Posted on 06/05/2010 6:47:58 AM PDT by all the best
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain’s military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.
The Pentagon had been withholding significant information...
(Excerpt) Read more at amconmag.com ...
McPain is not what the people of AZ have believed since 1982, but I don’t think their minds can be taught the truth.
He did not insist on Obama eligibility because he knew that would bring the displeasure of the national media, which he probably foolishly thought would be fair toward him considering his slavish devotion to past liberal causes.
Had his father not been an admiral it is probably that McCain would have never made or kept flight status.
What is McCain's motive for suppressing the POW/MIA issue?
I understand 90 percent of congressional votes are unanimous and unrecorded.
I buy it
This has been reported, quietly, for years.In fact McCain refused to meet with families of MIA’s and IIRC supported closing the door on further Gov’t action to look for MIA’s so the USA could start trading with communist VietNam. a policy driven by John kerry and which benefited kerry’s cousin to the tune of a billion.
You can buy it or not, but it is the truth.
Search the fR archives for similar threads.
John McCain led the charge to cover up our missing POWs/MIAs.
We knew in 1973 we did not get everyone back, only about 50-60%.
By 1992, McCain and Kerry oput the kabbash on the investigation.
And McCain threw the 2008 election.
So screw him. Hero, my eye.
This piece is reprinted with permission from The Nation Institute.
Talk about a red flag. It could all be true, and I, too, found Kerry's and McCain's behavior in those hearings weird. But I don't buy Schanburg's hypothesis for silence by so many otherwise principled men, such as Reagan. If it was all hushed up in a massive effort at butt-covering on behalf of previous administrations and the intelligence branches, well, butt-covering isn't particularly effective as a long-term strategy. It creates a juicy bit of news for someone to break, once he's out of government.
Why hasn't this issue turned up in more memoirs by former officials from various administrations?
I can believe that Nixon was a traitor...
Ford was a traitor.....
Kissinger was a traitor....
Cheney was a traitor....
Carter was a traitor....
Reagan was a traitor....
Or I can believe that you're a nutball
You're a nutball.
The POW-MIA issue is a huge can of worms. It is so highly charged politically, that one cannot really determine what is real and what is fabricated. Shanberg, like his other journalist friends of the time, gave Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge a pass for most of their murdering regime. When I come across anything written by him or his buddies, I skip right on over it.
As a POW-MIA investigator in Bangkok from 1992-1994, I came across so much fabricated stuff, lies and outright scams that it made me physically ill. The office I worked was so politically motivated that it was unbearable. Things were never as they seemed as too many politicians were trying to make a name for themselves over the issue while self-appointed “POW experts” were running around with all kinds of stories. The Laotians lied to us constantly. The Vietnamese released information only as it fit their agenda. It was a nightmare of intrigue, scam artists and coverups.
I went into Laos twice with DIA teams searching for downed aircraft and interviewing locals for information. That was the only thing good about the assignment. The rest in Bangkok was pure political with we who were assigned to the office playing like puppets on a string to the politicians like McCain and Kerry. Worst assignment I ever had.
After retiring, I moved to Cambodia for three years and met many of the journalists involved in writing about the Khmer Rouge regime. Most of these losers could be found at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club sitting around telling each other how great they were.
IMHO, there were no live Americans left behind in Laos. The jungle is totally unforgiving and the people so poor they can barely live in it themselves. Read Dieter Denglers Escape From Laos to find out just how miserable the living conditions were. I had the privilege of interviewing one of the Thais who had been captured and put in the same camp as Dengler. He was eventually recaptured after the prisoners all escaped and then sent to a camp closer to the Thai border where he was released when it was overrun by Thai Special Forces. Also watch Rescue Dawn which is a movie about Dengler’s capture and escape. It is pretty accurate.
The alleged rescue attempt by Bo Gritz (Velvet Hammer) is questionable at best. Met ole Bo at a gun show in Tulsa about ten years ago. Knew all about him but did not tell him who I was. He was, IMHO, a joke. He was kicked out Thailand for playing games using the POW as a cover. What a mess that whole thing was.
I do not buy any of it. Never found a POW. Never found any reliable information about a POW. Almost all the stuff people quote as “evidence” was nothing more than sightings of the same people over and over and counted as different sightings. Bobby Garwood was spotted many times plus a black army guy who went awol and was eventually killed in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge and dumped down a well was seen by several people.
There have always been true believers but that does not mean what they believe is true.
Yeah—reading the responses above, and responses in general...
Everyone has his price...and everyone has his own level of pc!
You rub my back, and I’ll rub yours—that’s the prevailing mo...
The socialist, Alinsky in his introduction to his better known book paid tribute to the originator of all this bs, lucifer.
The good book calls this Satan’s World—and that’s the name of this toon!
Keep yer eye on the Ideal, not the worldly appearance.
Semper Fidelis
Dick Gaines
**********
Another hit piece on McCain.
McCain a willing accomplice in the coronation of the “historical” presidency of obama. If there is any one item pointing to the compromise of our electoral system it is this and the people who pull the strings. The way McCain “gave up” when he had momentum over obama is clue enough. The mental peregrinations that had to have happened to McCain have warped him for life. He should be regarded as a victim of communist torture, and as such, compromised. obama a useful idiot for the same people.
Ping!
Along with Reagan, Bill Casey... who of all people would not condone communist success. But he was old and tired then and involved in current ops.
Very conclusive. lol
Bridge for sale. Submit sealed bids.
I taped and watched most of the 1993 POW/MIA hearings. McCain did everything he could to suppress any evidence that POW/MIAs might still be alive in Vietnam. A hostile witness to McCain was anyone trying to present evidence that men might still be there. His behavior was as described in the article, hostile and bizarre, suggesting someone with significant psychological problems.
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