and negates all the other testimonies from the other officers that were held prisoner with him - and also were subject to torture.
So who do we believe = this guard or one of our most decorated and admired military men, the man that shared a cell and torture with McCain: Col. Day, the most decorated service man since Gen. Douglas MacArthur, with more than 70 medals?
excerpts of what Col. Day says:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/08/mccains-former-hanoi-cell-mate-describes-character-in-deplorable-conditions/
"Day said the first time he saw McCain, he believed the future senator was close to death and that the only reason for the chance encounter was part of a Vietnamese ploy to break the morale of U.S. servicemen already in captivity.
“I took one look at him, and my brain instantly said, ‘They dropped this guy off on me to claim that we let him die,’” Day said. “He was just emaciated. Very, very skinny, in this full body cast. Just filthy.”
The U.S. soldiers were held sometimes five to a cell, barely big enough for two.
“He had this gimpy knee where he’d busted his knee, this arm had been fractured in a couple places, he’d been bayoneted in the leg, this arm was out at the shoulder and, in fact, during that time it was out at the shoulder so long it wore a hole in this bone,” Day said.
During captivity, they were tortured mercilessly, Day said, describing one tactic that McCain has also recalled.
“They roped me under the arms, tied my hands behind my back, ran another rope to that, got me up on a chair, threw that rope up over a rafter and jerked the chair out from under me and your own weight just tears your body apart,” he said.
Day’s broken arm was re-broken during torture so he would never fly again. McCain played physical therapist.
“John said, ‘Well we’ll gather up some bamboo, and he was in a bandage on his leg at that time. So I got some strips of bamboo, smuggled them into the room, John put his foot in my arm pit and pulled on my wrist ’till we could get the bone forced back down … it wasn’t exactly perfect but it worked out he got it back to where it was functional,” Day said.
...“John would help me. … John would pull my fingers out straight. They would just instantly recurl. And finally, one morning, I had just the slightest bit of movement in this hand — finger — and we both cried,” Day said.
McCain, whose military record was released to the Associated Press on Wednesday, received 17 commendations over his career from 1951-81. They included the Silver Star for his conduct in captivity. He also received the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and a Bronze Star.
Day said by any humane standard, McCain would have been a good candidate for early release from the camp, but that wasn’t in his playbook.
“It also wasn’t in his playbook to die. In fact he quickly became a leader.”
Can you picture obamiation in those circumstances?
“The Cuban (Yes, a Cuban guest torturer) took on the Baron (a USAF Major) as a special project. He intended to break him bad. His prestige as Comrade Big Brother was on the line. He tortured Baron and took him to a room we called the coal bin, on the other side of the camp. He tied him up the same way they did me (Lt. Chuck Rice USN) my first day and left him like that overnight. Another POW held in the next cell heard what happened.
Baron screamed all night, the POW said, until three in the morning. Then he stopped, didn’t make a further sound. Next morning, when the Cuban and the Vietnamese came, they were visibly stunned by what they found. Baron looked seventy years old. His hair had turned white overnight. He had snapped his wire and became a doddering old man . . .
He came back, his eyes blank and lie in the fetal position. We had to force feed him, but he fought and lost weight, down to about 90 pounds. Finally they took him out of our room and put him in solitary. We kept up with him for a while but eventually lost track. He died around Christmas 1970.”