Posted on 08/30/2018 4:24:46 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
“The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What’s more, the Pentagon’s POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of “debunking” POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.
The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. The chairman was John Kerry. McCain, as a former POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.”
And Mark Davis (WBAP talk show host, sometimes sub for Rush) was wanting to give McJuan a Congressional Medal of Honor today.
Heroes don’t commit treason.
All this rediculous McCain gushing is beyond disgusting and mostly BS.
Even the most positive press on him had me believing that the POWs/MIAs would have been better off without McCain doing anything.
BTT
Maybe this dark side of John McCain will come to light after his funeral. It continues to be disturbing to see how awful McCain was to those left behind.
Many times over the years we could see the loved ones of the MIA in Vietnam be stopped from finding out what happened. What was going on? Will we ever find out?
There was an old guy on Laura Ingraham last night, who said he was a captive with McCain; couldn’t say enough good about him. Ok, that’s ONE. Any more out there?
I totally separate the Military service prior to the shootdown, the POW hell, and the Senate “service” from each other in assessing McJuan.
I had never seen this article before today and felt absolutely sick to my stomach reading it. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that it is true. I was saddened that nothing happened during the Reagan years but GHW Bush probably convinced everyone to let it go since he had been part of the CIA cover-up at the time.
John McCain was NOT a hero! His actions then, and in recent years, have proven that beyond any doubt. The only solace the families of those poor men can have is that God has promised vengeance for those who have been wronged.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What did I miss about McCain’s career? The fawning over this a-hole is amazing.
The Left called him a racist and yet they’re lauding him for “reaching across the aisle”. Right. Like they’d remember Ted Kennedy for reaching across the Pacific to screw over Reagan.
Plenty of POWs endured as much, if not more, than McCain. We should be holding a ceremony for them, not this backstabber.
If there is a 'there' there, I and millions of Americans are with you on this. This story about McCain suppressing this information has been bantered about for 4 decades. I don't think President Trump would have any problem seeing this information released if there is something to it.
I followed this issue in the early ‘90s leading up to the POW/MIA hearings chaired by John Kerry and Juan McCain. Videotaped the hearings and watched them at night.
Like many, I was expecting McCain to be a real champion for any possible remaining POW/MIAs. To my shock, he did everything he could to discredit any witness presenting evidence that there might still be Americans in Vietnam. He was outright rude and hostile to some witnesses, including Ross Perot and relatives of some missing men.
That’s when I formed my very low opinion of Juan and he has done many other things to reaffirm and lower my opinion further over the years since.
McNitWit sucked donkey balls ...my friends ...
Stop watching fake news.
Screw the crooked bastard into the ground and let’s move on.
Is there going to be McCain shirts like Che?
Probably. If don’t learn to ignore the little spoiled one.
I do, too. He was a corrupt senator. I did a short search, and there were several of his fellow pows who were proud of him.
But all I know, for sure, is how he acted as a senator, and that was NOT noble.
bump
Was John McCain a Traitor? by James King
Three months after the bloody tragedy on the USS Forrestal Aircraft Carrier, John McCain was sent on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October of 1967 when he was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese, where he’s go on to be a prisoner of war until 1973. After being released from captivity, McCain would use his POW story and veteran status to rise to political prominence, where his image as a “Vietnam war hero” would go on to propel him to be elected as a United States Senator.
John “Songbird” McCain was welcomed back as a hero by President Nixon. But a “hero” is the last thing that John McCain was or will ever be. What most people don’t know is the massive government scandal that McCain helped hide, as he’d go on for decades to tirelessly work to bury stunning information about American prisoners over in Vietnam who unlike him, didn’t return home. Using his position as a senator, McCain would be behind the scenes quietly pushing and sponsoring federal laws that would keep the most damning information about our POWs buried through classified documents.
The secrets that John McCain has sought to hide about Vietnam POWs are massive. Despite sworn testimony by two Defense Secretaries of “the men left behind” in Vietnam, McCain continued to push the massive lie that there were no survivors, much to the horror of POW families who were frantic to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones. Enormous amounts of government documents indicate that hundreds of prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when President Nixon signed the peace treaty in January of 1973. Only 591 in Hanoi were released, among them, Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.
After the war, President Nixon promised the Vietnamese a $3.25 billion in “postwar reconstruction” aid “without any political conditions.” But there was a catch to this promise, where Nixon had included that Congress would have to approve these funds; approval that never happened. Furious that the American government had double-crossed them, Hanoi decided to keep the remaining hundreds of American prisoners, because their ransom money (post war provisions) never came.
CIA whistleblowers said that the government wanted to keep these missing men a secret, because as more years passed, it became more and more difficult for the government to admit that it knew about the prisoners that were left behind. Years later, CIA officials admitted that their intel indicated that the remaining POWs were eventually executed by the Vietnamese, as they were no longer useful bargaining chips.
After the Pentagon’s POW/MIA office was publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers that there were in fact still men in Vietnam being held as POWs, the pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the government in 1991 to create the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, to investigate these allegations. John Kerry was made chairman of the board, and McCain became its most pivotal member. In the end, this committee became part of the debunking machine, and McCain would become paramount to sweeping the entire atrocity of these forgotten POWs under the rug.
But what people don’t know is John McCain’s vital role in keeping this story about these abandoned POWs hidden from the American public, as a traitor who completely turned his back on his brothers-in-arms who had remained in captivity by the Vietnamese.
In the 1990s, legislation was proposed to Congress called “the Truth Bill” that would’ve provided complete transparency about these prisoners and missing men. But the Pentagon and McCain bitterly opposed the bill, and it went nowhere. People were predictably outraged over the bill being shot down, so in an effort for McCain and crooked Pentagon officials to cover their asses, the McCain Bill,” suddenly appeared several months later.
This bill eventually became law in 1991, but would only create a bureaucratic maze, making the truth for the families completely impossible to discover. The provisions of the law explicitly states why the Pentagon and other agencies are justified for not releasing information about prisoners held in captivity. Later that year, the Senate Select Committee was created, and McCain and Kerry would work together to bury the last renaming evidence on the missing men.
The American Conservative reported on the other ways McCain screwed over the POWs, by authoring a crippling amendment to the Missing Service Personnel Act, that stripped away the obligations that commanders were previously held to of speedily searching for missing men and reporting these incidents to the Pentagon.
The American Conservative reported:
“McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which had been strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties, saying, ‘Any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in Title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year or both.’ A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and to report the incidents to the Pentagon.”
“About the relaxation of POW/MIA obligations on commanders in the field, a public McCain memo said, ‘This transfers the bureaucracy involved out of the [battle] field to Washington.” He wrote that the original legislation, if left intact, “would accomplish nothing but create new jobs for lawyers and turn military commanders into clerks.’”
“McCain argued that keeping the criminal penalties would have made it impossible for the Pentagon to find staffers willing to work on POW/MIA matters. That’s an odd argument to make. Were staffers only “willing to work” if they were allowed to conceal POW records? By eviscerating the law, McCain gave his stamp of approval to the government policy of debunking the existence of live POWs.”
What’s even more sick is how McCain demonized the two Pentagon chiefs’ sworn testimonies who testified under oath about the men left behind, while insisting that all the evidence - to include documents, witnesses, satellite photos - be completely buried. He would go on to paint the entire story as an “unpatriotic myth” calling the testimony of anyone coming forward Vietnam’s POW’s the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists.” To this day, McCain regularly vilifies those who try to get their hands on these classified documents (that he’s worked for decades to conceal) as “hoaxers,” “charlatans,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “dime-store Rambos.”
Ironically, the very same man who who for decades has been propped up and hailed a POW war hero and crusader for the interests of other POWs, is the very same man responsible for their deaths. It’s absolutely sick how this man, despite his murdering and treasonous and crooked antics for decades, is to this day regarded as a “hero” in the minds of millions of Americans. It’s finally time that we set the record straight on who John “Songbird” McCain truly is before he dies of brain cancer, and nauseating tributes are made about his “patriotic service” to our country.
Link: http://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2018/07/if-he-wasnt-then-he-damn-sure-is-now.html
As I am now fond of posting:
McCain’s “accomplishments”:
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