Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Vanity: McCain "Broke" When a POW
Me | 9/17/08

Posted on 09/18/2008 12:35:02 PM PDT by llevrok

Please help me track something down I find despicable.

Today I heard Rush say that an Obama supporter is calling John McCain "unfit" to lead because he "broke" when a POW. By "broke", that is - he gave confidential information to his captors or admitted his "guilt" as a war terrorist.

I've read many books on the POW's in captivity both during Vietnam, Korea and WW2. Most - if not all - "break" under torture at some point usually later than sooner. And all who come home carry this huge feeling of guilt for letting their fellow POW's, service, country and family down.

I would defy any liberal who is spreading this as a cause of McCain being too weak to lead spend 1 month - or 1 day - under such conditions and not concede to what their captors want them to say or do.

THis is an attrocious charge and needs to be nipped in the bud. Now.


TOPICS: Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: mccain; mccainpalin; pow
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120121-133 next last
To: Nervous Tick
McCain gave his captors the names of the lineup of a professional ball team as the names of his fellow Naval officers.

The more anybody brings up McCain's time as a POW the worse it is for the coddled 0ne.

81 posted on 09/18/2008 1:07:45 PM PDT by allmendream (Sa-RAH! Sa-RAH! Sa-RAH! RAH RAH RAH! McCain/Palin2008)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Obadiah

And I believe he only “admitted” (after constant torture) personal “guilt”, he NEVER said that the US was wrong.


82 posted on 09/18/2008 1:08:16 PM PDT by mrsmel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Tallguy

Shoot, all ships, troop movements, battle plans, captures, killed and missing in action statistics, etc, were detailed daily on the traitorous lefty nightly news, NBC, CBS, ABC. Film at 11.


83 posted on 09/18/2008 1:08:30 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 63 | View Replies]

To: llevrok
McCain isn't hiding anything. Hell, he even mentioned it in his Convention speech:

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

Big yawn....

84 posted on 09/18/2008 1:08:34 PM PDT by r9etb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: llevrok

This is rich coming from people who think that living one week without their Starbucks’ Cafe Mochas equals “torture”.


85 posted on 09/18/2008 1:10:11 PM PDT by constitutiongirl (We will not go quietly into the night...we will fight to save our Republic.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SkyDancer

How many leftists would even *know* the names of football players?


86 posted on 09/18/2008 1:10:59 PM PDT by NYC GOP Chick ("Lights up on Washington Heights, Up at the break of day...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: llevrok
I heard that ignorant Obama boogerflinger this morning and I'm still smouldering. The Military Code of Conduct came about because of the incidence of brainwashing by the North Koreans on American POW's (I think that's even when the term "brainwashing" originated).

When I was in the Navy I was an enlisted aircrewman, and to qualify I had to attend what was known as SERE School (Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape) as did any Navy flier who flew in zones. A major part of the syllabus was how to conduct yourself and survive captivity as a POW. It was made very clear to us that the John Wayne/Richard Widmark type of behavior was not going to work in such an untenable situation. Reality and Hollywood are not the same.

There are limits to what individuals can stand and the training we recieved was basically to resist to your limit, and then comply (incluing deception, subterfuge etc.) at whatever point your life (or the lives of others) might be endangered.

When I heard that slackjaw attempting to sit in judgement of someone who endured what McCain endured made me almost half blind with hatred, and frankly I'm angry with Rush for not having the presence of mind to point out that McCains refusal to accept an early release for propaganda purposes say all one needs to know about his conduct as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. John McCain should not have to answer to any slimy bellied Obamaroid for his loyalty or his conduct. I have problems with some of the mans politics, but I believe he conducted himself in the best traditions of the naval service during the Vietnam war.

87 posted on 09/18/2008 1:11:37 PM PDT by VR-21
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HammerOfTheDogs

Only the female of the species.


88 posted on 09/18/2008 1:12:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]

To: dmz

I bet Vietnam is being nice to McCain because the last thing they want is payback. I know if I had the crap beaten out of me for five years by Democrats, I’d be planning my first nuke strike on Hanoi the minute I was inaugurated.


89 posted on 09/18/2008 1:14:08 PM PDT by HammerOfTheDogs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: constitutiongirl

I’d like to see the Obamessiah endure for 5 HOURS what McCain endured for 51/2 years. Of course, they’d never have to torture him, he’d sell this country out for free. His own pastor said God D*mn America, I don’t recall the story of him getting up and walking out when he did.


90 posted on 09/18/2008 1:14:11 PM PDT by mrsmel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies]

To: RobRoy
I know of one who did not. He died a horrible death.

The following is from Over The Beach, The Air War in Vietnam by Zalin Grant, 1986.

“The Cuban (yes, on loan from Fidel's paradise) 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.”

91 posted on 09/18/2008 1:15:19 PM PDT by Jacquerie (God save these United States.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: frankenMonkey; tx_eggman
John McCain secretly traveled to Mars when he was in captivity. Prove me wrong...

You're wrong. It's no secret that McCain traveled to Mars. Even NASA says so! McCain's Mars Expedition

LOL!
92 posted on 09/18/2008 1:16:04 PM PDT by SpinnerWebb (Islam ... If you can't join them, beat them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: HammerOfTheDogs

You said it. “My first official act as President will be to nuke Hanoi out of existence”.


93 posted on 09/18/2008 1:16:21 PM PDT by mrsmel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: Tarpon

“The info he gave was dated and useless when finally given.”

That’s because the VC and CRA made breaking a US soldier the goal. They cared less about the info and more about the emotional damage they inflicted when the soldier “broke”.

Evil has a face...


94 posted on 09/18/2008 1:17:45 PM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Fannie/Freddie are the Michael Millken of the Obama campaign.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: NYC GOP Chick

Hi - Not many .... those people would have lasted maybe ten seconds under the same torture that McCain went through. Then they have the audacity to say he doesn’t email because he’s too stupid not realizing that his fingers were smashed during his torture ... I simply hate those people ... and I don’t use the word ‘hate’ normally .....despise I guess is better ....


95 posted on 09/18/2008 1:17:46 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("I Believe In The Law Until It Interferes With Justice")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 86 | View Replies]

To: llevrok

I was listening... that call p****d me off. What an ignorant SOB that caller was. Rush was right — what can you say to a true idiot like that? They’re not even worth the time it takes to try and conduct a discussion.

The military teaches us that everyone has a breaking point, and the soldier should resist “to the utmost of my ability”.

It’s in Article Five of the Military Code of Conduct.

Senator McCain showed great courage and did resist, and withstood years of torture before he gave finally couldn’t take any more.

I don’t think there’s anyone that could have held up like that. Anyone.


96 posted on 09/18/2008 1:17:54 PM PDT by zipper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: llevrok

Joan of Arc, as pious and believing as they come, wobbled under torture. She went on to become a Saint.

Very few people under the ABSOLUTE power of their tormentors could not ‘break’ in some way. Anyone who points to someone such as McCain and accuses them of betraying their country years later as a partisan tactic in a presidential race is SHOWING us what he and his side are...and what our nation has become. Not that anyone cares or thinks it’s important. The degree to which we have defined deviancy down is pushing this nation toward the rocks.


97 posted on 09/18/2008 1:18:01 PM PDT by TalBlack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SkyDancer

More proof that it takes a lack of brains to be a leftist.


98 posted on 09/18/2008 1:19:15 PM PDT by NYC GOP Chick ("Lights up on Washington Heights, Up at the break of day...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 95 | View Replies]

To: mrsmel

After turning Hanoi into a bright, shining parking lot, I’d start carpet nuking every square mile of North Vietnam until I got to so-called “Ho chi Minh City”, and then demand they turn over all surviving guards to the Hanoi Hilton. After they do that, continue the attack until you hit the South China Sea.


99 posted on 09/18/2008 1:19:45 PM PDT by HammerOfTheDogs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 93 | View Replies]

To: llevrok
Over the years I've read as much about these POW's in North Vietnam as I could stand. Anyone with sense knows that a human can stand only so much torture. Also, individual limits vary from man to man.

I once read a British soldier's account torture by the Japanese in WWII. Apparently there are men willing to hold out to the death. The long and short of it was that men who held out to the death but didn't die would have been better off dead. They weren't worth much as men when the hostilities ended.

The way I understood the Vietnam POWs' accounts was that for the most part, they all broke in one fashion or another. The measure of the men was that they could stand up straight later and face another day. Just reading about what they endured gives me nightmares, and I'm fifty seven years old. I don't know that I have the stones to handle what they did. G-d, I love those men!

McCain has admitted that his torturers broke him. He said there were some of them, from the day he arrived, who saved his life. I believe it was the man in the next cell, after one of his episodes, who gave him the strength to move on to the next day.

I guess there are a handful of men who were POWs in North Vietnam whom the other POWs don't welcome back to POW reunions. My guess is there is a dynamic there that goes well beyond "breaking." One of my nightmares, beyond the torture, is that I would have been one of them and reached my limit way too soon.

McCain has never, to my knowledge, been refused admittance to one of their reminiscences. Therefore, people who criticize McCAin for his POW experience are such scum as to be ignored from any exchange in human interaction. Scum doesn't qualify.

100 posted on 09/18/2008 1:20:12 PM PDT by stevem
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120121-133 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson