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.
You make an excellent point-the men who would know-his fellow POWs-have expressed nothing but admiration for him (and he for them). They need to get together and make an ad to refute the freaking lies being circulated by the traitor left. Let them refute the men who were there.