Why the Senator is Not War Hero McCain in New Context select POWS were introduced to very wealthy

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/ogrady08232008.html

By PATTY O'GRADY

Did you know that when John McCain was away from home for extended periods of time working as a U.S. Senator, Mrs. Cindy McCain would tell her children with his acquiescence that he was “deployed” and imagined herself just another lonely - albeit very, very wealthy - naval wife?

As a military wife and daughter I don’t think living in D.C. - wining and dining lobbyists – is the equivalent of deployment to Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam.

Why is this story worth repeating? The Cinderella quality of such imaginings provides a telling context – revealing the man and his presumptions hiding behind the mask of war hero.

In this election season, understanding the full context of presumptions is very important. My husband, also a former Vietnam Prisoner of War (1970-1973), spent time in both the "Hanoi Hilton" and a secondary camp -"Plantation Gardens" - as did John McCain who never mentions time spent in the latter. I am also the daughter of Colonel John F. O'Grady who was known to be a POW captured on the border of Laos and Vietnam in 1967 and who never returned. Like John McCain, John O'Grady was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (1952). John O’Grady earned 7 military commendations for heroic service including the Silver Star and two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

There were many heroes in Vietnam – and there are many freshly bloodied heroes returning from new wars started by old men - and John McCain's claim is tarnished by long forgotten historical facts that few are brave enough to proffer today for fear of vicious attack on their “patriotism”. My father’s legacy protects me from such attack and so demands that I ask the unspoken questions and remind voters of the forgotten history. When the Vietnam POWS came home in 1973, President Nixon traded a small group of them celebrity status - anointing them as "heroes" - for political support of his failed war policies. John McCain was one of the anointed heroes while others were virtually discarded in exchange for their continued support of the false Nixon plan of “peace with honor” in Vietnam.

Politics can magnify or ignore heroism as it suits. In turn, the select POWS were introduced to very wealthy and influential members of the Republican Party, their records were elevated over other POW heroes with more compelling stories, and many difficult questions were not asked of them.

[dkf]

1. Very interesting. I never knew this.

[grannie4peace]

2. there are posts on du about this with a link to a site by

trying to get the info out. there are still pows over there & mcshit left them there!!!!!!

[seemslikeadream]

4. I missed that

Did it mention the Gardens? I'll look for it. THANKS!

[grannie4peace]

5. i had to get that info up.... wow i've just been finding out about this.

check out this website http://leboutillier.blogspot.com

[seemslikeadream]

6. Excellent

Enter John McCain.

Given his wartime experiences as a POW in Vietnam, Sen. John McCain was by default the most powerful and influential member of the Select Committee. Members on both sides of the aisle deferred to his judgment; reporters hung on his every pronouncement. And so when McCain, his chief of staff Mark Salter and their allies on the Select Committee joined forces with top Bush administration officials to assail, ridicule, attack, discredit, photoshop, retouch, manipulate, massage and/or “cherry-pick” the intelligence in order to destroy its intelligence value and keep the matter of live POWs from becoming an issue in the 1992 election, the live POWs never had a chance.

How McCain and Salter and the others went about doing this is a case study in how powerful government officials can manipulate intelligence to make it say what they want it to say - and the main reason we believe that John McCain must not be Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.

During that spring and summer of 1992, McCain and the other members of the committee were briefed on some 925 HUMINT reports the investigators had deemed plausible, credible. These intelligence reports were some of the several thousand reports the U.S. government had received from human sources who testified they had personally observed or had been told or had otherwise learned about American servicemen in captivity after Operation Homecoming. Many of the reports corroborated one another as to location, time and circumstance, e.g., independent sources repeatedly reported seeing American POWs being held in the same area; in the same town or village, and/or at the exact same prison at the same time or over a period of time – and, of course, absent IMINT and/or SIGINT, corroboration by independent human sources is the best lie detector ever devised by man. But what did McCain and Salter make of this crucial intelligence? Not one of these reports of American POWs held prisoner after Operation Homecoming was credible, they loudly declared; instead, all 925 sources were either (1) lying, or (2) confused about what he or she had actually seen. Not one report, McCain and Salter declared, related to American POWs trapped in Indochina after Operation Homecoming.

The SIGINT – the half-dozen or so postwar intercepts of secret Pathet Lao radio transmissions where the PL were heard describing how, when, where and/or why they were holding and/or moving American POWs from one point to another inside their country - got the same treatment. When analyzed carefully by committee intelligence investigators and cross-checked with the HUMINT, it was clear these postwar radio intercepts alone collectively described the confinement and/or movement of well over 100 American POWs inside Laos. McCain’s and Salter’s ruling? Same as with the POWs described in the HUMINT, “nothing to any of it. All radio intercepts are false."

Finally came the IMINT – the priceless postwar satellite images showing missing pilots' names, their official secret four-digit authenticators, secret USAF/USN escape and evasion (E&E) codes given to them and/or other “I’m alive, get me the hell out of here” messages our men had laid out on the ground in hopes U.S. spy satellites would image their plea and rescue forces would be dispatched - and the similar, shocking result. A missing USAF flight officer’s name along with a valid USAF/USN escape and evasion code imaged in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam on June 5, 1992 – photoshopped right out of the image, disappeared, gone! Nineteen four-digit authenticators matching those of missing airmen imaged in rice paddies along Route 4 in northern Laos - similarly photoshopped right out of the satellite image! The name of another USAF pilot and four digit number laid out beside a jungle road in northern Laos - "naturally occurring shadows on the ground," they said. A valid E&E code followed by the four-digit authenticator of another USAF flight officer in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam – “natural shadings in the field … not man-made intentional signals.” The letters "USA," each 12 feet tall and together stretching over 37 feet across, and below them a huge 24 foot tall by 19 feet across valid secret USAF/USN E&E code imaged in a rice paddy in northern Laos - "a young Laotian boy's handiwork that he had copied off an envelope," McCain and Salter "explained" in McCain's 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For. And on and on it went.


http://leboutillier.blogspot.com/

[grannie4peace]

7. you rock lady!!!!!

[speedoo]

3. K&R. Thanks for posting this. Must read. nt

[Trajan]

8. I hate to complain, because the message is important ...

But I cringe every time I read such a poorly constructed sentence. It has to do with my catholic school career, you see, where nuns would prowl the classroom with sticks waiting to pounce on a student with a run-on sentence ... And THAT one has three separate clauses jammed together ...

A little punctuation would go a long way here. Even a simple hyphen to separate the ideas - Because trying to read it as written is quite a challenge ....

It's my problem, I suppose ....

[seemslikeadream]

9. Please complain to the writer of the article, I am not a proof reader

Did you even read who she is?



Patty O’Grady, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Education at the University of Tampa.


You didn't really think I wrote that did you? I only ask because some one else does this to me all the time. Always finding little things to try and make me look stupid and never has anything to do with the message.

[grannie4peace]

12. i think you are pretty fucking cool, so tell whoever to take a hike

[seemslikeadream]

13. ya I did that

;)

[AzDar]

10. Kick...

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

11. The Unknown Soldier - Patty O'Grady Aloot, Ph.D.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/Unknown-soldier.html


The Unknown Soldier
By:
Patty O'Grady Aloot, Ph.D.
Dedicated In Honor Of Her Father,
Colonel John O'Grady
Missing-In-Action

-----------------------------------------


I'm the unknown soldier
Who you refuse to know.
I'm the brother and the friend
You left so long ago.

I'm a farmer from Missouri
A soldier from St. Paul.
I'm my sister's hero
I'm the name on the Wall.


I'm the unknown soldier
The one you left behind.
I'm the country boy from Texas
Who you never tried to find.

I'm someone's long-lost daddy
I'm my father's pride and joy.
I was someone's gentle lover
And someone's little boy.

I'm the unknown soldier
With no tears to shed.
I'm the ghost of Christmas past,
I'm the living dead.

I'm a sailor and a scholar
I'm the boy who lived next door.
I'm the poet and the dropout,
You sent to fight your war.

I'm the unknown soldier
Who dreamed you'd rescue me.
I'm the man who understands,
Only death will set me free.

How could you just forget me?
Should I forget you too?
You must try to bring me home,
For I belong to you.

I'm the unknown soldier
Whose cries are all in vain.
Would you finally come for me,
If you could feel my pain?

My country has betrayed me
But I've forgiven you.
And, every night I pray to God,
That He'll forgive you too.

I'm tired and I'm hungry
I'm lonely and I'm cold.
I'm the unknown soldier,
Who's been bought and sold.

If you would look around you
You would see my face.
That man standing next to you,
Could be here in my place.

I'm the unknown soldier,
The one for who you cried.
I'm the one that you can't face,
The one they told you died.

We fought that war together,
At Mu Gia and Pleiku.
Had you been the one we left,
I would have come for you.

I'm the unknown soldier
Who longs to be set free.
When you called, I answered,
Now will you answer me?

I want to lie down beside you,
I want to die in your arms.
I just want you to hold me,
And, help me to hang on.

I'm the unknown soldier,
The one you threw away.
Some call me POW....
Some call me MIA....
It is never too late to honor a Hero.


...........


Hey McGrumpy this one's for you

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R