain must answer why he warmly embraced Col. Bui Tin, one of his former interrogators.
During the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs hearings, McCain opposed all efforts by the POW/MIA families and activists to have the Select Committee expand its investigation to study how successful the Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban interrogation apparatuses were at exploiting American prisoners of war. During the Korean War, one out of every three U.S. POWs collaborated.
Candidate McCain must answer why he was opposed to such an investigation.
A McCain POW timeline proving that McCain's collaborations with the enemy continued over a three year period can be found on the internet at: http://www.usvetdsp.com/mcianhro.htm
Is John McCain a real life Manchurian Candidate? The original 1992 John McCain: The Manchurain Candidate report can be found on the internet at:
http://www.usvetdsp.com/manchuan.htm
Re a Rumsfeld-McCain feud, I suspect that it stems from some sort of envy by McCain.
Bump to that. Even though illegal use of the pills Cindy Money, er, McCain stole are classified by the government as Schedule 2 drugs, which puts them in the same category as opium--which carries a MINIMUM penalty of one year in prison--Senator Clean's wife is little Miss Treatment program.
And let's not forget his first wife, who had been seriously injured and crippled in a motor vehicle accident during his confinement in Vietnam, whom he divorced. Of course, he remarried to escape the pain of the divorce--a month later.
I was thinking the same thing about Little Tommy's wife. I thought she was involved with leasing tankers at a huge cost to the Govt. when it would have been cheaper to buy them.
Need to do a Google or something.
<< Maybe Rummy should have asked if McCain remembered the Keating Five scandal. Or asked him what kind of deal he made with clinton to get the DEA off his wife's back. Or asked him what the payoff was for selling his fellow POW/MIAs down the river.
McCain posing as an Untouchable is worth a laugh. >>
[All] Spot on!
I'm thinking Bush was trying to bank some good will from Daschle by playing ball with his wife.
Thoughts on post 42?
Good going on finding this info. i was not aware of this, but does it not surprise anyone ? this stuff just sickens me, the waste and outright Stealing from the Till of the USA taxpayers....
There are hundreds of major purchases, and leases, that the DoD has every year, and many take years to consummate.
In fact, I would not be surprised if this deal was largely a fait accompli before Dubya (and Rummy) even assumed office.
McCain talking about it with Hannity right now.
Sheesh, McCain just referred to himself in the third person...I hate that crap. (I'm Bob Dole!)
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