With all due to respect to the Senator and to you, McCain's experiences in Hanoi have absolutely nothing to do with the veracity of his policies on global warming, immigration or free speech.
That he was tortured doesn't make his wrong-headed policies right.
McCain will remain more man - yes, more man - than most certainly all of us - simply by his upholding of DUTY, HONOR AND COUNTRY during five-and-a-half years of the most brutal torture imaginable.
McCain could have gained early release from the Hanoi Hilton because the N. Vietnamese knew it would be a propaganda coup to “in good faith” to release the son of the U. S. fleet's admiral - a bitch of a propagandistic lie that the U. S. media would have obligingly promulgated if McCain had opted to be released.
McCain did NOT opt for this. HE DECLINED IT.
He subsequently went through the war in that hell hole alongside the other American and allied prisoners, and in two years of solitary confinement in a shoe box of a cell because he would not cooperate with the enemy - OUR ENEMY AND FREEDOM'S ENEMY.
People on this site say, “Yes, McCain has a good war record, but......”
No, he doesn't just have a “good war record”.
He and his fellow prisoners UPHELD the HONOR of America and of EVERYONE in it - including progenitors and descendants.
And, yes, including even the anonymous keyboard warriors on this site and other sites whose anonymity and technological toys enable them to casually slander good people, many of whose lives have gone to making possible the liberty of these very unfortunates.
By all means, criticize McCain's policies, his governmental record. But do it dispassionately and accurately. Else be seen as nothing more than a coward. McCain's sins are better known to him than to us; and all of us - everyone - will be sorted out not far down the line.