Why Vietnam Vets Split on McCain

Kelly Patricia O'Meara

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m157..._61487324/print

Vietnam vets are divided on John McCain's status as a hero, citing incongruities in his account of his time as a POW and his actions in Congress concerning POWs/MIAs.

It's a war zone out there for GOP presidential candidate John McCain. While he has worked desperately to broaden his support among Democrats and independents, trouble has been brewing within his core constituency. Among the huge number of voting veterans there is a deep divide concerning whether McCain is the hero he is proclaimed to be or something else.

Not the least of the issues that have military groups spitting mad is the Arizona senator's voting record on veterans' issues. Thomas Burch is a Washington attorney and chairman of the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition, a federation of 102 veterans' groups. Burch tells Insight, "McCain forgot the veterans, and you don't have to search too hard to see where he's dropped the ball." For instance, "McCain would not cosponsor the 1984 Agent Orange Bill, the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, the 1996 Missing Persons Personnel Act, the 1998 Persian Gulf Health Care Act or the 1999 Bring Them Home Alive Bill. He did cosponsor the 1991 Omnibus Agent Orange Bill, but at that point there was no struggle, it was a done deal. Back in the 1980s when we really needed him he wasn't there."

But Burch says it was McCain's conduct during 1992 hearings of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that turned many Vietnam War veterans against him. "When they held the hearings, it was McCain who handled the family members in a very rough manner, reducing one woman to tears. There are a lot of folks who compared him to Jane Fonda after he hugged Bui Tin, a former North Vietnamese army officer and interrogator/torturer of American prisoners of war, or POWs, who testified at the hearings. Symbolically, it's like seeing Fonda sitting on the antiaircraft gun. If you think that these people are still holding some of our men, as many of these families do, that's not the kind of photo that's going to endear you to him. I don't care what his reason was for doing it. It was an outrage."

Although McCain's hostile behavior toward the family members of POWs/MIAs is well-known among veterans, vet activists also have taken their share of the senator's wrath. "Whenever you cross McCain," says Burch, "he gets very ugly. One of his people, Orson Swindle, federal trade commissioner and one of the longest-held POWs, called me from his office and threatened to `destroy me' because I had come out in support of George Bush in South Carolina. That's tough treatment from a fellow Vietnam veteran."

David Hackworth, a retired Army colonel with five years' distinguished service in Vietnam who is a frequent commentator on military affairs on network television, is a longtime critic of McCain. He tells Insight that McCain's actions during the Senate Select Committee hearings were a "flash point" with a lot of veterans. "McCain should turn off his handlers," says Hackworth, "because he's presenting himself in a very poor light. I have read hundreds of letters and e-mails from members of the military and there's no question that there is a keen divide when it comes to McCain. There are many who challenge his conduct when he was a POW."

In 1991, explains Hackworth, "I interviewed Col. Bui Tin in Hanoi, who was presented to me as their authority on POW/MIA issues. In the course of the interview Tin told me that during the war he was involved in the imprisonment of American POWs. When I questioned him further he said that John McCain was a `special prisoner.' Tin later told other POWs that McCain never was tortured. So when McCain embraced Tin during the hearings it seemed to some Vietnam vets to confirm the reports they had heard, and it really angered a lot of people. It was no secret that McCain had admitted to giving information to the enemy. In fact, McCain was given the Silver Star for `conspicuous gallantry' for the time period of 27 Oct. to 8 Dec. 1967 -- one day after he was shot down and admits to having given information to the enemy. McCain is a survivor, not a hero, and I don't think anyone in the history of our nation has been awarded such high military awards for dealing with the enemy."

Charles Bates, director of Veterans for Government Accountability, a government watchdog group, tells Insight that "during a three-day seminar on the Vietnam War at the Center for Vietnam War Studies at Texas Tech University, I and another POW activist, Joe Jordan, spoke to Bui Tin about McCain's treatment in Hanoi. Tin said, `No, McCain was never tortured. He was too important. We called him the prince. He received special treatment.'"

The passion is strong among these veterans, and Bates gives no quarter: "When Tin testified at the 1992 hearings," he says, "McCain ran down to the floor and threw his arms around this guy. Everyone knew that this was the guy that had reportedly tortured him. Try and imagine someone from the Bataan death march throwing his arms around his captor. You can't. So this is why there is concern among veterans that he really may have collaborated with the enemy. I And there appears to be evidence that he did, including his own admissions in the May 14, 1973, U.S. News & World Report":

"O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," reported the then recently returned POW in that article in U.S. News. "I guess the thing is," says Bates, "you have to think that if he's elected president and this did happen, he could be open to blackmail."

To other veterans any such interpretation is outrageous -- and remember that vets tend to split 50-50 on McCain. Joe Schlatter, who served as the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, tells Insight that activist veteran groups have focused on three issues against the senator. "First," says Schlatter, "they argue that not all American POWs were released and McCain has refused to sign up on the `live' POW theory. They're angry because he supports President Clinton's efforts to normalize relations with the Vietnamese, and they're angry because McCain went after those people who he thought were making money off the POW/MIA issue."

Schlatter insists, "If you were alive in captivity in 1973, you came home. There is no conspiracy to cover this up. There are as many different veterans' votes as there are veterans. This is just a sideshow distracting from the real issues. If the other POWs don't care about how John McCain got his medals, why should I?"

And many of the former POWs with whom Insight spoke for this survey take great offense at the attacks on McCain. Mike McGrath, a retired Navy pilot and former POW, sees McCain's more outspoken critics as "activists who play on your emotions on an issue that no one can prove. The story should be about the cottage industry of POW/MIA activists and how John McCain got in the way of their political agenda. They don't want to give up this way of life and, if you say there aren't any more POWs over in Vietnam, it destroys what they're doing. The questions these guys bring up aren't worth answering."

Is it important for the American people to know what information a presidential hopeful may have provided to the enemy in return for medical care or under torture? Does that have any connection to the support of normalization of relations with Vietnam? "No," says McGrath. "Vietnam is just another country that we're trying to reestablish relations with. It's no different than what we have with Russia or China. Every one of the 661 POWs violated the code of conduct by giving information beyond name, rank and serial number. Does that mean that we're all traitors? If the Vietnamese said that they didn't torture John McCain, they are lying. What do you expect -- they're Communists."

Is it likely that the Communist government is lying about the treatment McCain received while he was their prisoner? This is one of the issues that so deeply have divided Vietnam veterans and leave many wondering why McCain has been so eager to reestablish ties with a government that has called him a liar. According to McGrath, "If anyone has any doubts about the treatment McCain received, they can ask his roommates -- the men who nursed him back to health and feared for his life. No one who lived with or near him has anything bad to say about him."

But not all of the POWs agree about McCain, and those who have come out against him are labeled as "crazies" by the POWs who support him.

McGrath suggests McCain could put all this ugliness to rest by requesting that the transcripts of his postcaptivity debriefing be released. Those transcripts long have been classified, but in 1996 Republican Sen. Robert Smith of New Hampshire moved legislation through Congress effectively making the portions of the debriefings that dealt with other military personnel still unaccounted for available for review. In 1999 Smith managed further to modify the legislation to make it retroactive for the Cold War, Korean and Vietnam debriefings concerning men left behind. The legislation sailed through despite attempts by those no one would name to prevent declassification. The McCain campaign has not returned Insight's calls to ask about these matters.

According to one Capitol Hill insider, "The chances of anyone actually seeing these records is a million-to-one, but if John McCain requested his records I'm sure they'd release them to him." To date that request has not been made. There also appears to be no chance of releasing any records held by the Vietnamese. According to Bill Bell, former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs, "In May of 1993 I attended a meeting in Hanoi with John McCain, Pete Peterson, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam and ex-POW. McCain and Peterson were very interested in getting an agreement from the Vietnamese that the records of the former POWs would never be made public."

This IS big. I have a friend that produces a local TV show (I am the editor) about Veterans affairs. He is MUCH more right wing than me and very involved in the POW/MIA movement. A LOT of these guys are PISSED... I will try a get a copy of a letter that is being sent to McCain from this group.

BTW I have worked on a lot of video for groups like that and I do believe that we left men behind, based on things I have seen.

I agree...I was not even looking for this and it popped up in another search...

I guess it makes a point --- maybe the Vietnam Veterans are so diverse they do not alll agree on anything? See the Kerry swift boaters...

Or McCain has some true problems...

How quickly do you think his candidacy would sink with the Republican party if this group started taking our ads like this on TV liek the swift boaters?

They'd be ready to nominate Romney is a second.

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

Here is a site...I used to post a lot on Vietnam Veterans against JOhn Kerry...

Against their rhetoric of course....

If they are smart they should wait until he gets the nomination...

Swiftboaters timed it perfect...

Anti-McCain vets ready salvo against Senator's presidential campaign Michael Roston
Published: Friday March 9, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/AntiMcCain_v...ainst_0302.html
Two familiar faces will soon be dogging Senator John McCain on the campaign trail, as activist Vietnam Veterans Jerry Kiley and Ted Sampley resume a campaign they have conducted for years against the Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war.

Jerry Kiley filed papers last week to establish the nonpartisan group Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. "When people truly get to know him, there's no possibility they'll consider him for president of the United States," says Kiley, who served in the Army and completed the Internal Revenue Service paperwork to establish the "527" group.

RAW STORY spoke last week with Kiley, as well as Ted Sampley, a North Carolina-based publisher who has been harshly criticizing McCain for more than 10 years. Sampley teamed up with Kiley in 2004 to found a similar group that targeted Senator John Kerry as he ran for president. They see McCain as an apologist for Vietnam's Communist government who sold out fellow POWs and servicemen missing in action from America's lengthy war in Southeast Asia.

"We know him best because we've dealt with him over the years, and we know how he's acted," Kiley said. "We're taking no salaries, we do this voluntarily, and every penny will go into defeating him."

Kiley is no stranger to political controversy. He was found not guilty in 2005 of intimidating a foreign official, when he threw a glass of wine at visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai's chair during a dinner. In 2003, he was ejected from a women's college basketball game for confronting a player, Toni Smith of Manhattanville College, who refused to face the American flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Kiley will be raising money to pay for an informational website and to produce television and radio advertisements targeting McCain as he competes in the crowded field for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

"We will expose how McCain has supported the brutal and repressive Communist regime in Vietnam," the Garnerville, New York-based activist said. "You have to ask why a man who was a POW would support this regime?"

Kiley will be working with Sampley, who produces the newspaper and website US Veteran Dispatch and served in the Army in Vietnam. The two worked together on the website Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, which they claim registered 20 million hits in 2004. He also speaks harshly of McCain on POW/MIA issues.

"He led the way on normalizing relations with Vietnam, and it took away all our leverage on prisoner of war issues," Sampley said. "McCain has proudly touted for years that he and Kerry were saviors of the POW issue, but he's really the betrayer of the issue."

Sampley has also long hammered away at McCain's mental state and argues that his experience in a Vietnamese POW camp makes him unfit to serve as president.

"The Chinese and Soviets, the Communist Vietnamese, they had sole control over him, they know more about him than the American people or than he knows about himself," Sampley asserted. "He's done somethings that they're holding over his head, and with how that affects a man, should he really be president?"

Kiley also suggested that McCain had problems controlling his temper and challenged the senator's sincerity in his current presidential campaign.

"Our basic message is that he's a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he pretends to be something he's not," he said. "He pretends to be a conservative Republican but he's not the man that people have projected onto him."

Matt David, a spokesman for McCain's 2008 Presidential campaign, said the senator would have no comment about Kiley's campaign at this time. But McCain has interacted with the two veterans on many occasions, particularly Sampley, and commented on their actions.

In the New York Times in Feb. 2004, McCain was reported as saying that Sampley was "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter."

"I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans," he added.

McCain's longtime staff-member Mark Salter also described how hurt McCain was by Sampley's allegations in a March 1999 Phoenix New Times article. "I remember the first time I saw the Sampley thing in his paper, the first Manchurian Candidate article, and I showed it to him [McCain]. He was stung. And I was kind of laughing, to make light of it. He said, 'It's not funny.'"

Sampley had a physical altercation with Salter in December 1992, which resulted in the activist's misdemeanor assault conviction in January 1993. A January 1993 report in the States News Service said Sampley spent two days in prison and received 180 days of probation.

At this point, the anti-McCain group is still in its earliest phases of preparation for its campaign. Kiley explained that he had just opened a bank account for the organization and that a website would launch next week.

Kiley also promised that McCain's support for engagement with the Vietnamese government and POW/MIA issues would not be the sole focus of their campaign against him.

"There will be other issues, but the full agenda is something I cannot get into right now," he explained.

When Kiley was asked if there was another presidential candidate his group supported, he noted that the legal strictures prevented him from discussing his chosen candidate within the context of Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.

"There'll be nothing on our website, or in our literature, having to do with any candidate other than McCain," he explained.

But Sampley praised Rep. Duncan Hunter, the former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who is also a Vietnam veteran and served in the Army. Hunter was one of the first Republicans to declare his candidacy for president, and received a formal endorsement in Sampley's publication.

"I'm in favor of Duncan Hunter," he explained. "He's going to have an interesting situation because he has to distance himself from McCain, because Veterans are not going to accept [the Senator]."

Hunter's campaign accepted the endorsement willingly, though his spokesman wasn't aware of Sampley's praise for the congressman.

"We haven't heard of the endorsement. I don't think we know him," said Roy Taylor from Hunter's campaign in an interview with RAW STORY. "We would like that, if a man goes to the polls and votes for him, we'd appreciate it."

The spokesman also said that Hunter had no comment about Sampley's attacks on McCain's record as a Vietnam veteran. "We're not out to condemn veterans," Taylor added. "But they have a right to think what they want, and it's not appropriate for us to reflect on other people's views."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/AntiMcCain_v...ainst_0302.html

Here is an Iraq Veterans against McCain

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d85_1204009481

Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain
vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain ^ | unknown | unknown


Posted on 02/01/2008 9:33:23 AM PST by FR_addict


http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

Ted Sampley, a Vietnam Veteran and former Green Beret, issued a CHALLENGE to John McCain "If you can show us that the information presented in our mailer is untruthful . . . we will Stand Down" This CHALLENGE was issued during an interview with INSIDE EDITION on January 17, 2008.

John, family members of Vietnam POW/MIA(s) have been waiting for more then 14 years for you to have the courage to face them eye to eye in front of the American Public - Here is your opportunity for some "STRAIGHT TALK." Stop hiding behind your fabricated "War Hero" persona. You know we can prove your collaborations with declassified government documents . . . It is time for the American people to get to know the REAL John McCain - the John McCain that the POW/MIA families witnessed during the 1991-93 US Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs .

Bring It On John! HERE IS OUR NUMBER 252-527-0442
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1963308/posts

I've been looking at the links....CRAZY MAN CRAZY!

This makes our squabbles @ CGCS seem tiny in comparison! Graham where are you?
Some of the links even use the word "Manchurian!"
Go to you tube and search John McCain + Traitor and you will get tons of hits.

Didn't buy it on Kerry...ain't buyin' on McCain.

He served, he flew, he was a POW. 'nuff said.

Does he have other problems? Oh hell yes.

People don't want to hear it but the chance of any POWs still being alive in 93 was about zero and literally all chance of any being alive once VietNam wanted to negotiate vanished because they wouldn't want to get caught holding any after they said all were returned.

The name Ted Sampley should ring a bell. Remember how he defamed Kerry?

Did we get all our POWs back? I doubt it. The North Koreans are known to have kept some of our people, why wouldn't the North Vietamese done the same?

Are any of them still alive? I doubt that too, by 1980 the North Vietnamese would a figured out they were of no use to them so the rice bowl slid through the slot at the bottom of the door would a just stopped arriving.

And what they say about John McCain getting special treatment is true, well, it was eventually true.

When the North Vietamese first got him they gave him a pretty rough time. It wasn't too tough torturing him considering all the broke bones he had. About six months after he'd been shot down the Red Cross clued them in he was an American Admirals son so they figured he'd make a better bargaining chip than a punching bag.

IH ---

I tend to agree with you.

However, if one of the posts is accurate and the spokesperson indeed represents some 119 groups who represent Vietnam War Veterans --- and this is a broad coalition of people who oppose the nomination and election of John McCain to the presidency, then I think there may be something to their concerns.

The reason why I say this is because the Swift Boat Vetrans for Truth were a small, well-financed group politicos -- whereas if this is a broad coalition it seems like it could be much more inclusive and representative of the Vietnam Veteran population.

Now, that is without even examining their grievances against John McCain...

If on top of that, they have valid grievances, then you have another lawyer because not only do you have a large number of Vietnam Veterans opposed to JohnMcCain's candidacy, but you have them voicing credible complaints --- he did not help with early agent orange relief --- he did not help with POW/MIA assistance until late into the process --- he did not help Gulf War Veterans --- he did not help Iraq War Veterans --- he has been insensitive to the families of POW/MIAs....

How can the Republican Party nominate a candidate who is opposed by war veterans?

I would suggest that they cannot...

So if both aspects of this are true ---- 1. broad coalition of Vietnam Veterans opposing McCain and 2. with valid grievances ---

This will make it all the more harder for him to gain election...

Absolutely --- but why would he be interested in defaming McCain?

Maybe this explains Sampley's angst...

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
John McCain Attacks Swiftboat Veterans For Truth-- Again

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/02/...t-veterans.html

I'm guessing this is not the best way to rally conservatives?

After distancing himself from popular conservative radio host Bill Cunningham yesterday, Senator John McCain smacked down the 200 members of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth... again.

The Swiftvets were upset that John Kerry lied about them to the Senate.
John McCain today defended John F. Kerry.

FOX News reported:

“We’re aware of many of the things that 527s have done … where unlimited amounts of money can pour into negative campaigns such as we saw against John Kerry and his combat record, as we saw against (former Georgia Sen.) Max Cleland … they’re really very not accountable to anyone. At least I have to say ‘I’m John McCain and I approve this message.’”

Some critics blame his signature campaign finance reform legislation, co-sponsored with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, for the explosion of uncontrolled 527 groups. But, McCain said the law is not the problem and argued that 527 groups were able to sprout up as a result of loophole in a 1974 campaign finance law.
The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth asked Senator McCain to extend the same respect and courtesy that they had extended to him after he attacked them last time.

Difficult to tell, he either needs to believe someone is alive or his entire reason for existance is hate. All I know for sure is he's dishonest and hateful but somehow maintains a small but active following.

John McCain's suicide attempt and his resulting PTSD
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
December 23, 2007
Presidential candidate John McCain's recently released Christmas ad depicting him as a tortured POW survivor underscores a reoccurring theme McCain's handlers have, for decades, carefully intertwined deep into his public persona and political campaigns.

McCain says because he survived 5½ years of brutal torture, while a prisoner of the communist Vietnamese, he is better qualified to be president of the United States than any other candidate. McCain claims his POW sufferings included three years in solitary confinement where he was tortured so badly that he "broke," causing him to attempt suicide.

What McCain's promoters have carefully edited out of their McCain-for-president equation is his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Department of Defense psychiatrists have evaluated McCain for PTSD several times, the results of which remain locked by privacy laws.

PTSD can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which physical harm occurred or was threatened. U.S. government studies have concluded that former POWs "may remain embroiled in a harsh psychological battle with themselves for decades after returning home."

An outcome of PTSD is a subtle web of personal problems including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and an inability to function well under stress.

Psychologist Patricia B. Sutker of the New Orleans Veterans Administration Medical Center and her colleagues reported in a 1991 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that as many as nine of 10 surviving U.S. servicemen taken captive during the Korean War may suffer from PTSD and other mental disorders more than 35 years after their release.

In a follow-up study, VA experts concluded that POWs suffer "a much greater risk of developing PTSD than combat veterans."

Robert Timberg, in his book, The Nightingale's Song, wrote that POW McCain "suffered terribly in North Vietnamese camps."

Timberg wrote that in July 1968, McCain was taken to a room in which the North Vietnamese POW camp commander, whom the prisoners had nicknamed "Slopehead," was waiting with 10 guards and an interrogator nicked named "The Prick."

The guards, according to Timberg, charged into McCain, beating and kicking him until he "lay on the floor, bloody, arms and legs throbbing, ribs cracked, several teeth broken off at the gumline." The Vietnamese wanted McCain to confess to being a war criminal.

It was then and there that McCain, Timberg noted, was introduced for the first time to the "torture ropes." He wrote that McCain was tortured for several days before he broke and signed a confession that he was a war criminal. After signing the confession, McCain was so distraught that he attempted suicide but was stopped when a guard burst into the room.

Over the years, countless numbers of columnist/pundits have nearly drowned in their own drool suggesting McCain's POW experience greatly qualifies him to be president.

Washington Post columnist George Will once wrote that because McCain was such an "obstinate" POW hero resister, he was kept "in solitary confinement most of that time ... Every day for two years, one of his guards ordered him to bow, and then knocked him down."

Another columnist/pundit wrote, "McCain is a war hero ... He was tossed into the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' prison camp, where he was hung by his fractured arms for hours at a time."

In the last two weeks before Christmas 2007, McCain is riding high on a new round of high-profile endorsements.

The New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed McCain on Dec. 16. Then former Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), gave his blessings followed by "back-to-back-to-back endorsements from three other major newspapers, The Des Moines Register, The Boston Globe and The Portsmouth Herald."

The New Hampshire Union Leader wrote, "Sen. McCain is much more than just a war hero who chose to endure years of abuse at the hands of a sadistic enemy rather than abandon his comrades."

The Des Moines Register wrote. "In an era of instant celebrity, we sometimes forget the real heroes in our midst. The defining chapter of McCain's life came 40 years ago as a naval aviator, when he was shot down over Vietnam. The crash broke both arms and a leg. When first seeing him, a fellow prisoner recalls thinking he wouldn't live the night. He was beaten and kept in solitary confinement, held five years. Sen. McCain is much more than just a war hero who chose to endure years of abuse at the hands of a sadistic enemy rather than abandon his comrades."

The Portsmouth Herald wrote, "As a former prisoner of war who was denied medical care and beaten by the North Vietnamese, McCain understands at the deepest level that torturing helpless prisoners who may or may not have some information ..."

Unfortunately for McCain, the baggage that accompanies understanding "the deepest level" of torture and especially "attempted suicide" is the psychological trauma known as PTSD.

During McCain's 1999 presidential campaign, he carefully controlled the release of some "redacted medical records" in what appeared to be an effort to counter discussions of whether McCain's legendary "short fuse" temperament makes him unfit to serve as president and commander in chief of the military. His campaign did not allow any pages to be photocopied and selectively picked news organizations to examine the records.

The 1999 campaign released a statement by Dr. Michael M. Ambrose, director of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, that said: ''Senator McCain has never been diagnosed with or treated at the center for a psychological or psychiatric disorder. He has been subject to an extensive battery of psychological tests and following his last examination in 1993, we judged him to be in good physical and mental health.''

The doctors said McCain explained that while in solitary confinement he created for himself a fantasy world in which he lived. The doctors said McCain always heard the guards coming with his food, but "was often so much in his private world, that he strongly resented their coming around and bringing him back to reality by intruding. He was enjoying his fantasies so much."

Members of the two major POW/MIA family organizations know the "real" John McCain and they despise him. They have experienced firsthand his cruel, angry temperament.

In 1996, McCain encountered a group of POW/MIA family members outside a Senate hearing room. The family members were some of the same who worked tirelessly during the Vietnam War to make sure Hanoi released all U.S. POWs - including POW McCain.

McCain immediately began quarreling with the POW/MIA family members, who were eager to question him on the issue of what happened to their loved ones.

Instead showing courtesy and appropriate compassion by answering their questions, the Arizona senator pushed through the group, shoving them out of his way, nearly toppling the wheelchair of POW/MIA mother Jane Duke Gaylor. Her son, Charles Duke, a civilian worker in Vietnam, is among 2,300 American POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for by the communists.

The POW/MIA families, shocked at McCain's overly aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Gaylor, registered complaints with senate officials.

In an earlier incident involving families of servicemen still MIA, McCain got so angry that he went ballistic.

McCain was advised (Nov. 11, 1992) that Dolores Apodaca Alfond, chairwoman of the National Alliance of POW/MIA Families (her pilot brother Capt. Victor J. Apodaca is missing in action in North Vietnam), was offering testimony critical of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. He rushed into the hearing room to confront her.

Award winning journalist Sydney Schanberg described the scene. "His face [McCain] angry and his voice very loud, he accused her of making 'allegations ... that are patently and totally false and deceptive.'

"Making a fist, he shook his index finger at her and said she had insulted an emissary to Vietnam sent by President Bush. He said she had insulted other MIA families with her remarks. And then he said, through clenched teeth: 'And I am sick and tired of you insulting mine and other people's [patriotism] who happen to have different views than yours.'

"By this time, tears were running down Alfond's cheeks. She reached into her handbag for a handkerchief. She tried to speak: 'The family members have been waiting for years -- years! And now you're shutting down.' He kept interrupting her. She tried to say, through tears, that she had issued no insults. He kept talking over her words. He said she was accusing him and others of 'some conspiracy without proof, and some cover-up.' She said she was merely seeking 'some answers. That is what I am asking.' He ripped into her for using the word 'fiasco.' She replied: 'The fiasco was the people that stepped out and said we have written the end, the final chapter to Vietnam.' 'No one said that,' he shouted. 'No one said what you are saying they said, Ms. Alfond.' And then, his face flaming pink, he stalked out of the room, to shouts of disfavor from members of the audience."

POW families were even more angered when they saw McCain actually bonding with his former torturers during and after the 1992 Senate Select Committee hearings on POW/MIA Affairs. Psychologist have identified behavior in which a prisoner emotionally bonds with an abuser as the Stockholm Syndrome.

The first display of bonding occurred when Col. Bui Tin, a former senior colonel in the North Vietnamese Army who had actually interrogated McCain and other U.S. prisoners, testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

During a break in the hearing, McCain moved to where Col. Bui Tin was seated. Instead of grabbing Bui Tin by the neck and demanding his arrest for war crimes against U.S. POWs, McCain reached out and warmly hugged his former interrogator as if he were a long lost brother. Never mind that at least 55 American POW were murdered by interrogators and guards while in North Vietnamese prisoner of war camps.

In a 1992 visit to Hanoi, McCain warmly greeted Vietnam Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, who had been a ranking Communist Party member of the secret Viet Cong National Liberation Front Central Committee during the Vietnam War.

As a senior Central Committee member, Kiet was responsible for helping formulate Viet Cong policy, which included ordering American POWs to be punished by execution.

On orders issued by Kiet's Viet Cong Central Committee, three U.S POWs, Special Forces Capt. "Rocky" Versace, Special Forces Sgt. Kenneth Mills Roraback and Army Sgt. Harold Bennett were publicly executed by the Viet Cong on Sunday, Sept. 26, 1965

On a Nov. 13, 1996 trip to Hanoi, McCain posed for a picture embracing Mai Van On, one of the Vietnamese who pulled McCain from Hanoi's Truc Bach Lake, where McCain parachuted in 1967 after his bomber was shot down. McCain has said many times that after being pulled from the lake, his Vietnamese rescuers brutally beat him and stabbed him with a bayonet.

Early in 2007, columnist Sidney Blumenthal, who once served as a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, questioned if McCain's "volatile temper" might derail his bid to be President.

Blumenthal wrote that the senator's temper sometimes surfaces in the form of obscenities: "McCain's political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero -- a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to 'shut up,' called his fellow Republican senators 'shithead,' 'f******* jerk,' 'a**hole,' and joked in 1998 at a Republican fundraiser about the teenage daughter of President Clinton, 'Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.'"

Regardless of all the obvious signs pointing to McCain's PTSD, the one outstanding fact is that McCain, by his own admission, broke under the stress of captivity and tried to kill himself.

National columnists and pundits have, so far, given McCain a "free pass" on the attempted suicide. Would the other presidential candidates be treated with the same indifference if they had an attempted suicide in their biographies?

http://www.usvetdsp.com/dec07/mccain_suicide_ptsd.htm

Sunday, March 18, 2007
John McCain: The POW/MIA Factor on Election '08
The Many Faces of John McCain

http://aproudinfidel.blogspot.com/2007/03/...n-election.html

What do you really know about John Kerry and John McCain and their treatment of the POW/MIA issue?

Have you ever spoken to anyone that has been on the receiving end of one of McCain's rants? I have. Three as a matter of fact. One was actually caught on tape during the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

Tell me why McCain can embrace his Vietnamese captors yet turn his back on the POW/MIA Families, many of whom were instrumental in seeing to it that he came home alive. McCain's first wife was one of them and he rewarded her loyalty with a divorce just a few years after he returned from capivity. Something that McCain has descretely kept close to the vest.

Do you know about documents that McCain and Kerry covered up during the Senate Select Committee that stated that the Vietnamese had ACKNOWLEDGED taking men into captivity that they never mentioned before? I have them and would be happy to share them with you. Here is a link to just get you started. 19 New POW cases


Maybe you should check out all of the discrepancies in McCain's story based on news reports and his very own biography before you assume that these people are, in McCain's word, "zealots", here. Ted Sampley was the man who investigated the remains that were in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington and because of his hard nosed investigating that man was identified and returned to his family. He was also a Green Beret, a tad more impressive than a Navy pilot with only some twenty hours or so of flight time. Yet McCain wants us to take his word over Sampley's when it comes to Vietnam and the POW/MIA issue.

Most don't know anything more about the POW/MIA issue than what has been spun, controled and then passed on to the MSM. If you want facts, talk to a family member of a missing man and find out their story. That is where you will get the truth. McCain and Kerry had much to gain by burying the POW/MIA issue. McCain, has regularly supported political move of his former captives; normalization of relations, re-establishing trade and membership in the WTO. He has even been photographed embracing one of the Vietamese men who pulled him from the water after his aircraft went down.



McCain with Mai Van On

This is just the tip of the POW/MIA iceburg for John McCain ..... check back from time to time for more on the not so public side of this presidential candidate.

Eventually? He got treatment in a hospital (very publicized at the time) which was very contrary to how other POWs were treated. The official story (it was because his father was an admiral) is suspect because their policy was to treat anyone with contacts or status worse. What it actually means is a matter of conjecture, but the official story doesn't seem much less distorted than what Sampley spews.

How is John McCain like John Kerry?
Hint: Members of the POW community -- ex-prisoners, their families and the families of those still unaccounted for -- have issues with him.

By Mark Benjamin

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/...ain/index1.html

AP Photo/John Duricka

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., left, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., meet reporters in Washington, on Jan. 27, 1994, after the Senate voted to urge the Clinton administration to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam.

Jan. 29, 2008 | Prior to the South Carolina Republican primary earlier this month, a group calling itself the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain launched a dubious attack on McCain's behavior as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Led by an activist named Jerry Kiley, the group alleged, with little factual basis, and with no effect on the primary, which McCain won, that the Arizona senator had collaborated with the enemy when he was a prisoner, and that he had been turned into a "Manchurian Candidate" during his captivity.

Kiley, who once tried to throw red wine on Phan Van Khai, the then-prime minister of Vietnam, has a history of extremism. And his South Carolina leaflet was reflective of similar attacks on John McCain's war record over the years, launched by a minority of POW activists who believe American POWs may still be alive in Southeast Asia. At first glance, one might assume that Kiley et al. are the exceptions, and that the mainstream of the POW community -- former POWs, their families and the families of those missing-in-action (MIA) -- would hold John McCain in high regard. After all, the man spent five-and-a-half years in a Vietnamese prison and despite being the son of a Navy admiral refused offers of early release unless his fellow prisoners were set free as well.

But, ironically, even setting aside fringe characters like Kiley, McCain has an icy relationship with the POW/MIA community. One longtime activist who has known McCain for decades described "real antipathy" toward the senator among families of the MIAs. And activists say that is not because of any widespread belief that POWs are still being held hostage. (Clydie Morgan, the national adjutant of American Ex-Prisoners of War, which released a statement condemning the anti-McCain leaflets, says that most members of her organization do not believe that any POWs are still alive in Southeast Asia.) On closer examination, the paradoxical story of McCain and the POW/MIA issue seems as complex as the American struggle with the legacy of the Vietnam War itself -- and fraught with the same raw emotion.

Some of the hard feelings were sparked by the senator's stance on relations with Vietnam after the war ended. They were exacerbated by his choice of allies in pushing that agenda forward. And even some levelheaded government officials worry that McCain's policy positions over the years have made it harder to determine the ultimate disposition of those Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

McCain's first sin was being a very early proponent of normalizing relations with the government of Vietnam, or resuming official political and economic ties cut off after the conflict ended. McCain's efforts in this realm infuriated some veterans still stinging from the American experience there. "Some people just can't let go of their hate," explained Rick Weidman, director of government relations at Vietnam Veterans of America.

For example, as a congressman from Arizona in the early 1980s, McCain and Tom Ridge, then a congressman from western Pennsylvania, supported legislation that would have created a U.S. Interests Section in Vietnam, a low-grade version of an embassy and a signal of warming relations between the two nations. That touched a nerve for some veterans.

During this period, the Reagan administration had launched new and serious efforts to get information about Americans missing in Southeast Asia. But the Vietnamese held all the information -- access to crash sites, prison records, aircraft shoot-down reports. And the administration's strategy was to take incremental steps toward normalization, but only in return for serious cooperation from the Vietnamese on the disposition of unaccounted-for Americans. The concern was that people like McCain would give away the carrot. Among some veterans, McCain wasn't making any new friends. "'Enemies' is probably not the right word," remembered Richard Childress, a Vietnam veteran who as director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration worked on POW issues. "But some questioned his judgment because he tried to move so hard and so fast," he said. "Even informed people on the issue thought he was going too far."

Then during the administration of George H.W. Bush, McCain served on a Senate committee aimed at figuring out whether any American POWs might still be alive in Southeast Asia. The final report, issued in January 1993, concluded that "there is, at this time, no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia." It added that "the question arises as to whether it is fair to say that American POWs were knowingly abandoned in Southeast Asia after the war. The answer to that question is clearly no."

The findings infuriated the more conspiracy-minded elements in the POW/MIA community. The Jerry Kileys of the world think McCain has committed an unthinkable sin. "Some people believe that there are live POWs still from the Vietnam War," explained Morgan of American Ex-Prisoners of War. "And they felt like Senator McCain did not delve deeply enough into that, considering that he was a POW." But Morgan, while hastening to say that her organization considers McCain "one of our own," acknowledges that McCain's unpopularity extends beyond the fringe.

Fair or not, the senator has also generated a reputation as being hostile to the families of those Americans still missing. And some of that is probably his fault. A well-known example is his barbed exchange with a witness whose brother went missing in Vietnam. Dolores Apodaca Alfond, who appeared before the Senate committee on Nov. 11, 1992, expressed concern that the committee might shut down without finding all the answers. The famously testy McCain bristled at the suggestion. "I do not denigrate your efforts," he said. "And I am sick and tired of you denigrating mine and many other people who have views different from you." Even he admitted that day that he may have "appeared upset." News clips say McCain left the hearing room that day to the sound of hisses from the audience of around 50 relatives of missing Americans.

That panel was chaired by Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who already had a troubled relationship with his fellow veterans because of his outspoken opposition to the war after his tours of duty. It was while serving on the panel together that McCain and Kerry solidified a friendship. In addition to their experience in Vietnam, the two men shared the belief that the United States would be more likely to get information about Americans unaccounted for after the war by normalizing relations with Vietnam.

In the spring of 1993, the two men traveled to Vietnam together. On their return, Kerry reported "very special efforts" by the Vietnamese to help the United States get more information on missing Americans. But some experts in the field didn't see any substantive progress by the Vietnamese. "[McCain and Kerry] were coming back [from Vietnam] and making pronouncements of great progress," said Childress, the Reagan administration official. "And those of us who dealt with the Vietnamese for many years know progress when we see it."

Normalization of relations with Vietnam went into high gear during the Clinton administration, with the full support of McCain, a process that is now complete. But many observers believe that President Clinton -- who did not serve in Vietnam -- could not have moved aggressively to normalize relations without the political cover provided by McCain, the war hero. Among the POW/MIA community and some veterans, McCain is referred to as a "cardboard cutout" for Clinton during this period on this issue. It did not further endear the Arizona senator to some veterans.

All these things accumulated over time. "A lot of people thought he moved too fast and too far with normalization, probably in good faith," Childress explained. "And then when he joined with Clinton, he identified himself with that. And when he and Kerry became good friends, and with everything he had said about Vietnam veterans, all that added up in people's minds." Kiley's campaign against McCain is, in a sense, just a continuation of his work against McCain's Senate colleague during the last presidential election. He and Ted Sampley, organizers of Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, also formed Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry and worked to discredit Kerry's record in 2004.

Unfortunately, it is possible that the normalization route favored by McCain and Kerry did come at a cost to some of the families of missing Americans. There are still 1,763 Americans missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam conflict. Based on U.S. government information, the National League of Families, an advocacy group for the families of those Americans, estimates that with full cooperation from the Vietnamese, remains or proof of death could likely be ascertained for half of that number. The United States has formally asked the government in Vietnam for a raft of specific documents -- like results of Vietnamese crash site investigations -- that might shed some light on these. The documents have not been forthcoming. Some experts think this is because there is little upside for the Vietnamese to go out of their way now.

http://mccaininsults.wordpress.com/categor...-grouprelative/

During June 1996 at the National Alliance of Families Annual Conference in Washington, DC, a group of approximately two-dozen people went to the Senate Building hoping to meet with McCain about the Missing Service Personnel Act of 1996. He refused to meet or to even schedule a meeting while the family conference was in session. As we were contemplating our next move, the Senator and a young, attractive female aide came from his office in our direction. Our spokesperson, John Parsels, a former POW of Vietnam, stepped toward McCain, asking if he would talk with us. McCain denied any knowledge of the Act and brushed past Parsels. As he approached the niece of Charles Duke, Jr. (missing civilian, 05-30-70, South Vietnam), she stepped forward to speak and McCain backhanded her, causing her to hit the wall.

As McCain and the aide continued walking, I then saw Jane Duke Gaylor, mother of Charles Duke Jr., who was in her mid-80’s and wheelchair bound, stretch her arms toward McCain saying, “Please talk with us.” “Please talk with us.” McCain raised his left arm ready to strike her, controlled himself, and pushed the wheelchair away from him. McCain and the aide continued down the hall and I saw Carol Hrdlicka (wife of Capt David L. Hrdlicka, USAF, POW, 05-18-65, Laos), John Parsels, and others follow McCain. The remainder of us looked at each other in total shock as to what we witnessed in those few minutes. It was later learned that Jane Duke Gaylor and her niece had gone to the Senate Police to file a complaint–the police refused to help them. John McCain is personally and single handily responsible for gutting the Missing Service Personnel Act of 1996. Why? Why does McCain treat the POW-MIA families in this manner?

Eleanor Apodaca
Sister of Major Victor Joe Apodaca, Jr., USAF
MIA, June 8, 1967, North Vietnam

Posted in POW/MIA Group/Relative | No Comments »

McCain belittles Dolores Alfond
February 6, 2008

Anyone who thinks we are going to get anything more from the communists in Vietnam is deluding themselves.

The way I'd put it is we got very close to the maximum result possible (I think some reticence for political reasons on both sides of the aisle cost us some minor amounts of cooperation). The difference is I see the possibility of more data in the future.

John McCain's capture and imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam, when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft 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 gathered around, spat on him, kicked him, and stripped him of his clothes. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs.


John McCain was flying an A-4E Skyhawk like this one (from a different Oriskany squadron) in 1967, when he was shot down.Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information, beating and interrogating him. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announced his capture. His status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care. Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week; they nursed McCain and kept him alive. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd59.htm

By: Devvy

August 26, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

Arizona Senator John McCain has been making big hay with the media lately regarding the anti-Kerry "Swift Boat" ads (search)calling for the White House to denounce them. McCain, never one to shy away from the camera, carries his own baggage from Viet Nam. This two part series was originally published in my old newsletter, The Power Educator, with permission from Ted Sampley of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, July 1995. McCain has always had his own problems with Viet Nam veterans. The government's media apparatus has basically given him a free pass.

Part I

John McCain the second-term Republican senator from Arizona and former Navy pilot captured and held prisoner during the Vietnam War, is a fraud, collaborator, and danger to the security of the United States because he is being black-mailed by the communist Vietnamese. He is a phony--a "rhinestone hero."

While a prisoner of war, McCain was treated as a "special prisoner," with privileges including being given his own private and affectionate nurse.

McCain's treatment as a "special prisoner" is a contradiction to his much publicized image of a great war hero who was severely tortured and kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time because he refused to break during interrogation.

Ted Guy, a former Air Force Colonel held 5 1/2 years by the Vietnamese and McCain's senior ranking officer (SRO) in the POW camp, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch he cannot remember the communists ever laying a hand on McCain.

Other sources have told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that the Vietnamese are holding as much as fifty hours of film footage secretly taken of McCain during the time his KGB-trained handlers had him isolated from other U.S. prisoners of war.

Some of the film, according to the sources, is of McCain receiving special privileges during the time he claims he was being tortured and held in long-term solitary confinement.

The sources say interrogators have candid camera footage of McCain with the nurse, who allegedly supplied him with more than just medical attention during those lonely days and nights in so-called solitary confinement.

In June 1992, Trung Hieu, a film director from the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and former North Vietnamese Army photographer, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that Hanoi does have considerable film of POW McCain and some of it involves a Vietnamese woman.

Trung, who worked during the war as an official photographer in North Vietnam's POW camps, was in the United States seeking political asylum when he told the U.S. Veterans Dispatch about the film.

Trung also said that during the war he photographed a nearly intact B-52 bomber, which was shot down at the edge of an air field near Hanoi in December 1972. He said the North Vietnamese traded the B-52 and some of its surviving crew members to the Soviets for three MIG-23 jet interceptors. Trung said the Soviets wanted to interrogate the crew about U.S. electronic warfare.



Trung said he took movie film of an American F-111 fighter bomber also shot down in 1972. He said the F-111 capsule, along with the surviving crew, was sent to China. The crew, according to Trung, was later returned to Hanoi.

McCain, who was a member of the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, argued emotionally during the hearings that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets."

Trung has said Hanoi has a large, secret vault containing shelves loaded with POW/MIA related film, which it has never allowed the U.S. government to view.

Gene Brown, who was employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a period of time in 1992 and 1993, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that, while in Hanoi, he had been inside a vault which contained wall-to-wall film and that there appeared to be approximately 50 hours of film about McCain.

Brown, who was in Hanoi secretly working for the DIA under the code name "Druid Smoke" succeeded in smuggling nearly 4,500 photographs out of Hanoi by buying them from Communist officials with money supplied by the DIA. The photos, most of which had never been seen by the U.S. government, were taken during the Vietnam War and depicted, Americans killed in the war and the wreckage of many U.S. aircraft.

To avoid embarrassing the communists, USG officials declared the release of Brown's black market photographs "important progress" and "unprecedented cooperation" toward resolving the POW/MIA issue and publicly thanked the Vietnamese for their cooperation.

Garnett Bell, a 30 year employee of DOD and former chief of the U.S. office for POW/MIA Affairs in Hanoi, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that he had actually seen some film footage of McCain taken by the Vietnamese when McCain did not know he was being filmed.

Last month the United Press International (UPI) quoted the Cambodian Khmer Rouge accusing McCain of being a "Vietnamese Agent."

"Who is John McCain?" the rebel group asked rhetorically in a radio broad-case monitored in Bangkok. "He is Vietnamese. He has a Vietnamese wife and Vietnamese children. He is an American by nationality, but he is a Vietnamese agent..."

McCain the collaborator

From the first days of McCain's captivity, he seriously violated the Military Code of Conduct, which outlines the basic responsibilities and obligations of members of the Armed Forces of the United States who have been captured by the enemy.

According to documentation obtained by the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, not only did POW McCain promise to give the communists "military information" in exchange for special hospital care not ordinarily available to U.S. prisoners, but he also made numerous anti-war radio broadcasts.

Article V of the Code of Conduct is very specific in declaring that U.S. military personnel are required to avoid answering questions to the utmost of their ability and to make no oral or written statements disloyal to the United States and its allies or harmful to their cause. Any violation of this code is considered collaborating with the enemy.

The following is McCain's own admission of collaboration in an article he wrote, printed May 14, 1973 in U.S. News and World Report:

"I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot down] that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us - a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.

"When I saw it, I said to the guard, `O.K., get the officer.'"

"An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, `O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.'"

The Admiral's son gets "special treatment"

McCain claims it was only a coincidence that, about the same time he was begging to be taken to a hospital, the Vietnamese learned his father was Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., commander of all U.S. forces in Europe and soon-to-be commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, including Vietnam.

McCain does concede he survived because the Vietnamese learned who his father was, rushing him to a hospital where his wounds were eagerly treated.

The former POW admitted in the U.S. News and World Report article that the Vietnamese usually left other U.S. prisoners with similar wounds to die, not wishing to waste medication on them. McCain pointed out "there were hardly any amputees among the prisoners who came back because the North Vietnamese just would not give medical treatment to someone who was badly injured. They weren't going to waste their time."

McCain has failed to mention what he has confided to another U.S. prisoner that since the Vietnamese felt they had in their hands such a "special prisoner" and propaganda bonanza, a Soviet surgeon was called in to treat him.

The communists figured that because POW McCain's father was of such high military rank, McCain was of royalty or the governing circle. They bragged that they had captured "the crown prince."

His communist handlers believed McCain, because he came from a "royal-family", would, when finally released, return to the United States to some important U.S. military or government job. Communist Interrogators and psychological warfare experts drooled at the thought.

McCain's handlers were very much aware that he would be under great psychological pressure not to do or say anything that would tarnish the name of his famous military family.

In fact, the communists considered that to be the key to eventually breaking and then "turning" their "special" prisoner, using blackmail if necessary.

According to U.S. government documents, within a week of POW McCain being transferred to the Gai Lam military hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him giving specific military information.

One report dated Nov. 9, 1967 read, "The question of the correspondent, McCain answered: "My assignment in to the Oriskany, I told myself, was due to serious losses of pilots, which were sustained by this aircraft carrier (due to raids on the North Vietnamese Territory (VNA), and which necessitated replacements. From 10 to 12 pilots were transferred like me from the forest to the Oriskany. Before I was shot down, we had made several sorties. All together, I made about 23 flights over North Vietnam."

In that article, McCain was further 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.

Six weeks after McCain was shot down, he was taken from the hospital and delivered to Room No. 11 of "The Plantation" and into the hands of two other POWs, who helped further nurse him along until he was eventually able to walk by himself.

Afterwards, his handlers isolated "special prisoner", McCain from other American prisoners and made him the target of intense psychological programs.




SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"
Part II

By: Devvy

August 29, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

McCain continuously violates the Code of Conduct

In direct violation of the Code of Conduct, McCain, who was supposedly in solitary confinement, met with and was interviewed by several foreign news reporters and political delegations, including many high-ranking North Vietnamese leaders, such as Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam's Minister of Defense and national hero.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Veteran Dispatch acquired a declassified Department of Defense (DOD) transcript of an interview prominent French television reporter Francois Chalais had with McCain.

Chalais told of his private interview with POW McCain in a series titled "Life in Hanoi", which was aired in Europe. In the series, Chalais said his meeting with McCain was "a meeting which will leave its mark on my life."

"My meeting with John Sidney McCain was certainly one of those meetings which will affect me most profoundly for the rest of my life. I had asked the North Vietnamese authorities to allow me to personally interrogate an American Prisoners. They authorized me to do so. When night fell, they took me --- without any precautions or mystery --- to a hospital near the Gia Lam airport reserved for the military (passage omitted). The officer who receives me begins: "I ask you not to ask any questions of political nature. If this man replies in a way unfavorable to us, they will not hesitate to speak of `brainwashing' and conclude that we threatened him.

"This John McCain is not an ordinary prisoner. His father is none other than Admiral Edmond John McCain, commander in chief of U.S. Naval forces in Europe. (passage omitted).

Another 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 Gramma in January 1970.

According to the DOD report, the meeting between Barral and McCain took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi. During that interview, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with his interrogator.

During that interview, McCain again seriously violated the 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.

On Dec. 7, 1969, McCain was moved out of isolation and into the "Hanoi Hilton" with other prisoners of war.

McCain is Hanoi's leading advocate

Today, McCain, who claims he was brutally tortured by the Communist Vietnamese, focally emerged as Hanoi's leading advocate for normalized relations with the United States.

McCain's high-profile and unrelenting support for a government that brutally tortured and murdered his fellow POWs is causing POW/MIA Family members and fellow Vietnam veterans to question the senator and his motivations.

They ask what drives McCain, who owes his public life to the tag "former POW," to work so hard for Hanoi and so diligently to discredit any possibility, in fact the probability, that Hanoi held back live U.S. prisoners of war after the 1973 prisoner release.



The POW/MIA families point out that they worked hard during the Vietnam War to secure McCain's freedom when he was being held by the Communists and the families want to know why he is now betraying them in their efforts to get answers about their missing loved ones.

None of the senators who served on the 1991-92 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs were as vicious in their attacks on POW/MIA family members, veterans, and activists than McCain.

During the POW/MIA hearings, Frances Zwenig, the $118,000-a-year staff director of the Senate Select Committee, reported to McCain that she was told by the Vietnamese, during a July 1992 meeting with the Vietnamese, that something had to be done about the POW/MIA activists who were opposing lifting the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Vietnam.

Not long after, McCain started demanding that the Select Committee investigate the activists, prompting one observer to ask, "Are the Vietnamese now directing the affairs of the Senate Select Committee?"

McCain accused the POW/MIA families and activists who openly challenged the U.S. government's POW/MIA policy, of fraud. In his attacks he said, "The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical, and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam."

McCain took the lead in the Senate and demanded a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the activists. The Justice Department did investigate and found no reason to charge any of the POW/MIA activists.

When one of McCain's former interrogators, Col Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified before the Senate Select Committee, McCain did not display that same "pit bull" inclination to attack as he did for the POW/MIA families and activists. Col Tin told the committee that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war, he had the right to "read all the documents and secret telegrams from the Politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but they treated them very badly.

During a break in the hearing, McCain warmly embraced Bui Tin as if he were a long lost brother. McCain fought a hard and successful campaign to get the U.S.-imposed trade embargo against Vietnam lifted, despite the opposition of all major veteran's organizations, the two POW/MIA family groups, and the majority of the Vietnamese Americans in this country. The veterans want to know why McCain, the "conservative" politician, takes such strong stand for the Vietnamese communists and against such patriotic groups.

John Sidney McCain, III

John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29, 1936. His father was Admiral John McCain II, who became commander-in-chief of the Pacific forces in 1968. Admiral McCain later ordered the bombing of Hanoi while his son was being held there as a prisoner of war. His grandfather was Admiral John S. McCain, Sr., the famous commander of aircraft carriers in the Pacific under Admiral William F. Halsey in World War II.

McCain's early years were spent in various places on both the east and west coats. He attended Episcopal High School Alexandria, VA., and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1958.

His grades in electrical engineering were "satisfactory", although he had numerous demerits for breaking curfews and infractions and he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.

Nevertheless, in spire of his low class standing, his request for training as a Navy pilot was granted, no doubt his father's rank of admiral and family history playing part in the decision.

After qualifying as a Navy pilot, McCain was shipped to Vietnam.

On his 23rd mission over North Vietnam on Oct 26, 1967, McCain was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

To relate the event, McCain later recalled that he was flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet, when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up -- the sky was full of them -- and blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive bomber. It went into an inverted, almost straight-down spin.

"I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection -- the air speed was about 300 knots. I didn't realize it at the moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three places and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the center of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off.

"I hit the water and sank to the bottom.....I did not feel any pain at the time, and I was able to rise to the surface. I took a breath of air and started sinking again."

After bobbing up and down, McCain said he was eventually pulled from the water by Vietnamese who swam out to get him.

He said a mob gathered on shore and that he was bayoneted in the foot and his shoulder was smashed with a rifle butt. He said he was put on a truck and taken to Hanoi's main prison.

The "Rhinestone Hero"

In Congress, McCain's peers touts him as a great war hero. On occasion, the press categorizes McCain as one of the most tortured prisoners of the Vietnam War. Neither is true. He was never brutally tortured and, by his own admission, he collaborated with the communists.

When one totals McCain's 23 missions over North Vietnam, times the number of minutes he was actually over enemy territory (approximately 20 to 35 minutes per mission), McCain's total time over Vietnam before being shot down, was about 10 1/2 hours.

For those 10 1/2 hours over Vietnam, McCain, the Admiral's son, was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and three Purple Hearts averaging over one hero medal per hour.

Compare McCain's 10 1/2 hours of combat and 13 medals to that of a U.S. infantry private who spent 365 days trudging through South Vietnam’s jungle and mud, facing death on a daily basis. He was lucky to leave Vietnam with a simple good conduct ribbon.

Compare McCain's record as a prisoner of war to that of Army Special Forces Captain "Rocky" Versace, who was captured by Vietnamese Communists (Viet Cong) on Oct. 29, 1963 in South Vietnam and who resisted his captors to the end. Very few, if any, in Congress know about Capt. Versace.

He spent two years chained in a bamboo cage and endured almost daily torture by the Vietnamese Communists. Capt. Versace continuously frustrated his Viet Cong interrogators by refusing to obey demands that he denounce America and accept the Communist Philosophy of revolution. He told his captors as they were dragging him to an interrogation hut, "I am an officer of the United States Army. You can force me to come here, you can make me sit and listen, but I don't have to believe a damn word you say."

The Viet Cong decided that day to take no more resistance from Rocky Versace. A few days later, one order of Viet Cong leader Vo Van Kiet, today Vietnam's prime minister and McCain's friend, Versace was dragged from his filth-ridden, mosquito-infested bamboo cage for the last time and forced to kneel with his forehead pressed into the jungle mud. Cap. Versace was then shot in the back of the head.

McCain doesn't talk about MIAs Capt. Rocky Versace, from Norfolk, VA., or Sgt. Kenneth Roraback of Fayetteville, N.C., or Army Sgt. Harold Bennett of Perryville, Ark., who were all ordered executed by his friend, "Butcher" Kiet, according to reports.

Compare McCain, the POW hero, to another fellow prisoner of war, Marine Capt. Donald Cook, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Capt. Cook was awarded our nation's highest award for valor because, during his years of captivity, he jeopardized his own health by sharing his meager supply of food and scarce medicines with other U.S. prisoners who were sicker. He became legendary for his refusal to betray the military Code of Conduct. On one occasion, Vo Van Kiet's Viet Cong cadre put a pistol to Capt. Cook's head, demanding that he denounce the United States. Capt. Cook resisted and calmly recited the nomenclature of the parts of the pistol, giving the Communists nothing.

The Viet Cong were so infuriated at Capt. Cook's resistance that they isolated him from other American prisoners. They intentionally denied him much needed food and medicine. Like Capt. Versace, Capt. Cook disappeared and was never heard from again. Today, Hanoi claims Capt. Cook died as a result of malaria and that they do not know where his remains are buried.

McCain discourages any talk about Capt. Versace, Sgt. Roraback, Sgt. Bennett, and Capt. Cook.

To talk about such patriots would require the United States to demand the return of their remains, or, at the very least, records of their deaths. If those MIAs are proven dead and their remains returned, then McCain's friend, Vo Van Kiet, would be forced to explain the holes in the back of their skulls and why he had ordered the POWs murdered.

John McCain is NO Hero. He violated the military Code of Conduct and willfully collaborated with the Vietnamese, Soviets, and Cubans.

It is not yet publicly known just how much he collaborated and what kind of favors he received in return. Those in the U.S. government that do know are not talking.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd60.htm

I agree completely. I told my seven year old daughter that he was a "brave man" even as I told her I wanted Obama, and would go along with her and her Mom if Hillary gets the nod.

But just as simply because I think that the whole Wright controversy concerning Obama is completely bogus as regards the candidate himself does not mean that I deny Obama has a real politcal problem here, this looks like it could be a real political problem for McCain, no matter how thin the real case against him is, on this stuff, that is.

It really depends on what you mean, the remnants of the POW/MIA activists will have very little effect, his political problem (and area of most valid questions) is what it leads to. To be blunt I'm sure he talked, this in no way impugns his courage or honor, anyone who's dealt with the combination of injuries, severe pain and shock (you can go into pretty deep shock and still feel pain) knows the disorientation it causes and can understand being manipulated under those conditions. The problem is he didn't live up to the virtually super human standards his father and his mentor exemplified and his later reactions to this. Look at events like his claiming to have ended his long friendship with Keating because Keating called him a wimp, whether it's true or false it raises very serious questions regarding his current capacity to deal rationally with certain issues.

I am certainly not claiming that he is without emotional or character problems. I certainly think that he is invulnerable on charges against his patriotism and basic bravery, at least from the Left, although the nutjob Right might be able to lure away some of the more paranoid voters on the Right fringe away from him on these issues.

But again, issues of character and emotional bearing should not be off the table for the Dems, as long as they handle them carefully.

I agree his patriotism and basic toughness shouldn't be questioned, the emotional or character problems can lead to an overcompensation that is weakness disguised as toughness (or to put it differently a need to appear tough that creates weakness).

I think he should undergo meticulous scrutiny on things like Keating, my comments regarding his background as a POW were merely an attempt to explain him in human terms. To my mind the sole question I see so far regarding his POW experience that seems appropriate for exploration is why he backed off in his opposition to torture and what this might say about him. I doubt rantings by people like Sampley will cost him more than a handfull of votes he would've gotten.

I do not think anyone has suggested he was not a brave man for his service in Vietnam.

The issue is whether he was abusive to the POWs/MIAs before his committee...and what this demonstrates about his character and fitness to serve as Commander in Chief?

Whether his reluctance to get involved in the issue during the late 80s and early 90s showed anything about his character and willingess to assist veterans?

Whether the complaints of Gulf War Veterans against him have any substance?

If there are 119 veteran groups lined up against them, and they represent a substantial number of Vietnam War Veterans, isn't that reality something to give you pause about electing someone who supposedly counts national security and judgment as a soldier and expert on military affairs --- a person of sound judgment on these issues?

I do not think that is the issue.

Some may hold out small hope for that, but realistically its a non-starter.

The issue is whether McCain's abrasive personality and his actions with the Select Committee and on other veteran issues raise sufficient questions regarding his character and fitness to serve as Commander in Chief as to damage his candidacy for president.

Both John Kerry and John McCain were heros in Vietnam. Only a cock sucker would say different.

So internally McCain is a cock sucker? I know of his father through his mentor who was llike family to me, there's no way McCain doesn't feel like he wimped out comparing himself to them. I don't consider this to be an argument against his heroism, but unless you look at how he sees himself you can't understand influences on his decisions.

No one disagrees with this statement that I know of.

BUt this ignores the real question...

Since Vietnam, has John McCain acted in a manner that would make Vietnam War Veterans, and other veterans proud?

If not, does this failure compromise his character and his ability to serve effectively as Commander in Chief?

Character... what "character".

I saw McCain's character when he allowed Bush to slime his family in 2000 and came back and licked Bush's boots. Some character.

"What Bush did to McCain in the 2000 S. C. primary"

McCain was doing that to bide his time -- he was being a party loyalist...

Now --- he has done that a bit too much for my liking...and it shows a weakness of character/polticial expediency IMHO...

Many suggest that Obama's present votes in the Illinois legislature are a similar mark of expediency...

BUt I would suggest that while the latter may be true, the illustration by JOhn McCain is much worse than that of Obama.

Obama had a reasomable excuse, particulalry in the illustration offered by Hillary where he was the bill sponsor...

Voting Present on his own bill was not a good choice of an illustration by Hillary particularly for someone like myself who is familiar with state legislative and parliamentary practices which often require amendments to be made only by certain persons...