Yeah, McCain was captured and spent some bad time in the Hanoi Hilton. Ok, fine. That does NOT make him automatically and unquestionably qualified to be president.
What no one wants anyone to say is that McCain was a lousy pilot. The guy sucked at flying. Not long after being commissioned, he crashed a plane into Corpus Christi Bay while in training at the naval air station there. Then, he crashed while taking out power lines "over the Iberian Peninsula". As if that wasn't enough, he later crashed again while flying a government plane back from attending an Army v Navy football game. It's all there at
McCain's Wikipedia entry. (Except the McCain campaign has done a marvelous job of insuring there's no mention of the fact McCain was returning from a football game when he says he flamed out.)
Then, McCain is said to have been shot down over North Vietnam by ground fire. I'm no Navy pilot, but how low do you have to be to be shot down by ground fire? Shouldn't he have been higher than ground fire can be effective?
So was McCain a war hero or was he incompetently stupid? Or was he dangerously irresponsible?
Prior to being shot down over North Viet Nam, there was the famous
USS Forrestal Fire which McCain played a part in. It appears that McCain, was being the hotdog, showboating juvenile when he when he "wet started" his A4E Skyhawk. You see, the starter motor switch on the A4E Skyhawk that McCain was in allowed fuel to pool inside the engine. If you wanted to phuck with the guy in the plane behind you, you could "wet-start" this plane and an impressive flame would shoot from the tail. Apparently, it was this cook off that launched an M34 Zuni rocket that tore through the Skyhawk’s fuel tank, released a thousand pound bomb, and ignited a fire that killed the pilot plus 167 men. Before the tally of dead and dying was complete, the McCain, the son and grandson of admirals had been transferred to the USS Oriskany.
(See this article) McCain was also the only Forrestal crewman to be immediately transferred after the fire.
See this article.
Now, the only thing official I can find is this
cleaned up, typical military version of the Forrestal fire. From the link:
"Lt. Cmdr. Robert "Bo" Browning one of the pilots due for launch with many others, he was seated in the cockpit of his fueled and armed Skyhawk; the plane was spotted way aft, to port. Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III said later he heard a "whooshy" sound then a "low-order explosion" in front of him. Suddenly, two A-4s ahead of his plane were engulfed in flaming jet fuel — JP-5 — spewed from them. A bomb dropped to the deck and rolled about six feet and came to rest in a pool of burning fuel.
A "whooshy" sound? A "low-order explosion"? That's probably what it sounds like when you wet start an A4E Skyhawk.
Maybe you want to google "Manual of the Judge Advocate General Basic Final Investigative Report Concerning the Fire on Board the USS Forrestal", which is a 7,500 page report to find out more? Don't bother. It only has one link that's mostly irrelevant.
And his youth while in the Navy is not unlike Bush's. (Although I do give McCain credit for being active duty and not hiding out in the Guard, as if he had a choice with his dad and granddad.) While there are no known cocaine possession convictions in Houston, as was the case with Bush, he dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame of Florida" and it was said of him that "being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck."
Now I've nothing against exotic dancers and I'd love to have partied with someone that parties - train wreck - hardy just like I would have loved to have partied with W. There's got to be some great stories there. But would I want either one to be president? I don't think so.
Did I mention that MCCain graduated 894th out of 899 from the Naval Academy? That puts him in the good company of
General George Armstrong Custer who graduated last from West Point.
So is McCain presidential material?
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