Make-Believe Maverick

[agentS]

Source: Rolling Stone

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door. There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."
"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.
"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.
"Why? Where are you going to, John?"
"Oh, I'm going to Rio."
"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"
McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.
"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

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A ten page article on the life history of McCain, including shocking details about his time as a POW and his motivations for his actions. This article is positively shocking, unless you already knew most of this stuff anyway.

McCain a maverick? More like a loose cannon perfectly willing to shoot his own friends to save himself. Read the part about the friend who took the fall for him at Annapolis.

[Lasher]

1. Too bad this one dropped like a stone.

Very good contribution. I was just made aware via email of the article and found this OP when I searched to see if it had already been posted.

I'm going to post it in GDP and hope you won't feel like I'm stealing your thunder.

Lasher

[rebel with a cause]

2. Maverick my foot!

Why is it that no one ever mentions that the war hero POW broke under the torture and confessed to his captors. Not that I would blame him for that, except that there is so much made about his being so much a hero (by mccain himself) and nothing is ever said about him finally breaking. I mean it that was me, I would say everything that I had done not just part of it. How many people don't even know that he broke?

And yes mccain stayed an a** just the way that bush did. They never out grew that frat boy attitude. There are people like that, they never become adults no matter how old they get. :eyes: