[Chainmail]

This is BS: he was mistreated, tortured, and kept in horrific conditions. That script was written by the enemy and he was coerced into reading it. He refused early repatriation and spent five and a half long years in that hell.

That tape should not be held against him.

[grania]

This tape will not be held against him

He should have told us about it, at the very latest at the time he was opposing the US using torture techniques against terror suspects, rather then hold back and nobody knew about it. McCain is a historical figure, and he owed that information to those who chronicle it.

If McCain were a patriotic American, he would drop out and let Kelli Ward have the nomination. By all accounts, she's a worthy candidate and he would get to leave politics, not totally disgraced.

[Theodore R.]

I wouldn’t think people in Phoenix and Tucson would pay that much attention to this, knowing he was coerced into making the recording.

[varon]

That tape should not be held against him.

Agreed!

[submarinerswife]

he was mistreated, tortured, and kept in horrific conditions.

That tape should not be held against him.

I absolutely agree with you. Anyone using this tape against him is trash. And I really hope it blows up in their face.

[ladyjane]

Agree. He was a POW.

Plus - he’s done more damage as a senator than he ever could have as a POW.

[HomerBohn]

The main thing I have against Juan is that he was so damned un-patriotic as to run for president.

The captivity thing is null and void as far as I am concerned. He wasn’t the only American held in Viet Nam inhuman prisons. His plane crashed but he still had a sidearm. He should have shot as many commies as he could before they could take him down.

He is beloved by the opposition and for very good reasons.

[mountainlion]

To add to the discussion I add this as a point of interest as I do not know the reliability of the source:http://powderedwigsociety.com/the-real-john-mccain-20012/

Compare and contrast McCain, Kerry and Jane Fonda for a look at the faces of treason.

[thesligoduffyflynns]

You hit the nail on the head and I’m standing with your analysis-even tho’ i don’t like his politics.

His 100 year old (or so) mother Roberta makes more sense than he ever will.-She’s cast iron. Haven’t heard much of her lately or what state she’s in physically or mentally but there a few yrs ago she was always ripping into something to keep going physically & her mind active and to keep herself entertained. She’s a strong woman.

[StAntKnee]

“He refused early repatriation and spent five and a half long years in that hell.

That tape should not be held against him.”
_____________________

Ditto. I don’t like what Sen. McCain has become, but I’m gonna say that only another POW who endured like treatment has the moral authority to condemn him on this one.

[cynwoody]

This is BS: he was mistreated, tortured, and kept in horrific conditions. That script was written by the enemy and he was coerced into reading it. He refused early repatriation and spent five and a half long years in that hell.

I agree completely.

That tape should not be held against him.

If you reside in Arizona, vote Ward on 30 August!

http://www.kelliward.com/retire_mccain?splash=1

#RetireMcCain

[HollyB]

I agree. if one wants to listen as regards to our history, fine. But,he was a POW and served honorably.

[wardaddy]

I agree in sentiment

That said

McCain was no Jim Stockdale

Now that was a man....tough....tougher than me and I know it

The Brett Favre of POWs

Very rare a man endure like he did

And how he was maligned in that debate

Disgusting...he deserves a statue somewhere

[Enlightened1]

McCain made over a dozen messages according to Vietnam. This is just one of them. They have all his radio messages in Hanoi.

This is why McCain earned the nick name, “Song Bird” by his fellow P.O.W.s at the Hanoi Hilton. McCain was terrified to be tortured. So he gave the North Vietnamese all the information like the routes of the Navy and Marine Coro planes coming off the U.S. Navy ships to hit Vietnam. I wonder how many Navy and Maribe pilots were killed because of Song Bird giving the routes?

McCain made these propghanda messages for North Vietnam too. They try to send McCain back, but he said no because anyone that went back meant they talked to the enemy, and McCain did not want to label a traitor.

My understanding was that it was bad for McCain the first 3 weeks before they knew who he was the son of Admiral McCain a WWII hero. John is nothing like his father. Anyway, John was injured because he did not bail out right. That’s why he was injured.

Anyhow, the north Viennese made John their errands boy. He would dry clean the guards clothes, get food, get the prosttitutes, etc... and DID NOT live like the rest of the P.O.W.s.

[SkyPilot]

This is BS: he was mistreated, tortured, and kept in horrific conditions.

Agreed. The torture was horrific, and everyone has a breaking point. I would challenge those throwing stones to endure 1/100th of that torture, and let's see how they would stand up to it.

Col "Bud" Day, Medal of Honor recipient, and one of the most decorated military officers of all time, was held with McCain. They were cellmates for a time. Day resisted, as did McCain. Both men eventually broke under severe, severe torture. They all did.

The people who are sitting on the sidelines today throwing judgment on these men are a__holes.

Plain and simple.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

This is BS: he was mistreated, tortured, and kept in horrific conditions.

Really! I heard just the opposite.

That his fellow captors were held in horrific conditions, and he was unseen by them for long periods at a time. As the story goes, as the son of an admiral, he was allegedly residing comfortably in the Real "Hanoi Hilton"...uptown. Checking in occasionally "for appearances".

[daniel1212]

That script was written by the enemy and he was coerced into reading it. He refused early repatriation and spent five and a half long years in that hell. That tape should not be held against him.

Those who condemn him for this solitary confession have no appreciation for what the manner of torture atheistic Communists could effect.

Here’s a look at four Northeast Florida veterans who were in captivity with McCain in Vietnam. This story was originally published on Sunday, March 23, 2008...

Byron Fuller dreamed of the houses he would build, counted the number of 2-by-4s he would need, counted each and every nail he would use Dick Stratton repeated the names of the hundreds of tormented souls with him, so they would never be forgotten. Hal Kushner mourned for the men who’d died in his arms, men he could have saved, and wondered if his newborn child back home was a boy or a girl, healthy or sick. Pete Schoeffel wrote poems, tales of home and hope and despair that, for years, existed only in his head...

These men, all held from 1967 to 1973, have a bond with each other. They feel a bond, too, with the fellow POW who wants to be president, even if they can't figure out why he would want to subject himself to more punishment. Thick books could be written about each of these men, cataloguing the indignities and pain they endured. And they would indeed be stories of endurance.

The torturers in the Hanoi Hilton’s knobby-walled room were experts. Consider the straps -- a system of shackles, a nylon strap and an iron bar. The guards pulled the straps taut, forcing Schoeffel’s face to the floor, between his knees. They stomped on his back. He could barely breathe, yet they kept him there: 15 minutes or one hour, or longer. Who could tell? Through the panic and the pain came the thirst: Held in that position, Schoeffel became so dehydrated he sucked his own sweat off the floor. He wondered why he couldn’t faint. Don’t people faint from pain? Why couldn’t he, when it was so bad?...

Stratton, who was a Navy commander, later wrote that the senior ranking American officers at Hoa Lo let out the message: Fight them as long as you can. And “don’t despair when they break you, they have broken us all.” Then do it all over again...

The prisoners were told to sign letters declaring that they were getting “lenient and humane treatment.” Stratton gives a sour laugh: “To them, it was letting me live...”

And upon his release from Vietnam, a wire service reporter wrote that “Stratton’s gaunt, stooped figure and haunted expression” had become “a symbol of the plight of the American POWs.” Still, the suspicion lingered far longer than that, even as McCain, shortly after his release, took pains to clear Stratton’s name. “He stood up for me when other people were saying things,” Stratton says. “When I was down, people kicking me, he stood up for me, and he didn’t have to. He gained nothing...”

And lonely -- it could be so lonely. Fuller, who went to Landon Junior-Senior High School in Jacksonville and the U.S. Naval Academy, broke his right arm and injured his left after he was forced to eject from his downed A-4 Skyhawk over North Vietnam on the afternoon of July 14, 1967...

After 10 days of torture, he was taken to an empty cell, barely able to move. Days later, another prisoner was shoved in with him -- an Air Force pilot named Wayne Waddell. They were together for 100 days: “He saved my life. He set my bones. Wiped my ass. Fed me. Bathed me. He’d use his water ration to daub my heat rash.”

Much of the time, though, the men were alone. Fuller, for one, spent more than two years in solitary confinement, from Oct. 25, 1967, to Nov. 25, 1969.

Kushner was a late arrival to all of this, having survived years of a very different kind of hell. The only survivor of a horrific helicopter crash in South Vietnam, he was kept for 3 1/2 years in small jungle camps in the south. Prisoners’ clothes rotted off their bodies, and disease, starvation and beatings killed many of them. - http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-07-20/story/out-tortured-past-story-john-mccain-and-his-fellow-pows#