Posted on 04/29/2008 10:07:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton.
As we ate near the Days' home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history.
When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal.
Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Sorry, but this isn’t Republicanism. This is people seeing that we have a choice between four years of (at best) Jimmy Carter or four years of (at worst) FDR, and we’re picking FDR.
I asked him for a citation quite awhile ago and have gotten no answer. I think that if McCain had done such a thing it would be common knowledge among conservatives the way Leaky Leahy's misdeeds and Clinton's sales to China are.
Let’s not forget, counterpunch, that both Hillary and Obama voted against Roberts and Alito, while McCain supported both.
I don’t recall McCain attempting suicide (you may be thinking of fellow naval aviator Jim Stockdale) but he was definitely worked over very badly, and had opportunities to make it stop that he did not take.
In his book, McCain says he was ashamed that he gave them the name of his squadron (something they certainly already knew) but when he was asked to name officers in his squadron he gave them the names of the front line of the Green Bay Packers, and they bought it.
You’re 100% correct about people breaking under the sort of torture that the guys in the Hilton were receiving. When I was at Air force basic they told us that the Hilton had reulted in a complete rewrite of what pilots were expected to do when captured, because it was certain that the enemy would take the vast majority of them beyond their point of resistance.
In his own book he admits giving the Cong classified information that put many in uniform in greater danger than they were already in, just to get preferential treatment.
I haven't read the whole book, but as I recall the only "preferential treatment" he ever acquired with information was medical treatment when he first was captured. This was treatement without which he would have died. And let's not forget that THEY WERE REQUIRED TO GIVE HIM TREATMENT BY INTERNATIONAL LAW AND USED IT AS LEVERAGE INSTEAD. And what did he give them? The name of his squadron, which they almost certainly knew anyway. Then he gave them the front line of the Green Bay Packers when they asked for pilots' names, and he continued to lie to them whenever he was interrogated.
I would also note that most people broke under torture in the Hilton. There's a reason the definitive book about it is called "When Hell Was In Session."
BTW, look up the Keating Five on wikipedia and ask yourself if McCain's actions even approach the least disgusting Clinton scandal. More importantly, Robert S. Bennett, the special investigator, recommended that McCain be cleared, and says he is certain the ethics committee only went after McCain to avoid having only Democrats involved in the scandal.
Let’s see how much good policy and good decision making in a crisis comes out of Obama being a “community organizer.” Man, that’s real impressive, and his voting record is so much more conservative and sensible than McCain’s!
McCain=Amnesty=Destruction of this country. This isn’t about McCain’s resume or personal experiences. It is about his policies.
Welcome to FR, by the way.
Actually, as much as I like Governor Romney, he came from wealth. George Romney did very well for himself.
You make a good point. FDR was a liberal but I’d take him over Jimmy Carter any day.
LOL!
Do you have a citation for item 7?
Are you aware that the special investigator in the Keating Five case recommended that McCain be cleared, and says he believes the reason he wasn’t cleared was to avoid the embarassment of only having Dems involved in the scandal?
Without looking it up, can you tell me what McCain did that was so scandalous?
What it means is that there's no evidence that a Dem President gets us a lot of congressional seats. Voting on the basis of that theory is unwarranted, and doubly so in a time of war when the other choice is a clueless chihuahua.
Well then, you'd better pick a country to emigrate to, because neither of his opponents has a sane immigration policy. Plus, we've already killed amnesty once with a pro-amnesty president in office, we can do it again. What we can't do is avoid losing the war if we have a Dem in the White House and leading both houses of Congress.
There is overwhelming evidence, which I gave to you. Clinton 1994, Carter 1980, Johnson 1966, Truman 1946, FDR 1938, Wilson 1918 & 1920, Cleveland 1894, et al. But if you refuse to look and keep up with this mindless ra-ra crap, what can I tell you ?
I’m not telling you NOT to vote for McCain, I’m just telling you exactly what we’ll get from a RINO President. If you get a gargantuan rodent Congress, McCain will have his hands tied in engaging in foreign policy, too. So there goes that, your #1 argument for electing him, right out the window.
That's exactly right. All three favor amnesty with McCain, the Amnesty King, being the ringleader of the past two amnesty bills, i.e., S 2611 in 2006 and McCain-Kennedy in 2007. I won't emigrate. I won't vote for any of them under any circumstance and be complicit in the destruction of this country. I will continue to fight amnesty in Congress as I have the past several years as an immigration activist. We are currently forming a national coalition of immigration groups to try to make immigration a high profile item in the 2008 general election and to form the base for the anticipated fight in Congress no matter who is elected in November.
Plus, we've already killed amnesty once with a pro-amnesty president in office, we can do it again.
We? What did YOU do to stop it? I can tell you that this issue is far from dead. The open border types tried just several months ago to pass the Dream Act and to attach a guest worker program to the Ag bill. As someone who is intimately involved in this issue including lobbying on the Hill, it is going to be much more difficult to stop amnesty the next time around. And if McCain is in the WH, it will be much harder to fight. Many of the RINOs will support McCain just like they did in 2006 when in a Rep controlled Senate, they passed S 2611 with the Reps voting AGAINST IT 32-23 and the Dems voting FOR it, 38-4.
What we can't do is avoid losing the war if we have a Dem in the White House and leading both houses of Congress.
First, it is very likely the Dems will increase their control of Congress. And in the unlikely event that McCain wins, you can bet that they will pursue an even stronger opposition to the war, including cutting off funding just like the Dem congress did to Nixon and Ford on Vietnam.
If Bush/McCain were really concerned about the national security of this country, they would have secured the border and completely implemented the US VISIT program.
If amnesty passes, everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The statement I had referred to is posted here for your convenience:
Comparing the heroism of John McCain to the opportunism of Barack Obama is like comparing night and day.
In the first place, heroism is maintained only if the hero remains true. Many years of betrayals have largely negated any heroism that had been to McCain's credit. One cannot be hero and traitor at the same time, and it is the treachery that is remembered. Just ask Benedict Arnold.
Secondly, the statement implies the false premise that Obama is more of an opportunist than McCain is, when in fact they are both opportunists of the highest order.
Okay. But McRINO has a LONG way to go
to make ME comfie with voting for him.
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Verrrrry Interrrresting!
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