Somehow I don't believe McCain to be some amazing exception.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
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 ...
There are two factors involved: 1. personal, and 2. political.
1. As far as McCain's own personal motivations I can only speculate - we aren't privy to the inner working of his mind (thank God). And since such speculation is unprovable and will lead only to endless tit for tat projections of our own mutual opinions onto McCain, it is irrelevant.
2. However, the political factors are not a matter of speculation but of fact. By the early 1990s there was tremendous pressure building on the US government from powerful politically connected business and investment interests to "normalize" relations with Vietnam. The reason for this is that Vietnam was entering a phase of tremendous economic recovery and infrastructure rebuilding, especially Haiphong harbor and the Hanoi area, and these companies wanted to be able to bid on and compete for the business. They couldn't do this as long as the POW/MIA issues was unresolved and until formal diplomatic relations with Vietnam were restored. The issue just needed to "go away".
In short, the service and lives of these men, and the solace due their families were simply not as important as the fact that there was political benefit to be earned and a lot of money to be made for a lot of powerful interests by simply sweeping them under the rug and moving on. Thus you had the ostensible "opposites" of McCain and Kerry joining forces for shared political expedience regardless of what their theoretically differing psychological "motivations" might have been.
I tend to agree with that statement. If you look at the picture that McCain paints of himself - and then take a look at his actions - there is a HUGE disconnect! Something is definitely wrong with the picture.
Why doesn't he just declare himself to be a Democrat? I think it is because he is a mole, a usurper - a traitor.
Unfortunately, it is true. We don’t absolutely know how many POWs and MIAs were still alive at the time, but it is true that McCain used his reputation as a heroic POW to cover it up and open relations with Communist North Vietnam, as a way of furthering his career.
I followed it very carefully at the time it happened. It was totally disgusting. As I have sometimes said, when not keeping my mouth shut during the McCain-Palin campaign, it was the single worst thing he ever did. He betrayed his fellow POW-MIAs.
Why? Because the higher political powers wanted a credible hero to lead this effort, and McCain happily went along with them—much as he has done every since on other issues such as McCain-Feingold and McCain-Kennedy.
Beyond the question of honor (and I am not trying to minimize that) there is also the question of compromise. Of course this has been pointed out before. To the extent that McCain is dishonorable is the same extent to which he may have been compromised. The two issues are inextricably related but are not exactly the same thing. For example, if McCain were no longer in public life it wouldn’t matter as much as it does now if he has or had been compromised.
Somehow I don't believe McCain to be some amazing exception.
Proof?
I do too. Expecially since 20 years earlier, the Vietnamese did the exact same thing with French soldiers and returned them after the ransom was paid.
I don’t believe many conspiracy theories, think there is a flying saucer in area 51,,etc,, BUT i solidly believe our government knew to a certainty they left about 600 behind.
Kill 600 and be done with the while mess? They would do it in a minute.
After a few years, the Vietnamese realized that vietnam was over for us, and that they would never get any money. This made them realize the POWs were then only a liability. They are almost sure to all be dead now, probably executed in a single afternoon.
It can’t be fixed now, but i want a leader to say it happened and let the chips fall where they may politically. It won’t happen though, because people eyeballs deep in it are still around. Our government became illegitimate when it committed this crime.
And McCain is a cowardly tool, being exploited. How does what happened to him make him an expert? It’s nuts that his opinion matters. Do you ask a guy from Stalag 17 what happened to the prisoners held in Cabanatuan? Mccain has no freaking idea what happened to men in Laos. He is used by our government for cover, and used by the vietnamese to achieve normalization.
And last,, the current trend with our captured soldiers is to get on TV,,, fast! Say *anything you need to* to make that happen. Getting your face out there assures that your government can’t betray you the way it did the men in Vietnam.
Well, the whole thing went on for several years, and there were numerous articles. There’s certainly no doubt about the role McCain played politically, which was to take the chair of the POW-MIA committee and use his image as a hero to persuade people that it was time to make peace with Communist North Vietnam, even though they were not forthcoming in discussing the prisoner issue—or any other issue, for that matter.
There were numerous reports of sightings of live prisoners. And there were persuasive accounts of how the POWs were moved out of North Vietnam to China and the Soviet Union, where they were liquidated.
How do you absolutely prove that, when the Soviets and Chinese were not talking, and when your own government wants to brush all of that out of the way and arrange a few profitable business deals?
As with most of such matters, there cannot be absolute certainty. But there was considerable doubt, resting on the testimony of honorable military witnesses and former POWs with no obvious reason to lie.
It’s like the murder of Ron Brown. No one is ever going to release the evidence on that business, because they prefer to cover it up. But the probabilities were pretty overwhelming.
McCain was among those who went over to North Vietnam after it was opened up, and he himself profited from one of the business deals.
I found McCain to be unpleasant at best. His POW experiences were real and he did put up with as much stuff as anyone there. The man who insured his success was an AF Colonel by the name of George “Bud” Day. They were put in the same cell after McCain’s injuries had healed. Day was awarded the Medal of Honor for escaping at least twice. He was totally fearless as a POW and the Vietnamese could not break him and they tried daily.
He is the finest and most courageous man I have ever met. I took a Troy State University course on Military Policy in Florida from him. He and McCain are very good friends. If McCain is Col Day’s friend, then that is good enough for me. McCain learned how to be a man and a POW from Day. Everyone who knows Day will tell you what the Vietnamese found out - this is the toughest man who ever walked the planet. He kept himself alive after any other man would have died from the torture he endured. I have heard it said that Day did not die simply to spite his tormenters.
Colonel Day’s special name for the Vietnamese communists was “peckerwoods.”
No he didn't. That was Jesse Helms.
“What is McCain’s motive for suppressing the POW/MIA issue?”
1) Access to power and cash from the exact people that started the whole abandonment and covered up.
2) He was the dealmaker that brought normal trade relations to Vietnam. Im sure that was for free/ whether you believe that Vietnam, the bankers, related businesses, or whoever,, bribed him, you can take it to the bank he got contributions to do what he did.
More than any others, he and Kerry made that normalization happen. They got paid, and there are a LOT of ways to pay a man.
I remember Day campaigning for McCain. Again, thanks for the info.
There may be no doubt in your mind but that makes you an idiot.
He was not the Chairman (Bob Kerry). He was not the co-chair (Bob Smiff). He was a committee member. The same as Jesse Helms and Hank Brown and every Senate Vietnam vet save for Al Gore. They all signed off on the same things that McCain signed off on.
Pssst. There's a monster under your bed.
Let’s see...
I can believe that Nixon was a traitor...
(poor negotiator who wanted the “deal” at any price,, we’ll clean up details later)
Ford was a traitor.....(Pardoned the draft dodgers and Nixon, wasn’t about to restart the Vietnam war or ask congress to shell out billions of free money for Vietnam)
Kissinger was a traitor....(Kissingers only loyalty is to one world governance. He would easily abandon a few hundred poor saps for the greater good as he saw it).
Cheney was a traitor....(nope, just a coward and Bushite having fun in the power structure.)
Carter was a traitor....(just an idiot, probably never told, and easily deceived by the CIA director Bush and other people who knew)
Reagan was a traitor....(interested, cared, likely would have launched rescues, retaliations, etc,,. Until guys like his vice president, a former CIA director, told him “this is bad info mr president,, but we are working on this other info. We will immediately apprise you if,,,”
Or I can believe that you’re a nutball
(Then maybe you could read the article and explain to us what happened to the men in Laos who were known to be captured and never emerged, calling opeople nutballs doesn’t address the issue)
heres a helpful list from the office of Senator Smith.
http://www.pownetwork.org/alive.htm
That Bush....he done got to President Reagan.
Gotta keep in mind when exposing oneself to usernames online, that not all who call themselves patriots, conservatives, or even...Americans, etc. are what they claim. By their responses we can know them.
Just Plain Dick
***************
Ever think Colonel Day might just be acting gallant towards his cellmate? That he sees no productive reason to trash him,,,, and just keeps his personal opinions of McCain,,, personal?
Of course, since one can never determine what is real or fabricated, including your "resume", we should all just shrug our shoulders and move on. However, Shanberg was a relative latecomer to this issue, and there were other reputable investigators (and quite a few Freepers) who were on this long before him. In addition, your ad hominum fallacy to the contrary, the relevant issue is not whether we agree or disagree with Shanberg's political agenda, but whether what he writes on this subject is plausibly corroborated by other sources. It is.
Both you and I are mere anonymous "keyboard commandos" on the internet and there is no way to verify either of our credentials. I, however, make no claim of being an "authority" on the subject - you do. In looking at your homepage you state you were assigned to the POW/MIA task force in 1992. Since the issue was "settled" in 1993 your involvement and opportunity to fully master the material seems rather brief. There are others who had far more experience than you. The burden of establishing your credentials is on you.
However, for those readers here who wish to look more deeply into the research that is actually available, I recommend the following book for starters:
An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia
About the author:
Former U.S. Rep. Bill Hendon,(R-NC), served two terms on the U.S. House POW/MIA Task Force (1981-1982, 1985-1986); as Consultant on POW/MIA Affairs with an office in the Pentagon (1983); and as a full time intelligence investigator assigned to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-1992). He has traveled to South and Southeast Asia 33 times on behalf of America’s POWs and MIAs. Hendon is considered the nation's foremost authority on intelligence relating to American POWs held after Operation Homecoming and an expert on the Vietnamese and Laotian prison systems. He lives in Washington, DC.
You can also find much additional useful information at the authors' website: www.enormouscrime.com
The reference to Day's friendship for McCain is just another of those fallacious diversionary tactics so often employed in discussions of these types of issues. Day and McCain were in prison together. They weren't with the missing POWs/MIAs who are the subject of this issue, and they had no way of personally knowing the facts about them. The issue is whether McCain later obstructed a genuine investigation of the evidence. He did. Whether or not Bud Day likes McCain is irrelevant.
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