John Sidney McCain III is the son of a Navy Admiral and Grandson of a Navy Admiral. He was born into moderate wealth but great power and ultimately married into great wealth with his mistress-turned-second wife, Cindy.
According to Wikipedia:
“John McCain’s capture and imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam, when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg, and then nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a mob attacked him, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".”
Wikipedia also notes this about John McCain’s time in the Hanoi Hilton:
“In August of 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery, and McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession". He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."”
What does being broken do to a person’s psyche? How long can the effects from a traumatic experience like that last? A lifetime? How much of John McCain’s infamously unstable temper comes from his experience as a victim of torture? Is that a person we really want with his finger of the nuclear button?
Ok, now I feel very bad for McCain and he has my deepest sympathies for what he experienced, but that does not qualify him for status of “hero”. Especially when McCain just recently voted against banning torture!
If we are supposed to consider John McCain a hero by virtue of him being held captive and tortured until he was broken then what are we supposed to think about all the people we are doing that to now? Are they also heroes? What does that say about us now that we are doing it to others?
Getting shot down, captured, and tortured and being broken both physically and mentally does not strike me as someone “blessed by the gods”. Neither does bombing runs on villages or creating propaganda videos for the enemy strike me as particularly “noble” and it certainly is not something I think should be regarded as a “model or ideal”.
Now lets look at the story of another Vietnam veteran who shares his first name, John Kerry. This is just one story of how he earned one of his medals in Vietnam. Also from Wikipedia.
“Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others. Their mission included bringing a demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese soldiers to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers. Running into an ambush, Kerry "directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire and coordinated the deployment of the South Vietnamese troops, according to the original medal citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt). Going a short distance farther, Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round; as the boat beached at the site, a VC with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the VC and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher.”
So what I want to know is, if John Kerry’s war record was not above reproach, why do Democrats act as if John McCain’s is? The one thing that Karl Rove was right about was the tactic of taking your opponent’s strength and turning it into a liability. John McCain’s war record is his greatest strength and it is the reason the media is treating him with kid gloves. If Democrats want to win this they are going to have to take off the kid gloves and bring up the hypocrisy of someone who was broken by torture turning around and voting against banning the same behavior by Americans. They are going to have to bring up the fact McCain cooperated with the enemy and made anti-American propaganda for them.
John McCain’s low moral standards and questionable judgment have been repeatedly shown by his behavior. From the fact he was one of the infamous “Keating Five” to the fact he is breaking his own campaign finance laws right now by taking public financing and then going over the spending limits and by using his wife’s corporate jet for free, we have seen examples again and again of a man who is willing to sell out his principles for political convenience.
Hypocrisy is also a serious issue with John McCain. His record as a Senator shows a pattern of opposing Veteran and POW/MIA issues.
John Sidney McCain III opposed the Missing Personnel Act and the POW/MIA Rescue Act, which would have granted political asylum to any Southeast Asian national who brought a living American POW to freedom.
How can a former POW oppose that?
John McCain disagreed with the findings of the 1990 Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which concluded that our government had indeed abandoned some of our men when the war ended.
John McCain then went on to single handedly undermine the Senate Select Committee created to investigate the issue.
“During the course of their several month-long investigations, they heard unbelievable testimony from hundreds of people. No less than four former Secretaries of Defense testified that men were left behind. National Security analysts testified that they tracked the movements of our men long after the war ended. Radio transcripts of American POWs being moved in Laos were recorded in the early 1980s:
There were satellite photos of pilot distress signals taken as recently as 1992, complete with pilot name and authenticator code numbers. Former Soviet Commanders testified that they debriefed our men in the Soviet Union, and even Boris Yeltsin admitted American POWs had been transferred there.
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