‹ Muravchik: McCain Will Bomb Iran •
In last night’s debate, McCain again strutted out the fact of his POW status during the Vietnam war.
A servile media has long allowed this to be the primary part of McCain’s halo.
But instead, it should raise questions that go to the heart of McCain’s willingness to betray his fellow soldiers and countrymen in pursuit of political profit.
Sydney Schanberg won a Pulitzer prize while risking his life covering Cambodia for the New York Times in the 1970s. The Nation just published a Schanberg expose that proves that McCain intentionally pulled strings to bury U.S. government information on American soldiers left behind in Vietnam. Upon returning from Vietnam, McCain “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” by burnishing Richard Nixon’s boots - and denying the existence of POWs left behind was Obligatory Lie #1.
Schanberg’s sources are 10-karat, if not better.
Here is the shorter version that appears in the October 6 version of Nation.
Here is the longer version that appears in a study at the Nation Institute webpage.
The media never cares enough about American soldiers to even ask McCain about his role in covering up info about American POWs left behind. But the press turns into his boot burnishers whenever he struts out his tale of suffering.
Update: I also posted this comment here, where there are links to some other videos. Comments also welcome at the other site.
You can also emphasize the fact that McCain’s father was a major figure in the cover-up of the USS Liberty. McCain continues to preach those same lies.
I assume the media has asked him about this coverup, too, right?
A centralized media will never expose a centralized govt.
Each enables the other.
In a country of 300 million we have, what, 5 major media outlets?
At the same time we have, what, 2 major political parties?
Today’s America is a farce. Freedom is nothing but a redneck fantasy.
excellent info.
one pedantic note: i think you meant 24-carat.
sorry, i’m a nerd, can’t help it.
What a work McCain is. We knew he was an evil-tempered warmonger with the brains of a rutabaga, and now evidence that he’s a smelly hypocrite again comes to life. If he’s covering up even a single POW left behind in Vietnam, I hope there’s a double-stoked heap of glowing coal waiting for him in Hell. Mother Maria, the despicable people our major parties put up for office!
That’s because the major parties are financed by despicable people, and because of political ponerology. Check out that website and book by that title. Thanks R.Nelson. Vote third party, everyone. Show the two, that we are not their chump.
Well, no. Well, my opinion is that [Bush] is a typical American. A typical American, who thinks in an American way. He cannot [help] himself… an American cannot imagine that other people, other nations think a bit differently, that there are other cultures, other civilizations, that the Mohammedan civilization is completely different from the European and the Christian one. He, an American is unable to imagine this, because the entire world is built just like America… in their understanding. And he thinks that the Arabs react as if they were Americans. So, this is typical for America. If we considered this as a clinical condition, then it would mean that 80 or 90 percent of Americans are nuts, right?
Andrzej M. Łobaczewski
It is really beside the point whether Andrzej M. Łobaczewski is a Venus On The Half Shell bequeathed by Stanislaw Lem or a real trout, now supposedly deceased, and–as football coaches and sportscasters used to say at charity dinners–”a great human being in his own right.”
“Ponerology” is a good and legitimate Greek formation. Popularizing it in American English has only this downside–it closes out the scientific study of “pone” and its agents under the same name.
Interesting points, but I must disagree with some details.
Bush is NOT a typical American in at least one respect. Most of us do not have millionaire ex-presidents for our fathers! He’s enjoyed a lot of privileges the rest of us have not.
As for Islamic civilization being TOTALLY different from the Western, “Christian” one, no, no, no! They are in fact Siamese twins, very similar and intimately connected. That’s why they can argue about the same things. Indian and Chinese civilizations are truly different.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all what Arthur Darby Nock distinguished as “prophetic religions”. I would add, only a bit tentatively, Zoroastrianism.
As you likely well know, Lester Ness, Spengler considered Arabian civilization “Western” and counted it, with Christianity, as “Magian”.
Indian and Chinese civilization different? No doubt. Buddhism bridged both (and Japan too), but the bridging Buddhism was not a religion in the strict sense of the word, and there are some similarities for all that, seen best in the ancient period.
None of these generalizations, however, are worth much without detailed acquaintance with and delineation of what one is talking about.
Whoever this Andrzej M. Łobaczewski was, he was clearly not using “typical American” as a term of class, but of cultural outlook.
There, especially in the matter of “pone”, jubilational or otherwise, Bush fits the type to a capital “T”, don’t you think?
***Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all what Arthur Darby Nock distinguished as “prophetic religions”. I would add, only a bit tentatively, Zoroastrianism.***
There’s nothing tentative about Zoroastrian religious propheticism. Zoroastrianism is full of prophecy. Zoroastrianism is in fact the role model for all the later, younger Magian religions that came after it and were influenced by it: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam included. That’s why Spengler used the term “Magian” to collectively refer to the entire culture that produced these religions.
***As you likely well know, Lester Ness, Spengler considered Arabian civilization “Western” and counted it, with Christianity, as “Magian”.***
Actually Spengler classified Western and Magian as distinctly different civilizations.
The fact that the West was Christian did not change that fact; the basic cultural/political formation in the West is the nation state (and its feudal precursors) where belonging means citizenship according to geographical boundaries.
The Magian civilization (which includes the Arabian Islamic, Levantine Christian, Jewish, Mandean, Yezidi, Persian Zoroastrian, Manichean, etc., religious communities) was focused rather on the “sect nation” or “nation sect” and not the “nation state” (in the Western sense), where belonging, or “citizenship” (in the Western sense) was a matter of belonging to a religious community, and not to a “nation state”.
In many ways it still is, in spite of an attempt to impose a Western nation state system on to the middle east. Attempts to recreate the Caliphate are in essence attempts to recreate a truly “Magian” state. It’s probably not practical in a world that is dominated now by Western ideas of the state, but that won’t keep some people from trying.
Actually, I meant 10 karat.
Schanberg has a wide array of sources, including two former Secretaries of Defense. There are also a huge number of first-hand reports of apparent POW sightings in Indochina after the “peace” treaty was signed in 1973.
He doesn’t have a videotape of the prisoners left behind, but the breadth of his evidence makes up for that.
POWs & MIAs UNITED AGAINST John McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTe7cuyx6J4
Didn’t Obamba just say something along the lines of McCain is a hero for his work to normalize trade with Vietnam?
Kerry was an integral part of the McCain POW cover-up. The Dems are in on it too.
Please post Schanberg’s article everywhere you can, but especially on GOP-leaning websites.
Americans need to know that far from being a hero, McCain is a cowardly backstabber who betrayed men far braver than he.
I think that this is significant too: it’s an article written by John McCain himself for the May 1973 U.S. News & World Report, describing how he tried to trade information for medical care just FOUR DAYS AFTER BEING SHOT DOWN, so well before any “torture.”
Again, McCain IN HIS OWN WORDS:
John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account
U.S. News & World Report, May, 1973
http://tinyurl.com/28nrbx
Here’s the money quote (again, McCain IN HIS OWN WORDS!)
“I think it was on the fourth day 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.” He left and came back with a doctor, a guy that we called “Zorba,” who was completely incompetent. He squatted down, took my pulse. He did not speak English, but shook his head and jabbered to “The Bug.” I asked, “Are you going to take me to the hospital?” “The Bug” replied, “It’s too late.” I said, “If you take me to the hospital, I’ll get well.”
Here’s an actual film clip of the great “war hero” and “former POW” John McCain making an ass out of himself in front of Dolores Alfond, with POW/MIA, courtesy of Peter Brimelow. Note St John walking out of the hearing.
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/09/22/mccain-vs-mias-on-youtube/print/
McCain is not only a traitor in my opinion, but a first rate jerk.
Thank you for the video.
McCain shouldn’t be considered a hero because he dropped bombs on women and children.
His betrayal of POW’s doesn’t even come close in the distorted morality stakes to the war crimes he was part of in Vietnam.
John McCain is a proud war criminal.
And possibly on his way to the White House.
and yes with Iraq where we tortured thier troop and Mccain did little but put on a show, just because he was on a aircraft carrier that was on fire and shot down, and a pow-with perks, like his dad?, don’t make him the kind of man we need to run this country, he as milked this pow think for 35 years., I to gave in veitnam lost a foot to a land mine, can’t hear s**t, and now if you add them up 270% VA disabled, or VA 100%, In 1966 I came home and put it behind me, work a lot of jobs razed a family of 3, and still married 42 to the same women, I work till my body said no more 35 years, I not like mccain come home and get a divoice.
Also on the Debates, he said he stop a 35 billion dollar contract and put some people in jail,? Well It was the beoing tanker contract. and he will have put another 56,000 usa worker out of work.
At 72 years old, and with is problems he will only have a few years left, and I don’t think we need a fool as a VP to be a heart beat away from becomeing the President.
Dan Horn logan, ohio God help us, because the antichrist is here.
“In 2001 Mccain said “I hated my enemies even before they held me captive because hate sustained me in my devotion to their complete destruction and helped me overcome the virtuous human impulse to recoil in disgust from what had to be done by my hand.” Is this the kind of man we want in charge of our armed forces?”
The word hero is a joke,abused,overused,only in the US services in the military is considered such an honour.
The Eagle Empire Hit Man
Get your head out of the sand empire eagle
Things started to get out of hand long before you
helped bloody the occupation in the Holy land
long before September the eleventh
no not the mystery twin towers one
the September 11th coup in seventy three
toppling a democracy for AT&T
The eagle empire installed another
hit man Henry… for a dictator on our side
does the big stick doctrine
with ‘justice’ and style
Say….. It’s just US
Say….. It’s just US
but hey…..
When has the eagle empire not been on the make?
For the sake of apple pie hypocrisy
rewrite the play of history?
Don’t you need to sack before you can civilize?
Did Baron precede barbarian?
bomb bomb bomb
bomb rebuild and feed
bomb rebuild and feed
From 13 paupers colonies to the pinnacle of military might…
how long has your head has been in the sand?
you’d think you had found the promised land
From rags to married into riches
it’s gonna take more than high class pitches
to make you the Cane for the ‘new world order’
Who are you the hit man for? ….Do you even know?
or…
Are you just another red rapture button geriatric
who confuses glow with blow?
‘bar bar bar
bar bar bar anne’
can can can
can can McCain?
Let us consider a race with more than two candidates, A, B, & C.
Let us now define the candidate of the Republican Party as A, the candidate of the Democrat Party as B, and the candidate of any of the other parties as C.
Consider voter X, who ordinarily would vote for the Republican Party, thus candidate A.
Having seen what that Republican Party has done over eight years, voter X decides that destroying the Republican Party in its latest, sinister mutation is necessary to the survival of any constitutional polity.
X can now do several things.
X can vote for A, which would be counter to his analysis. Let us count X voting for A as -1.
X can also vote for C, which, given that C has no chance, is the equivalent of not voting at all. Let us count that as 0.
X can also vote for B, given that is the only realistic “winner” of the contest besides A.
Let us count that as +1.
This is quite clearly the reasoning of Paul Craig Roberts. If one is truly disgusted with what the Republican Party has done, and is still doing, for the past eight years, the optimum accountability is to vote for Obama, making one’s vote the equivalent of two votes.
Whatever one thinks of Obama in this scheme is irrelevant.
What Rove and the Neo-Cons are after, on the other hand, is to convince you that McCain, as the maverick, is actually Obama, and that destroying the Republican Party of the last eight years is best done by voting for McCain.
Two years ago during the Congressional midterm elections, I observed: come 2008 Rove and the Republicans will run against themselves.
I did not, for various reasons, later translate that into McCain, but he does a fine job of fulfilling the prediction, including his averral during the debate (fere)–
“I am not known as Mr. Congeniality.”
No, he isn’t and that is at least partly why he got the call, despite his age, his mental instability and his life-long incompetence.
It is noteworthy that Congressman Paul, who in effect defused the anti-war vote, was also decisive in making McCain the nominee.
I don’t see how being a P.O.W. qualifies you to be president.
I have long advocated a constitutional amendment banning any ex-POW from running for the offices of president or vice president. The security risks are too great.
John McCain–never a hero, ever a lousy pilot, and now–apparently–a betrayer of his fellow POWs.
Many people think you are unpatriotic and horrible if you attack McCain something like this, they’ll come back with responses like, “HE WAS A POW! YOU ANTI-AMERICAN, NAIVE *explicit*!”, etc. etc.
Well, I was in the Navy and fixed planes on a carrier, if a few years later than McCain (1971-6). I took part in bombing N. Viet Nam, in 1972, if not by flying a plane. (I fixed their radars and crude computers.) No one hesitates to damn me as an evil liberal and certainly no one thinks me presidential timber. “What meat do these men eat that they are grown so great?”
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I hate to come to the defense of McCain but if you read H. Bruce Franklin’s “Mythmaking in America” you will find a totally different narrative. The POW/MIA myth is no different from the spitting myth, they are myths undertaken to provide support for war and the Deification of soldiers. Soldiers are humans, not Gods. They make mistakes like civilians. Prisoners have no intrinsic value to the Vietnamese other than revenge motives which amazingly they have never shown any indication of having. The woman in the infamous picture of the naked 12 year-old child running down a road after being napalmed does not harbor resentment of Americans, nor do the survivors of My Lai. They have never raised a stink about the reparations they are owed so the idea they are holding live prisoners makes no sense. There is a short version of Franklin’s book in an issue of The Atlantic Monthly from the early 90s, probably around 93 or 94.
Bill Warrick,
Veterans for Peace
Gainesville
Amen and amen, Mr. Warrick! I’ve noticed that the “POWs were abandoned” seems to be especially popular wih the naive sorts who also believe in Bigfoot, Flying Saucers, the face of Jesus on a tank of soybean oil, who give their money to televangelists, etc. The gullible and the uneducated and those given to wishful thinking.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China