Video and Audio
See other Video and Audio Articles
Title: John McCain’s 1969 “Tokyo Rose” Propaganda Recording Released
Source:
TRUNEWS
URL Source: http://www.trunews.com/article/john ... -propaganda-recording-released
Published: Aug 6, 2016
Author: TRUNEWS
Post Date: 2016-08-06 20:23:39 by Hondo68
Keywords: very old news, Hanoi John McCain, uninal cakes
Views: 18086
Comments: 55
Vero Beach, FL - (TRUNEWS) U.S. Senator John McCain recorded a Tokyo Rose-style propaganda message that was broadcast on North Vietnamese radio in 1969.
TRUNEWS, a nonprofit Christian digital news app, obtained the bombshell audio recording and released it today on the organization’s daily newscast hosted by Rick Wiles. TRUNEWS acquired the audio recording in cooperation with WeSearchR.com, a new media company founded by Charles Johnson.
The 1969 North Vietnamese radio broadcast has never been heard in the United States of America. In fact, there has never been any knowledge that such a recording existed. The audio recording was found in a misplaced file in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The broadcast was recorded by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a branch of the CIA that monitored international shortwave and foreign radio broadcasts.
Lt. Commander John McCain was shot down over Hanoi by a North Vietnamese missile while flying his 23rd bombing mission. Both of his arms and one leg were broken. He was pulled ashore by North Vietnamese who took him to a prison known by POWs as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
McCain was a prisoner of war for five and a half years. He was released on March 14, 1973, and returned to the United States of America as a war hero. His POW legacy propelled McCain to victory in a race for a U.S. Congressional seat in Arizona in 1982. He replaced Barry Goldwater in the Senate in 1986.
In the propaganda recording, Lt. Commander McCain said he was “guilty of crimes against the Vietnamese country and people.” He confessed that he bombed “their cities, towns, and villages and caused many injuries, even deaths, for the people of Vietnam.”
He praised the medical care and kindness of his communist captors even though he came to North Vietnam as “an aggressor.” McCain said he wished to express his “deep gratitude” for their “kind treatment” and that he “will never forget” the kindness extended to him by the communist North Vietnamese.
Senator McCain is running for a sixth six-year term in the Senate. He is facing a strong primary challenge from former State Senator Dr. Kelli Ward, a physician in Lake Havasu.
The Arizona Republican Primary is August 30. Sen. McCain will turn age 80 on the day before the primary.
Here is the actual script of John McCain’s 1969 “Tokyo Rose” propaganda broadcast on North Vietnamese radio.
To the Vietnamese people and the government of the DRVN:
From John Sidney McCain, 624787, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy, born 29 August, 1936, Panama, home state Oregon. Shot down 26 October, 1967, A-4E aircraft.
I, as a U.S. airman, am guilty of crimes against the Vietnamese country and people. I bombed their cities, towns and villages and caused many injuries, even deaths, for the people of Vietnam.
I was captured in the capital city of Hanoi, while attacking it. After I was captured, I was taken to the hospital in Hanoi, where I received very good medical treatment. I was given an operation on my leg, which allowed me to walk again, and a cast on my right arm, which was badly broken in three places.
The doctors were very good and they knew a great deal about the practice of medicine. I remained in the hospital for some time and regained much of my health and strength. Since I arrived in the camp of detention, I received humane and lenient treatment.
I received this kind treatment and food even though I came here as an aggressor and the people who I injured have much difficulty in their living standards. I wish to express my deep gratitude for my kind treatment and I will never forget this kindness extended to me.
To listen to the full interview click here for the August 4th edition of TRUNEWS.
Poster Comment:
Hanoi John, GOP presidential candidate 2008. Endorsed by GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, for re-election 2016.
What difference does it make, millions of loyal partisan hack Republicans voted for this known traitor in '08?
Piss on Trump/McCain 2016!
Need some of these with Trump endorsing McCain for US Senate.(1 image)
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
The
knights
Templar
under
torture
confessed
to
every
blasphemy
they
could
think
of
to
stop
the
pain
brain
damaged
people
like
you
can't
sort
out
the
garbage
to
find
out
the
reality
truth
you
need
24
hour
around
the
clock
adult
supervision
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
#2. To: BorisY, more torture, more lies please, more idiotic rhetoric, more disinfo (#1)
Trump will never admit that his plan for increasing torture is counterproductive. He loves lies so much, that he'll torture for more of them.
Castle(C), Stein(G), Johnson(L)
#3. To: hondo68 (#0)
Shit sandwich from from trump or a shit sandwich everyday for the rest of your life from a sick drug infested aids patients called the Clinton's. Pick your poison. Either asshole trump or corrupt career politician Clinton who shares zero values with the you.
No matter how you stack it trump at his worse will be better than the best of Clinton. Either we can break the cycle of corrupt career politicians or make them so strong they can never be defeated.
#4. To: hondo68, A K A Stone (#0)
That is the kind of trash, Stone votes for.
#5. To: hondo68 (#2)
Daniel Tammet: Mathematical Genius Visualizes Numbers, Solves Problems in Blink of an Eye
By Nick Watt
ERIC M. STRAUSS and ASTRID RODRIGUES
·May 28, 2010
Daniel Tammet is a mathematical genius, capable of astronomical calculations in the blink of an eye. He's also a gifted linguist, speaking nine languages including one he created called Manti.more +
On the outside, 31-year-old Daniel Tammet is an unremarkable young man. But behind Tammet's bookish exterior lies a superhuman gift: one of the most extraordinary brains our planet has ever seen. He is a mathematical genius, capable of astronomical calculations in the blink of an eye. And he's a gifted linguist, speaking nine languages, including one he created called Manti.
Tammet says he was born with the ability to experience numbers in an exceptionally vivid way.
"The numbers are moving in my mind," he says. "Sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're slow. Sometimes they're dark. Sometimes they're bright. That emotion, that motion, that texture will be highly memorable for me."
Watch the full story on 20/20 Friday, Dec. 10 at 10 ET.
The phenomenon is called synesthesia, a mixture of the senses that results in a heightened sensory experience. Tammet is able to see and feel numbers. In his mind's eye, every digit from zero to 10,000 is pictured as a 3-dimensional shape with a unique color and texture. For example, he says, the number fifteen is white, yellow, lumpy and round.
Synesthesia occurs when regions of the brain associated with different abilities are able to form unusual connections. In most people's brains, the recognition of colors, the ability to manipulate numbers, or language capacity all work differently in separate parts, and the information is generally kept divided to prevent information overload. But in synesthetes, the brain communicates between the regions.
Tammet doesn't need a calculator to solve exponential math problems such as 27 to the 7th power -- that's 27 multiplied by itself seven times -- he'll come up with the answer, 10,460,353,203, in a few seconds.
Tammet visualizes numbers in their unique forms and then melds them together to create a new image for the solution. When asked to multiply 53 by 131, he explains the solution in shapes and textures: "Fifty-three, which is round, very round...and larger at the bottom. Then you've got another number 131, which is longer a little bit like an hourglass. And there's a space that's created in between. That shape is the solution. 6,943!"
Tammet first discovered his mathematical abilities as a child, the eldest of nine children in his family in England.
"I learned to count, like anyone else, at a young age, and when I did I would see colors," he said. "I would see pictures in my mind. I assumed at the time that everyone saw numbers as I did."
Tammet didn't do math as it was taught in school. Instead, the answers just came to him.
Autistic Savant Ridiculed as Youth
In addition to having synesthesia, Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant. As depicted by Dustin Hoffman in the movie "Rainman," savant syndrome is a very rare condition in which people with developmental disorders are exceedingly brilliant in a particular area. Only 10 percent of people with autism have savant syndrome, and fewer than 1 percent of non-autistic people exhibit savant skills.
Tammet's form of autism, called Asperger's syndrome, makes him unnaturally obsessive and focused.
Growing up, he felt restricted by repetitive patterns of behavior, and like most savants he found normal life and social interaction almost impossible. It's a tragic downside to the savant gift that often results in isolation and ridicule.
"Children would tease me. I would have gestures...flapping of the hands, walking in circles," he said. "The other children would repeat that back to me, call me names."
Obsession with Numbers Leads to Pi Day
It was Tammet's obsession with numbers that led to an incredible feat on March 14, 2004, known as Pi Day, when Tammet broke the European record for reciting the number Pi from memory.
Pi, the ratio a circle's circumference to its diameter is considered an "irrational" number in mathematics because it does not end. You may be able to remember the first few digits -- 3.14159 -- but not more.
Tammet says he only read through the digits once and was able to remember 22,514 of them. After a couple weeks to practice reciting the numbers back, in order, it took Tammet just 5 hours and 9 minutes to reel off the numbers while mathematicians listened and simultaneously checked every digit.
To memorize a long number like Pi, Tammet said he just forms a beautiful landscape out of the shapes he pictures in his mind: "I'm taking the numbers, I'm making them into colors and shapes. I'm able to put those into combinations which form hills…or ground or sky…It's another world that I'm able to go into, experience, live within."
Autistic Savant Masters Icelandic in One Week
Despite Tammet's limitations as an autistic savant, he is able to leave his vibrant autistic world and communicate in a way that's impossible for most savants and remarkable for any person.
"As with numbers, language is something that I have an exceptional ability, and it's something that I can perform very well in beyond most people's ability," he said.
Tammet was even challenged to learn Icelandic, perhaps the most impenetrable language on earth, in just one week. While some said it was impossible, Tammet says, "When people say to me, 'This is something you can't do,' I want to do it. I want to prove them wrong."
Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University, said Tammet has mastered languages by understanding them as code. "He's treating vocabulary and grammar as systems and he wants to crack the system, crack the code," he said.
After just seven days of learning Icelandic, Tammet appeared live on an Icelandic television talk show and proved his gift to the world.
These days Tammet shares his intellect in writing. He uses his synesthesia to visualize sentence structure and many have appreciated the beautiful landscape of his prose. His autobiography, "Born on a Blue Day," is a bestseller that has been translated into 20 languages.
His second book, "Embracing the Wide Sky," details how our brains really work and how Tammet overcame autism: He trained himself to make friends and tell jokes, stuff that for most of us is second nature.
"These are skills that can be learned. I'm living proof of that and there are many who are like me who have acquired those skills through effort, through the love and support of their families as well."
Tammet is currently at work on a novel, due out early next year. He spends a lot of time traveling, lecturing and sharing his gifts with scientists and adoring audiences alike.
He's learned to enjoy the disorders that caused him so much pain earlier in life.
"As a child, I wanted very much to be like everyone else, to be normal. Today, it's different. I live in a beautiful country, I have a relationship, I have a career. I travel and I do many, many things and I think my mind and the abilities that come with that way of imagining the world has enriched my life enormously."
Excerpts from 'Embracing the Wide Sky'
The following is a selection of excerpts from Daniel Tammet's second book, "Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind."
On Memory
Imagine entering a room around which a dozen everyday objects are scattered. After a few minutes you step outside while someone else enters and removes one of the items. When you return a short while later you will likely be able to tell immediately which of the objects has been taken. As though endowed with some superhuman power, you will do this by seeing what is not there. Such is the magic of memory.
When I recited the mathematical constant Pi (3.141…) from memory to 22,514 decimal places in March 2004, it seemed like magic to many people. In fact the achievement (a European record) was the result of weeks of disciplined study that was aided by the unusual way in which my mind perceives numbers, as complex, multi-dimensional, coloured and textured shapes. Using these shapes I was able to visualise and remember the digits of Pi in my mind's eye as a rolling numerical panorama, the beauty of which both fascinated and enchanted me.
One of my fondest memories from the Pi event in Oxford four years ago is the profound sense of joy I felt at that visual experience of the numbers' beauty. The public recitation of number after number after number developed into a kind of meditation for me, as I grew more and more wrapped up in their flow. Although the digits of Pi are, mathematically speaking, strictly random my internal representation of them was anything but – filled with rhythmic strokes and structures of light, colour and personality. From this random assembly of digits I was able to compose something like a visual song that meandered through every contour of my mind, through which I was able to hear the music of the numbers.
On Language
A particular bugbear for many language learners (especially those whose native language is English) is the use of grammatical gender (the assignment of gender to all nouns) in many languages. Most European languages have two or three genders (such as the German 'der' for masculine nouns, 'die' for feminine nouns and 'das' for neuter nouns), though that number pales in comparison to the aboriginal Yanyuwa language, which has no fewer than 16 genders based on the various functions of objects used in their society ! What makes learning a noun's gender so tricky for learners is its seeming arbitrariness; for example, in French the word for 'moon' (la lune) is feminine but in German it is masculine (der Mond). Mark Twain, the American humorist, marvelled at the gendered nature of German nouns in his book, 'A Tramp Aboard': "In German a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has…(A) tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female...tomcats included."
Studies by cognitive psychologists Lera Boroditsky, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips suggest that native speakers of languages that have gendered nouns remember the different categorisation for each by attending to differing characteristics, depending on whether the noun is 'male' or 'female.' In one such study, a group of native German and Spanish speakers was asked to think of adjectives to describe a key. German speakers, for whom the word 'key' is masculine, gave adjectives such as 'hard,' 'heavy,' 'jagged,' and 'metal' whereas the Spanish speakers, for whom 'key' is feminine, gave responses like : 'golden,' 'little,' 'lovely,' and 'shiny.'
On Numbers
Various surveys indicate that as many as 10-15 percent of people report some kind of graphic mental representation of numbers. Francis Galton, a psychologist and cousin of Charles Darwin, carried out the first of these surveys back in 1880. The responses he obtained offer a fascinating glimpse into the sheer variety of mental number representations, though many number lines also displayed consistent patterns: about two-thirds were left-to-right and ran more often upwards than downwards. Some of the number lines had twists and bends, some turned upside down or back on themselves. A physicist replying to Galton's questionnaire described seeing numbers in the form of a horseshoe, with 0 at the bottom right, 50 at the top and 100 at the bottom left. Another respondent, a barrister, described visualising the numbers 1-12 as though on the face of a clock, with the following numbers tailing off afterwards into an undulating stream with the tens – 20, 30, 40, etc. – at each bend.
On the Future of the Mind
Alongside such impressive advances in medicine and technology, I hope for continuing progress in our cultures too, particularly in the way individuals with different minds are viewed and valued by society. In the not-too-distant past, autistic savants were considered of little scientific or intellectual interest and often treated as mere curiosities or performing seals. Even to this day autistic savants are too often viewed as robots, or computers, freaks, or even supernaturally endowed - in short, anything but human. And yet, as I have argued elsewhere in this book, it is our humanity that makes such abilities possible.
With all that we have begun to learn in recent decades about the intricacy and idiosyncrasy of 'normal' brains and minds, and with the growing awareness of the wide variability in conditions as complex as the autistic spectrum, such distorting and hurtful misconceptions will – I hope – decline in the years ahead. Better still, society will find ways to make best use of the talents and energies of differently able minds, maximising the depth and diversity of its intellectual capital in the face of the many challenges, and opportunities, that lie ahead for all of us.
Excerpts from "Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind" have been reprinted with permission from the author.
you
are
the
liberace
of
politics
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
#6. To: hondo68 (#0)
This propaganda video is the main reason why McCain says if you are tortured, you give out lies. That is a lie, you get information that makes a difference, that is just a fact. Technically, a Mc in front of your name means Son of. Cain is the first murderer, and is mentioned by Jesus as the "son of Satan". That is literally what I think of Johnny boy McCain. He is a deceptive lying prick. If he said the ocean is wet, I would use a test strip to check.
Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.
#7. To: buckeroo (#4)
You are the kind of trash that let America down. You don't have traditional American values. That is why you value fag lovers like sneak a peter.
#8. To: hondo68 (#2)
If you were tortured id yawn.
#9. To: Justified (#3)
No matter how you stack it trump at his worse will be better than the best of Clinton. Either we can break the cycle of corrupt career politicians or make them so strong they can never be defeated.
This should be repeated for all the posters smart enough to comprehend... don't count on Paultard Hondope to get it.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
#10. To: A K A Stone, sneakypete (#7)
You are the kind of trash that let America down. You don't have traditional American values. That is why you value fag lovers like sneak a peter.
Goto Sunday school and receive redemption for your outright lies and gooble-di-goop. After having your halo polished, feel free to tell the world you lied.
#11. To: buckeroo (#10)
Your anti christian attitude is un american. You're the problem with America, not the solution.
#12. To: A K A Stone (#11)
I think Jesus was a GREAT guy. What is your problem?
#13. To: BorisY (#1)
One word per line?
It seems another part of what's left of your brain has died.
#14. To: hondo68 (#0)
John McCain’s 1969 “Tokyo Rose” Propaganda Recording ReleasedHanoi John ...
There was no good reason to post this trash on LF. John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable. He did exactly what he was taught to do. Those of us who have been through the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program know he followed the procedures we learned there. Those who are not familiar with the SERE program need to be enlightened.
SERE provided Military Aircrew and Special Operations personnel with training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct. the program was established by the Air Force and later extended to the Marine Corps, Navy and Army. The training was for those personnel considered to be at high risk of capture. The curriculum had three key parts: survival and evasion; resistance and escape; and water survival. Some parts were (may still be) classified.
A statement by a Marine lieutenant who completed the SERE training:
While I was in the school, I lived like an animal. I was hooded, beaten, starved, stripped naked, and hosed down in the December air until I became hypothermic. At one point, I couldn't speak because I was shivering so hard. Thrown into a 3-by-3-foot cage with only a rusted coffee can to piss into, I was told that the worst had yet to come. I was violently interrogated three times. When I forgot my prisoner number, I was strapped to a gurney and made to watch as a fellow prisoner was water-boarded a foot away from me. I will never forget the sound of that young sailor choking, seemingly near death, paying for my mistake. I remember only the sound because, try as I might, I couldn't force myself to look at his face. I was next. But for some reason, the guards just dropped the hose on my chest, the water soaking my uniform. I was incarcerated at SERE for only a few days, but my mind quickly disintegrated. I became convinced that I was being held in an actual prisoner of war camp. Training had stopped, from my point of view. We had crossed over into some murky shadow land where the regulations no longer applied. I was sure that my captors, who wore Warsaw Pact-style uniforms and spoke with thick Slavic accents, would go all the way if the need arose.That’s a brief summary by one individual who attended SERE. For explicated details from another individual who also attended SERE on what it was like to attend the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) School in Brunswick, Maine during the winter of 1984, click here.
The trainees at SERE were taught to resist torture as long as humanly possible before submitting and then resort first to lying. John McCain did that, many others also did that.
This was the situation with Harry Jenkins, a 6-foot-5 Navy pilot who refused to give up what his father did for a living — once they got that, they’d want more and more. Jenkins was tortured so brutally, he was sure he’d lose his hands. He passed out, and when he came to, his tormenters hung him from his wrists — still tied behind his back — from a meat hook. He had never conceived of such pain. He asked God to take him. Again, Jenkins passed out. When he came to again, he was made to kneel on gravel for hours, and only when the skin was sheared from his kneecaps did he submit. “My father grows flowers,” he said.The torture was constant at the Hanoi Hilton.
The POWs were thrown in tiny cells, slabs of concrete for beds, single, bare lightbulbs making sleep impossible. They were in a constant state of starvation, and when they were fed, their watery soup was laced with pebbles or feces. They were made to stand on stacked stools for days on end. They were often strapped down by 15-pound leg irons, which caused lacerations and infection, or by stocks at the ends of their beds, which kept them on their backs for days. The walls and floors were overrun with roaches and rats. When they were strapped down, they were forced to lie in their own excrement.Before condemning John McCain by sarcastically and contemptuously referring to him as Hanoi John (using the inference to relate to the traitorous actions by the despicable Hanoi Jane) for any statement he made as as POW, you need to realize that each of the men would break and each of the POWs fully understood that.Nels Tanner was tortured into writing a confession of war crimes; he identified a Lt. Clark Kent and was thereafter known as the author of Superman’s confession.
While transported to Hanoi after being shot down, Jim Mulligan’s captors poured gasoline over his bound arms, fusing threads of rope into his wounds. Howie Rutledge was beaten mercilessly during his first day in captivity; refusing to give up his ship and squadron, he was told to get on the floor, and a guard thrashed his injured and dislocated leg until it pressed flat on the ground. He and Sam Johnson had both suffered over 60 boils each during one summer, and Johnson had been held in solitary multiple times, often going six days in a row without sunlight.
Ron Storz had been made to stand on a stool for seven days straight, beaten nearly to death by a bamboo stick. Hands tied behind his back,
George McKnight was held for 34 nights in an air-raid trench 4 feet long; he was 6-foot-2. They beat George McKnight for 36 hours straight; they beat and tortured Denton so brutally his arms turned black; Jim Mulligan was strung up and beaten for six days, Nels Tanner for 17.
Sam Johnson was so brutalized that when he finally submitted, he literally could not write the apology demanded by the Vietnamese. He was able only to sign it, and when he was thrown back in his cell, he heard Jerry Denton whispering to him from next door. “Sam, Sam, it’s OK, buddy.” “I made them write it, Jerry,” he replied. “But I had to sign it.” “It’s OK, Sam,” Jerry said. “You’re OK. Hang on, You did good.”
#15. To: Gatlin, hondo68 (#14) (Edited)
John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.
Attaboy!
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
#16. To: Deckard, Gatlin, hondo68 (#15)
SPUDS: John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.
I am pretty sure McCain was caught in the Vietnam War by the offensive military forces. That action is dishonorable all by itself, especially when the POW agrees with his captors.
#17. To: Deckard (#15)
John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.Attaboy!
I accept your "Attaboy" with great pride because I will defend the actions by any POW confined in Hanoi Hilton.
Some of my friends spent a very unpleasant time there. Other friends that were shot down, never lived to get there.
I did not vote for John McCain in the Senate race the last time. And I have condemned some of the statements and actions he made and took as a Senator.
But I will never, NEVER, condemn him, or any POW who spent time in the Hanoi Hilton for what they said or did while held captive...neither should anyone else.
#18. To: Gatlin (#17)
Some of my friends spent a very unpleasant time there
Oh, you mean they didn't get "special treatment" like McStain did?
Good grief, you're pathetically defending a frigging traitor.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
#19. To: Deckard (#18)
Oh, you mean they didn't get "special treatment" like McStain did?
What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?
#20. To: buckeroo (#16)
I am pretty sure McCain was caught in the Vietnam War by the offensive military forces.
What were the "offensive military forces" that took John McCain captive?
#21. To: Gatlin (#19)
What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?
He praised the medical care and kindness of his communist captors even though he came to North Vietnam as “an aggressor.” McCain said he wished to express his “deep gratitude” for their “kind treatment” and that he “will never forget” the kindness extended to him by the communist North Vietnamese.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
#22. To: buckeroo (#16)
That action is dishonorable all by itself, especially when the POW agrees with his captors.
This coming from an asshole who spent his short military career as a photographer stationed in Germany and was never tortured as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton...is understandable.
#23. To: Gatlin (#22)
You're so right and these people do not comprehend intelligence matters. Every f*cking moron realizes that everyone will talk and the military recognizes that this will happen. Only an IDIOT believes that McCain was a traitor for doing a tape.
The assholes here wouldn't have lasted a day under captivity without giving there momma up.
#24. To: Deckard (#21) (Edited)
What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?He praised the medical care and kindness of his communist captors even though he came to North Vietnam as “an aggressor.” McCain said he wished to express his “deep gratitude” for their “kind treatment” and that he “will never forget” the kindness extended to him by the communist North Vietnamese.
Ah, this amazing brain fart coming from an asshole, who spent his SEA tour in complete safety at Udorn RTAFB in Thailand, sitting behind a desk during the day and his nights in the hootch drinking beer and smoking pot….while watching the action in Nam on Armed Forces Network TV.
The man was in severe pain with two broken arms and a broken leg did what he needed to do to get help. He could not care for himself. What would you have done “desk jockey?” Stand up from the hospital bed and spit your captors in the eye while telling them to take their medical care and shove it up their communist asses? Sure, you would….LOL!!!!
#25. To: buckeroo, Deckard, hondo68 (#16) (Edited)
That action is dishonorable….when the POW agrees with his captors.
This happened a number of times.
Besides John McCain’s appearance on TV….such another event occurred in 1966, when Jeremiah Denton was also forced to appear at a televised press conference. It must be noted this was when he famously blinked the word "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" with his eyes in Morse code, confirming to U.S. intelligence that U.S. prisoners were being harshly treated.
Was everyone who was forced to agree with his captors at the Hanoi Hilton acting dishonorably….I ask you, picture taking boy?
#26. To: calcon (#23)
You're so right and these people do not comprehend intelligence matters. Every f*cking moron realizes that everyone will talk and the military recognizes that this will happen. Only an IDIOT believes that McCain was a traitor for doing a tape.The assholes here wouldn't have lasted a day under captivity without giving there momma up.
So true….so very true.
For in the end it became known that the torture was sufficiently brutal and prolonged that virtually every American POW so subjected made a statement of some kind at some time. Upon being released, one POW said that when he was finally forced to make an anti-American statement: "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”
The POWs developed an internal creed: "Take physical torture until you are right at the edge of losing your ability to be rational. At that point, lie, do, or say whatever you must do to survive. But you first must take physical torture."
#27. To: Gatlin (#24)
Ah, this amazing brain fart coming from an asshole, who spent his SEA tour in complete safety at Udorn RTAFB in Thailand,
As I recall, you were stationed not far from there at about the same time as me you pompous, self-aggrandizing hypocritical piece of shit.
You and McStain - two traitorous peas in a pod.
Go fuck yourself Major potato peeler.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
#28. To: Deckard (#27) (Edited)
That was my second tour....you desk jockey asshole.
This time in the AC-130 Spectre Gunship at Ubon.
#29. To: Gatlin, calcon, buckeroo, hoindo68 (#26)
Gee - I wonder why someone of McStain's "heroic caliber" buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam?
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home.
Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents.
Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
#30. To: Gatlin (#14)
SERE was not pleasant.
#31. To: hondo68 (#0)
McCain had two things going for him. Both his father and Grandfather were full admirals. On the strength of that, he was admitted to the Naval Academy where he was a chronic screw-up who graduated near the bottom of his class. From there he was given his choice of becoming an airplane pilot, a position for which he was unqualified. He wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship. He would hace been court martialed, but someone who is a Admiral's son is not to be subjected to court martial. After being relaesed from being a POW and then eventually promoted to Captain and given the job of entertaining big wigs who wanted to meet an authentic war hero until his retirement. The man is a complete fabrication.
#32. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
SERE was not pleasant.
It definitely was not.
#33. To: rlk (#31)
nearly destroyed a ship
not
true
loaded
missiles
on
deck
were
armed
prematurely
one
started
a
chain
reaction
that
could've
sunk
the
ship
killed
him
too
love
boris
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
#34. To: Deckard, Jane Fonda, Gatlin, chicom coverup team, Trumpkins, McCain democratic rebels, Christmas in Cambodia Kerry, *Neo-Lib Chickenhawk Wars* (#29)
https://www.intellihub.com/john-mccain-is-no-war-hero-he-has-covered-up-pows-left-behind-in-vietnam-for-years/
Gatlin, McCain, Jame Fonda, and their neocon lackeys, Trump, Pence, etc. are still covering up for the chicoms after all these decades.
I wonder, if there were North Korean collaborators running for president(R), would Gatlin support them too?
Castle(C), Stein(G), Johnson(L)
#35. To: rlk, hondo68 (#31)
McCain had two things going for him. Both his father and Grandfather were full admirals. On the strength of that, he was admitted to the Naval Academy where he was a chronic screw-up who graduated near the bottom of his class. From there he was given his choice of becoming an airplane pilot, a position for which he was unqualified. He wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship. He would hace been court martialed, but someone who is a Admiral's son is not to be subjected to court martial. After being relaesed from being a POW and then eventually promoted to Captain and given the job of entertaining big wigs who wanted to meet an authentic war hero until his retirement. The man is a complete fabrication.
I found no record to show where McCain “wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship.” I found that he only crashed “one” aircraft that was determined to be his fault and listed in Navy records as “pilot error.” The accident investigation board determined a second aircraft was lost due to engine failure.
McCain was in no way at fault for the Forrestal disaster. He was in his A-4 Skyhawk. loaded with two, 1,000-pound bombs and waiting on the carrier deck for his turn to launch when a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft, swooshed across the carrier deck and stuck the plane next to McCain’s plane.
Of course, I could be wrong and stand to be corrected.
#36. To: hondo68 (#34)
One thing you can always be absolutely assured of and that is Gatlin will support the TRUTH.... something you are totally unfamiliar with doing.
I will not blindly buy into hearsay and agenda driven erroneous information simply because I agree with it....as you continue to do.
|
#37. To: BorisY (#33)
Yep!
#38. To: Gatlin (#26)
"I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”
I worked for the NSA (army sec. agen.) and we always discounted inteligence gained from detainees.
No matter how "bad" you think you are, they can make you talk and do whatever else they want.
#39. To: Gatlin, rlk, hondo68 (#35)
I found no record to show where McCain “wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship.” I found that he only crashed “one” aircraft that was determined to be his fault and listed in Navy records as “pilot error.” The accident investigation board determined a second aircraft was lost due to engine failure.
There seems to be ample evidence that McCain lost three planes and tore up some wires in Italy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-klein/mccains-secret-questionab_b_107409.html
McCain's Secret, Questionable RecordJeffrey Klein
Huffington Post
Posted June 16, 2008 | 08:50 PM (EST)
Updated: 05/25/2011 12:35 pm EDT"At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral.... Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral's star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could ‘do more good there,’ Mr. Lehman recalled." So claimed the New York Times in a front-page article on May 29 this year.
This story is highly improbable for several reasons, not least of all because John McCain himself has always told a very different story about his stalled naval career. For example, on page 9 of his memoir Worth The Fighting For, McCain writes:
"Several months before my father died, I informed him that I was leaving the navy. I am sure he had already gotten word of my decision from friends in the Pentagon. I had been summoned to see the CNO, Admiral Heyward, who told me that I was making a mistake.... His attempt to dissuade me encouraged me to believe that I might have made admiral had I had been in the navy, a prospect that remained an open question in my mind.... Some of my navy friends believed I could still earn my star; others doubted it.... When I told my father of my intention, he did not remonstrate with me.... But I knew him well enough to know that he was disappointed. For when I left him that day, alone in his study, I took with me his hope that I might someday become the first son and grandson of four-star admirals to achieve the same distinction. That aspiration was well beyond my reach by the time I made my decision...."
McCain's father died on March 22, 1981. McCain retired from the Navy within a week. He wrote about his retirement soon thereafter. McCain never mentioned the alleged offer of an admiralship by Lehman in any of his books, nor in the numerous interviews McCain gave during his first run for the presidency in 1999-2000.
Furthermore, articles written during the current presidential campaign quote McCain's closest friends about McCain's failure to be promoted to admiral before he retired from the Navy. For example, in an April 26, 2008, National Journal cover story, William Cohen (then a Senator, subsequently Secretary of Defense and the best man at McCain's second wedding) recounts that McCain "knew his career in the Navy was limited." Former Senator Gary Hart, who served as a groomsman at McCain's 1980 wedding, says in the National Journal story that he had been told "that [McCain] was not going to receive a star and not going to become an admiral. I think that was the deciding point for him to retire from the Navy."
John Lehman doesn't figure in any accounts of McCain's naval career, probably because Lehman was appointed Secretary of the Navy less than two months before McCain retired. The New York Times didn't note this, or the pertinent fact that John Lehman is currently serving as National Security Adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Two other top naval officers in the Times story confirmed Lehman's claim, but for unknown reasons the Times, in violation of its own guidelines, accorded them off-the-record status that makes it impossible to assess their motives and credibility.
The New York Times' front-page story about McCain declining promotion to admiral lacks credibility for other reasons as well. For example, McCain had been promoted to captain on August 1, 1979, so he wouldn't have been due for another promotion by March of 1981.
Retired Admiral Peter Booth, who was promoted to rear admiral in 1981, flatly disputes Lehman's claim about McCain. "No, John McCain was not selected for flag rank, for admiral. With all due respect, I think I was selected that same year, and I have never heard anything even remotely like that. To begin with, John Lehman did not select Navy flag officers. That was done with a very august selection board headed by a four-star admiral. The Secretary of the Navy does not appoint. He is in the approval chain, but he is not on the committee.
"I have never heard a story, even remotely, that John McCain was going to be a flag officer. I was early selected for captain, in 1976, and I was regular selected for admiral in 1981. So it's probably five or six years, I guess. I've never heard of anybody being selected for flag rank within three or four years of making captain, ever."
Retired Admiral John R. Batzler, former commanding officer of the U.S.S. Nimitz, also promoted to rear admiral in 1981, agrees with Retired Admiral Booth.
"I made rear admiral in about five years. I wasn't selected early, and I wasn't selected late. I find it incredible that someone made that statement that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be promoted to admiral two years after he made captain. First of all, telling him at all is not kosher, but we all know the Secretary of the Navy does what he damn well pleases, in particular John Lehman. This whole idea that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be promoted to flag two years after he made captain sounds preposterous to me."
All of the evidence, indications and comments that the New York Times published a flattering lie about McCain's career on its front page are easy for John McCain to refute. All he needs to do is sign Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an undeleted copy of McCain's naval file to news organizations. A long paper trail about McCain's pending promotion to admiral would be prominent in his file. To date, McCain's advisers have released snippets from his file, but under constrained viewing circumstances. There's no reason McCain's full file shouldn't be released immediately. In May 2005, six months after he lost his bid for president, Senator John Kerry signed the 180 waiver, authorizing the release of his complete military service record to the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. ** Unlike Kerry, McCain shouldn't wait until after the election to do so.
The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the Associated Press.
Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.
Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airedales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished, according to his own books, by mediocrity and misdeeds, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.
McCain's file should also include records and analytic reviews of McCain's subsequent sub-par performances. Here are a few cited in two highly favorable biographies, both titled John McCain, one by Robert Timberg and the other by John Karaagac.
Timberg:
"[A]fter a European fling with the tobacco heiress, John McCain reported to flight school at Pensacola in August 1958.... [H]is performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it. What he loved was the kick-the-tire, start-the-fire, scarf-in-the-wind life of a naval aviator. ...One Saturday morning, as McCain was practicing landings, his engine quit and his plane plunged into Corpus Christi. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom....McCain was an adequate pilot, but he had no patience for studying dry aviation manuals.... His professional growth, though reasonably steady, had its troubled moments. Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines, which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.... [In 1965] he flew a trainer solo to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game. Flying by way of Norfolk, he had just begun his descent over unpopulated tidal terrain when the engine died. 'I've got a flameout,' he radioed. He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."
Adds Karaagac:
"In his memoir, everything becomes a kind of game of adolescent brinksmanship, how much can one press the limits of the acceptable and elude the powers that be....The [fighter jocks'] ethos of exaggerated, almost aggressive sociability becomes an end in itself and an excuse for license. There is a tendency for people, not simply to believe their own mythology but, indeed, to exaggerate it.... Fighter jocks, like politicians around their campaign contributions, often press the limits of the acceptable. It is a type of mild corruption that takes place in a highly privileged atmosphere, where restraints are loosened and excuses made....McCain gives some hint in his memoirs about where he stood in the hierarchy among carrier flyers. Instead of the sleek and newer Phantoms and Crusaders, McCain flew the dependable Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in an attack, not a fighter squadron. He was thus on the lower end of the flying totem pole." The genius of McCain's mythmaking is his perceived humility amid perpetual defiance. Having been a rebel without cause, and often a rebel without consequences, McCain apparently was not surprised when his Vietnamese captors went relatively easy on him compared to his fellow POWs. The Vietnamese military secretly and frequently filmed the American POWs to learn their propensities. Col. Pham Van Hoa of the Vietnamese People's Army Film Department was in charge of the filming. Asked recently for his dominant impression of McCain, the now-retired Van Hoa said that McCain "seemed superior to other prisoners." How so? "Superior in attitude towards them."
But when Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide and co-author, was asked by the Arizona New Times about the first McCain memoir, Faith of My Fathers, that he was then working on, Salter said the book would showcase a humble McCain. When I worked on this book with him, he just kept saying, "Other guys had it a lot worse. I think they took it easier on me because of who my dad was. . . . When they tied me in ropes, they'd roll my sleeve up to give it a little padding between the rope and my bicep, you know, little things I noticed. The only really hard time I had was when I didn't go home, and then it only lasted a week, and sometimes I felt braver, I felt I could get away with more.'"
Is McCain now getting away with more by hiding his official history and by having his national security adviser inflate McCain's resume with a bogus promotion to admiral humbly declined? If so, McCain may be attempting to hide why the Navy was in fact slow to promote him upwards despite his suffering as a POW and his distinguished naval heritage.
One possible reason: After McCain had returned from Vietnam as a war hero and was physically rehabilitated, he was urged by his medical caretakers and military colleagues never to fly again. But McCain insisted on going up. As Carl Bernstein reported in Vanity Fair, he piloted an ultra-light, single propeller plane -- and crashed another time. His fifth loss of a plane has vanished from public records, but should be a subject of discussion in his Navy file. It wouldn't be surprising if his naval superiors worried that McCain was just too defiant, too reckless and too crash prone.
Regardless, McCain owes it to the country to release his complete naval records so that American voters can see his documented history and make an informed decision.
** An earlier version of this story may have left the impression that John Kerry had signed the 180 military waiver during the 2004 presidential campaign. It has been updated to clarify the timing of the release.
#40. To: Gatlin, rlk, hondo68 (#35)
McCain was in no way at fault for the Forrestal disaster. He was in his A-4 Skyhawk. loaded with two, 1,000-pound bombs and waiting on the carrier deck for his turn to launch when a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft, swooshed across the carrier deck and stuck the plane next to McCain’s plane.
I have never seen how McCain could have been responsible, but there was a lot of controversy about the incident and whatever it was that McCain did or did not do.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081007_investigating_john_mccains_tragedy_at_sea/
Investigating John McCain’s Tragedy at SeaPosted on Oct 7, 2008
By Mary Hershberger
John McCain’s personal account of his life has shaped a powerful political narrative that accords him deference on the full range of policy issues. His first effort at shaping that narrative received a remarkable boost when the May 14, 1973, edition of U.S. News & World Report gave him space for what is perhaps the longest article the magazine had ever run, a 12,000-word piece composed entirely of his unedited and often rambling account of his prisoner-of-war experience. Ever since, McCain has added compelling details at key points in his political career. When his stories are placed beside documented evidence from other sources, significant contradictions often emerge. One such case involves McCain’s experience in the devastating fire and explosions that killed 134 sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the Vietnam War three months before he was shot down over North Vietnam. McCain has made claims about this accident that differ dramatically from parts of the official Navy report and accounts of reliable eyewitnesses.
In considering the 1967 catastrophe, it is important to note that the official report concluded that no individual bore responsibility for the fire or its spread. There are a number of conflicting accounts of the Forrestal accident, but here is the story as based on the strongest sources. The fire started at 10:51 a.m. Saturday, July 29, 1967, as 30-year-old Lt. Cmdr. John McCain sat on the port side of the Forrestal in his A-4 Skyhawk going through preflight checks. To his right was Lt. Cmdr. Fred White, also in an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft. A Zuni rocket on another airplane accidentally fired and flew across the flight deck, passing through White’s auxiliary fuel tank and falling into the ocean. Fuel spilled onto the deck from White’s craft and ignited. McCain told his biographer, Robert Timberg, and repeats in his own book, “Faith of My Fathers,” that the rocket hit his own plane and knocked two bombs from it into the burning fuel as he scrambled out of his cockpit and raced to safety across the deck.1
There was, in fact, a single bomb—not two—that dropped to the deck. It exploded 90 seconds after the fire broke out, intensifying the blaze until it raged out of control. White and Thomas Ott, McCain’s parachute rigger, were among the first to be killed instantly or mortally injured, along with most of the firefighting crew. McCain’s plane captain, Robert Zwerlein, was one of those who suffered fatal wounds at this point.
A camera on the deck recorded images showing that the Zuni rocket struck White’s plane. The Navy report later attributed the dropped bomb to White’s plane, although the film footage does not seem to establish this definitively. However, McCain has said many times that the Zuni rocket caused the bomb (two bombs in McCain’s version) to fall from his own craft.
Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain’s craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk. These sources—who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified—agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.
Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.
McCain has never been asked to explain why he claims that the Zuni rocket struck his plane. If a bomb or bombs subsequently fell from McCain’s plane as he has said, it seems to strongly suggests pilot error, and if a bomb or bombs did not fall from his plane, it suggests rash disregard for important facts in his accounts of the accident.
There is plenty more about this story that raises questions about McCain’s truthfulness and judgment. In the first hours after the fire, he apparently did not claim to have been injured. New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, who helicoptered out to the ship the day after the tragedy and sought out McCain as the “son and grandson of two noted admirals,” never mentioned him being wounded, although he reported on him more than on any other crew member. This would be an odd omission on Apple’s part if McCain indeed had been wounded, given that service wounds are usually highlighted in such reports during wartime. McCain’s own father, after seeing his son several weeks later, sent a letter to relatives and friends about the fire saying, “Happily for all of us, he [John] came through without a scratch.”2
A week after the fire, McCain made a statement in which he said that when he was on the hangar deck he noticed that he had a wound on his knee and small shrapnel cuts in his thigh and shoulder. He was not treated in sick bay, however, and he tells a story in “Faith of My Fathers” that seems to be at variance with the facts. He writes that he went to sick bay to have his wounds treated but when he got there, a “kid” who was “anonymous to me because the fire had burned off all of his identifying features” asked him if another pilot in the squadron was OK. When McCain replied that he was, the “kid” said “Thank God” and died before McCain’s eyes. McCain said that experience left him “unable to keep my composure,” and that is why he left sick bay without being treated.
Lt. j.g. Dave Dollarhide witnessed that encounter because he was in sick bay, having broken his hip escaping from his plane, which had been immediately to the left of McCain’s when the blaze started. Dollarhide knew McCain and also the “kid,” a young man whom McCain knew well because he was his own plane captain, Robert Zwerlein, who was terribly burned when the first bomb exploded on the ship. Notwithstanding McCain’s dramatic account of witnessing someone die before his eyes, Zwerlein did not die then but instead was evacuated to the hospital ship USS Repose, where he expired three days later. On the basis of Dollarhide’s account, if McCain left sick bay without being treated it was not because someone died before his eyes.3
McCain’s actions after the fire show a determination to exit the ship as quickly as possible. When New York Times reporter Apple finished gathering his notes on the fire, McCain boarded a helicopter with him and flew to Saigon. Given that fires still burned on the ship and some of his fellow airmen were gravely wounded and dying, McCain’s assertion that he left the carrier for “some welcome R&R” in Saigon has a surreal air. Apple, now dead, said nothing in his news reports about inviting McCain to leave the ship, although he did report talking to him in Saigon later that day. McCain does not mention receiving permission to leave the still-burning ship. Merv Rowland, a commander and chief engineering officer of the Forrestal at the time of the fire, told me that he had not known that McCain left the ship within 30 hours of the fire and that he found this “extraordinary.” Rowland added that only the severely wounded were allowed to leave the ship and that no one, as far as he knew, would have been given permission to fly to Saigon for R&R. McCain’s quick flight off the Forrestal meant that he missed the memorial service for his dead comrades held the following day in the South China Sea.
Not long after McCain left, the Forrestal set off without him on its somber voyage to Subic Bay in the Philippines, where it would undergo initial repairs. He rejoined the ship a week later when it was docked at Subic Bay. There he gave an official statement and asked for a transfer to the aircraft carrier Oriskany.
Apple filed two stories about McCain’s time in Saigon. Apple’s first story said: “Today, hours after the fire that ravaged the flight deck and killed so many of his fellow crewmen, commander McCain sat in Saigon and shook his head. ‘It was such a great ship,’ he said.”4 Apple’s second story was filed three months later, just after McCain was shot down over Hanoi. In that story Apple wrote: “It was almost three months ago that the young, prematurely gray Navy pilot was sitting in a villa in Saigon, sipping a Scotch with friends and recalling the holocaust that he had managed to live through. He was John Sydney [sic—spelling is Sidney] McCain, 3rd, a lieutenant commander. The day before, he had watched from the cockpit of his Skyhawk attack plane as flames suddenly engulfed the flight deck of the Forrestal, on which his squadron was based. ‘It’s a difficult thing to say,’ he remarked after a long time. ‘But now that I’ve seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I’m not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam.’ ”5
The record suggests that after McCain left the burning Forrestal for the greater ease of Saigon, he saw his Navy career as being in jeopardy. Soon, he went to London, where his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., was stationed as commander in chief of the United States Naval Forces in Europe. Sen. McCain has written little about the fire, and his book does not mention any conversations with his father about bombs dropping from his plane on the Forrestal or his leaving the ship. However, it is difficult to imagine that he did not discuss the tragedy and his own personal difficulties because, by McCain’s own account, his father had intervened on his behalf before. After seeing the admiral in London, McCain went to the French Riviera, where he spent his nights gambling at the Palm Beach Casino.6
McCain’s book skips over the weeks after the Forrestal fire, but Timberg says that the young naval officer spent the months of August and September 1967 “unsure of his status.” Following McCain’s application for a transfer to the Oriskany, his orders were delayed, and in September he returned to his home in Jacksonville, Fla. There, an old friend, Chuck Larson, saw a change in McCain: The pilot was discouraged about his future. McCain confided to Larson that he might have to get out of the Navy because, in the words of the Timberg biography, “his past had become a burden” and “whenever he joined a new outfit he was dismayed that his reputation for mayhem had preceded him.”7 Aside from any questions about his Forrestal actions, McCain had, in his short Navy career, crashed two planes and flown a third into power lines in Spain because of, as he put it, “daredevil clowning.”8
The investigation into the Forrestal fire was in the hands of Adm. Thomas Moorer, chief of naval operations and a close friend of McCain’s father. (Their friendship was why Moorer would personally convey the news to Adm. Jack McCain three months later that his son had been shot down in Vietnam.) Moorer gave the investigation to Rear Adm. Forsyth Massey, who handed in his report on Sept. 19, 1967. McCain received orders to report to the Oriskany on Sept. 30.9
During the period when John McCain was shot down over Hanoi on Oct. 26, 1967, less than a month after being assigned to the Oriskany, recent events—the Forrestal fire and his possible role in its growth, misgivings about “dropping more of that stuff” on Vietnam, his decision to leave the stricken ship for some “R&R” in Saigon, anxiety about his naval career—were fresh in his mind. What had been going on in McCain’s life may cast light on some of the decisions he made later as a prisoner of war. While he was a POW, he famously refused to be released early, electing not to leave his comrades behind.
After McCain made his first run for the presidency, in 2000, Gregory Freeman wrote a book on the fire, “Sailors to the End.” Freeman’s 2002 book appears to be mostly reliable, but it ignores key parts of the official report and hews closely to McCain’s claim that the Zuni rocket struck his plane, not Fred White’s, causing the two thousand-pound bombs to drop into the burning fuel.
In addition to following McCain’s misleading narrative of the Zuni rocket accident to the letter, Freeman published an uncredited hand-drawn sketch purporting to show the Forrestal deck just before the fire. In that sketch, the plane in which White died is stripped of White’s name, even though Freeman printed the names of the other pilots near McCain’s plane and told their stories. The only place that White’s name appears is at the back of the book in a list of those who died. In the narrative of “Sailors to the End,” Fred White’s name is conspicuous by its absence.
After erasing White, Freeman’s sketch presents an incorrect line between the original position of the Zuni rocket and McCain’s plane, instead of showing the actual line that the rocket took in striking White’s plane. This sketch alone will cause the unwary reader to believe there is visual evidence to support the claim that the Zuni rocket hit McCain’s plane, not that of White, the pilot lost on the Forrestal and now airbrushed out of history, at least in Freeman’s book.
McCain wrote a glowing blurb for Freeman’s book, drawing and all, calling it a “riveting account.” The presence of his enthusiastic blurb on the book cover raises another issue: Freeman relied heavily on interviews of survivors who were close to the Forrestal events but he never quotes McCain directly or mentions having requested an interview with him. Because his book pushes McCain’s misleading and unsubstantiated account, Freeman should make public whether McCain, or people around him, played a role in the genesis of “Sailors to the End.”
“I’m an old Navy pilot. I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck,”10 Sen. McCain said recently in explaining why he was temporarily suspending his presidential campaign and calling for postponement of the first debate between himself and Democratic candidate Barack Obama, which eventually occurred as scheduled. At the one time in his life when he was faced with a real crisis on deck, we now know, McCain left the crisis to others and descended to safety below. As to the question of whether the first bomb to explode on the Forrestal dropped from his plane through pilot error, it is not reassuring to hear him describe his attitude as a Navy pilot toward safety procedures. He told reporters during his 2000 presidential campaign that his motto in those days was: “Kick the tires and light the fires [jet engines]. To hell with the checklist. Anybody can be slow.”11
McCain has gone much further than most veterans in using his military experiences for political purposes, but he has not allowed his military records to be released, save for the list of his awards and medals, all of which were given only after he became a prisoner of war. It is appropriate that he release those records before the election. If his actions contributed to the magnitude of the Forrestal disaster and if he left the burning ship under less than honorable circumstances, that information should be available to voters as they choose their next president. At the very least, John McCain should be asked to explain his actions in the summer of 1967 and tell American voters why he has repeatedly given a false account of Robert Zwerlein’s death.
Mary Hershberger is a historian and the author of “Jane Fonda’s War” and other books. She is a recipient of the Binkley-Stephenson Award, given annually for the best scholarly article in the Journal of American History.
1. John McCain with Mark Salter, “Faith of My Fathers,” 177-181; Robert Timberg, “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” 71-74.
2. R.W. Apple Jr., “Start of Tragedy: Pilot Hears a Blast As He Checks Plane” (New York Times, July 31, 1967) 1; McCain, 181.
3. James Caiella, “Hell 1051,” Foundation Magazine (fall 2003) 52.
4. Apple, ibid.
5. R.W. Apple Jr., “McCain’s Son, Forrestal Survivor, Is Missing in Raid” (New York Times, Oct. 28, 1967) 1.
6. Timberg, 75-76.
7. Ibid.
8. McCain, 155-156, 159, 172.
9. Ibid., 192, 182.
10. “Prepared Remarks by John McCain to the Clinton Global Initiative,” Boston Globe, Sept. 25, 2008, online.
11. Roger Simon, “Honest John, on the Loose: With McCain, you get the good, the bad, and the angry,” U.S. News & World Report, posted Sept. 19, 1999.
#41. To: Deckard (#29)
Mccain is a giant ASS*ole, I don't support him on anything other then his time as a prisoner of war. Don't feel I have a right to judge anyone who went through that.
.
.
.
Comments (42 - 55) not displayed.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]