My sense is probably not going to be in the majority on this. Anyone who went through that kind of hell gets my respect, gratitude and kind consideration, pretty much regardless of what they did while there.
However ... I will hold someone responsible for what they say and do now, in regards to their past. If they lie now and claim heroism beyond what occurred, or deny and cover up more human responses which did occur, then that gives me reason to doubt their current integrity.
You may well be right that my view won't sell well with the public.
This compulsion many of us have (even I had, a couple paragraphs above ;) to always start critiques of McCain with a statement honoring his service and heroism is beginning to feel to me like a strange variant of Political Correctness.
In any case, I'm not voting on someone for a Medal, but for President.
Yes, I completely concur with that line of thought, however, if these stories are true (and former Vietnam POWs have been saying these things for many years) then McCain should have become a beer distributor in AZ and stayed out of politics. Politics is a dirty business where all the skeletons in ones closet have a way of being outed and in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.
I sympathize with what McCain endured in Vietnam but I do not find someone who turned on his fellow prisoners and his country to be a "war hero" and because there is this cloud hanging over McCain (among other reasons) I will never, never vote for him.
Exactly. I arrived at the same conclusion a while ago. It's "comparing apples with oranges."