I am not a McCain supporter, far from it.
But, this post simply repeats the same rumors that anti-McCain forces, mostly very liberal Dems, have repeated about him for years.
There is only one on-the-record comment about McCain from anyone who would know, and that is from Vice Admiral Stockdale. Stockdale would know. He was SOP and McCain’s cellmate in the Hanoi Hilton.
He said all the McCain stories about “songbird” are BS, and McCain served honorably. So much of the other is what communist reporters say he said. Who do you trust, a MOH-winning American or communist reporters?
He laced them up and served. I did a RVN tour, and I know few real ‘Nam vets (other then REMFs, like guys that sat around safe bases in safe places like Thailand and effed the local $2 hooch mamas every night) who would criticize his military service, or the service of anyone who spent time in the HH with a broken arm that was never treated. How bad was that broken arm? He still can’t use it 45 years later.
Again, I hate McCain’s politics, but if we just repeat the same unverified “war stories”, are we any better the DU faggots?
Dislike his stupid RINO politics all you (we) want. But lay off the BS military stuff. I left some good parts of my knee over there, and going after another’s service, with nothing but unverified rumors is sacred ground to many of us.
And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner-of-war record of a man who was near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison 1967: both arms broken, left leg broken, left shoulder broken by a civilian with a rifle butt.
He was eventually taken to the same rat-infested hospital room I had occupied two years earlier, and, like me, he had surgery on his leg. By then the Vietnamese had discovered that his father was the ranking admiral in the Pacific Fleet, and he received an offer that, as far as I know, was made to no other American prisoner: immediate release, no strings attached. He refused, thereby sentencing himself to four more years in a cell.
George "Bud" Day and Orson Swindle, fellow POWs, told PolitiFact that POWs sometimes were forced to talk when they were tortured, but they tried to tell lies to mislead their captors.
"We were all tortured and we wrote confessions under the pressure of torture," said Swindle, who was a cellmate with McCain and is active in his campaign. "John McCain never collaborated with the enemy. He, like every one of us, submitted to severe torture. John McCain did nothing dishonorable. He was heroic."
[...]
[On the original flyers slandering McCain:]
Day, a Medal of Honor winner who also is supporting McCain's campaign, said the flyer is "the most outrageous f------ lie I've ever heard."
Stories about McCain’s actions as a POW have long circulated in the media. I am sure Trump has learned of them. The truth is, McCain’s conduct as a POW violated The Code:
Consisting of six articles in simple language, the United States Military Code of Conduct orders American military personnel to resist capture at all cost and if captured; to attempt to escape, to give the enemy no information other than name, rank, serial number and date of birth, to take charge if senior, to obey orders of the seniors, to accept no favors from the enemy and to make no written or oral statements disloyal to the United States.
“A lot of people don’t know… that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity,” wrote American blogger John Aravosis. The reason such information does not come out is that McCain’s “hero” perception is too well established to be upset by the information filtering out that speaks otherwise.
ON Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press began quoting him giving specific military information. One report read, “To a question of the correspondent, McCain answered: ‘My assignment to the Oriskany, I told myself, was due to serious losses in pilots, which were sustained by this aircraft carrier (due to its raids on the North Vietnam territory - VNA) and which necessitated replacements. From 10 to 12 pilots were transferred like me from the Forrestal to the Oriskany. Before I was shot down, we had made several sorties. Altogether, I made about 23 flights over North Vietnam.’” In that report, McCain was quoted describing the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the order of which his attack was supposed to take place.
A declassified DOD document reports an interview between POW McCain and Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist who was living in Cuba at the time. The interview was published in the Havana Granma in January 1970.
According to the DOD report, the meeting between Barral and McCain (which was photographed by the Vietnamese) took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi. During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with his interrogator.
While talking with Barral, McCain seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by failing to evade answering questions “to the utmost” of his ability when he, according to the DOD report, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in school.
1999 - March 25, 1999, The Phoenix New Times: Ted Guy and Gordon “Swede” Larson, two former POWs, who were McCain’s senior ranking officers (SRO’s), at the time McCain says he was tortured in solitary confinement, told the New Times that while they could not guarantee that McCain was not physically harmed, they doubted it.
“Between the two of us, it’s our belief, and to the best of our knowledge, that no prisoner was beaten or harmed physically in that camp ,” Larson says. “. . . My only contention with the McCain deal is that while he was at The Plantation, to the best of my knowledge and Ted’s knowledge, he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp. It was the camp that people were released from.”
Ross Perot's running mate?
> “He said all the McCain stories about “songbird” are BS, and McCain served honorably. So much of the other is what communist reporters say he said. Who do you trust, a MOH-winning American or communist reporters?”
Your facts are off.
First, Admiral Stockdale supported all POWs in the HH but he was not a cell mate of McCain. McCain was brought in after to replace Admiral Stockdale in solitary confinement.
Second, Admiral Stockdale set up a clandestine communication network because communication among POWs was forbidden and one of the communications from Admiral Stockdale to the hundreds of POWs in the HH was that no one would accept an early release, that everyone would go home together. McCain got that order but told his captors in his own words “I will need to think about it” when first offered early release (that’s all on the record). The Communist interrogator came back to ask McCain again and McCain said his answer was no. McCain was following orders after realizing that if he got out the POWs would eventually come home and ruin him with their testimony.
Admiral Stockdale stood up for McCain because he followed orders. All great leaders and Commanding Officers such as Admiral Stockdale (then a USN Captain) stand up for their loyal subordinates as part of leadership training to build loyalty up and down the chain of command.
Regardless of the reports about McCain, many of which came from honorable persons, regardless he came home and one of the first things he did was get rid of his wife who had been dutifully waiting for him for years praying for him and his safe return. She had been ill and had gained a little weight so she wasn’t so pretty as she once was. So McCain dumps her and goes and gets a younger, prettier and richer wife. That right there is a red flag of poor and conceited character, a character developed as a spoiled son and grandson of 4-star Admirals.
And the report of graduating near the bottom of his class and of his flight instructors wanting to kick him out of flight school are on the record; they are true.
Admiral Stockdale recommended all the POWs for medals but only two others were cited for the Congressional Medal of Honor; McCain was not one of those. Instead McCain was cited for a Silver Star for nothing more than surviving.
So Trump was right, McCain was decorated as a POW because he was a POW and for nothing more.
When one reads McCain’s citation for Silver Star, there are no ‘acts’ other than the fact that he survived.
Should every person that survives brutality be declared a ‘hero’?
Should the 80 year old vet who was brutally murdered by criminal black youth following the Trayvon Martin fiasco be declared a hero and cited for a Legion of Merit medal? And Legion of Merit medals are awarded to civilians.
Should a person walking down to the corner grocery market who is jumped and savaged by criminals but survives, should they be declared a hero?
Does refusing to call a victim a hero mean we disrespect the victim?
Can we sympathize with and offer our support to a victim, a survivor of horrors and still think the person does not deserve hero status?
The ‘story’ of McCain’s ‘heroism’ is a myth. It is a myth boosted by a corrupt media as a shield around the severely flawed character of McCain for the simple reason that Mark Steyn writes “because McCain bad-mouthed other Republicans” and the Media saw a useful tool in McCain.
You can read more here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3314982/posts?page=35#35
Did John McCain lay off veterans and the families of MIAs in Vietnam?
We’ve laid off him for 40 freakin years, which is twice the length of time he laid off veterans and the families of MIAs.
Do you know how many MIA families John refused to turn over information to? Does it bother you that many of those MIAs were tortured more than he was, and he personally pushed to get the U. S. to abandon them all?
I waited until two days ago, because I detest having to address something like this about a man. I’m not going to remain silent on it any longer.
He milks that service like a bulging cow.
He’s been a sub-human his entire life.
Research him. He’s one of the most disgusting men I’ve every seen.
http://www.hotr.us/mccain/mccainagain.html
He said all the McCain stories about “songbird” are BS, and McCain served honorably. So much of the other is what communist reporters say he said. Who do you trust, a MOH-winning American or communist reporters?
The Spartan ethos would say, “Come back with your shield - or on it.”But if you’re going to hold someone else to that standard, you had better have a Spartan hero’s record yourself. I don’t - and Donald Trump doesn’t, either.
OTOH, tho the Bible says to defer to those who have suffered for the faith, it has not proved possible to live with that as an absolute - there have been instances of people with such credentials actually (gasp!) being wrong about important matters. Or so my pastor once informed me.
In that context, the deference John McCain earned passed its Sell By date long ago.
Long before he was accorded the Republican nomination for POTUS, in fact.
That is an informative post. Thanks!