American Pravda: What Was McCain's True Wartime Record in Vietnam?
[font color=green]The story begins with commentary about Tokyo Rose and how she was tried for treason for her radio broadcasts. Considering that McCain's father was a four-star admiral it is possible that McCain received preferential treatment while he was a POW and by the press after his release.[/font]
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McCains public image took a beating at the end of the 1980s when he became one of the senators caught up in the Keating Five financial scandal, but he managed to survive that controversy unlike most of the others. Soon thereafter he became prominent as a leading national advocate of campaign finance reform, a strong pro-immigrant voice, and also a champion of normalizing our relations with Vietnam, positions that appealed to me as much as they did to the national media. By 2000 my opinion had become sufficiently favorable that I donated to his underdog challenge to Gov. George W. Bush in the Republican primaries of that year, and was thrilled when he did surprisingly well in some of the early contests and suddenly had a serious shot at the nomination. However, he then suffered an unexpected defeat in South Carolina, as the large block of local military voters swung decisively against him. According to widespread media reports, the main cause was an utterly scurrilous whispering campaign by Karl Rove and his henchmen, which even included appalling accusations that the great war-hero candidate had been a traitor in Vietnam. My only conclusion was that the filthy lies sometimes found in American politics were even worse than Id ever imagined.
Although in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I turned sharply against McCain due to his support for an extremely bellicose foreign policy, I never had any reason to question his background or his integrity, and my strong opposition to his 2008 presidential run was entirely on policy grounds: I feared his notoriously hot temper might easily get us into additional disastrous wars.
Everything suddenly changed in June 2008 when I read a long article by an unfamiliar writer on the leftist Counterpunch website. Shocking claims were made that McCain may never have been tortured and that he instead spent his wartime captivity collaborating with his captors and broadcasting Communist propaganda, a possibility that seemed almost incomprehensible to me given all the thousands of contrary articles that I had absorbed over the decades from the mainstream media. How could this one article on a small website be the truth about McCains war record and everything else be total falsehood? The evidence was hardly overwhelming, with the piece being thinly sourced and written in a meandering fashion by an obscure author, but the claims were so astonishing that I made some effort to investigate the matter, though without any real success.
Read more: http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-for-president/
haikugal
(6,476 posts)From the above article...
In 1993 the front page of the New York Times broke the story that a Politburo transcript found in the Kremlin archives fully confirmed the existence of the additional POWs, and when interviewed on the PBS Newshour former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the document was very likely correct and that hundreds of Americas Vietnam POWs had indeed been left behind. In my opinion, the reality of Schanbergs POW story is now about as solidly established as anything can be that has not yet received an official blessing from the American mainstream media. And the total dishonesty of that media regarding both the POW story and McCains leading role in the later cover up soon made me very suspicious of all those other claims regarding John McCains supposedly heroic war record. Our American Pravda is simply not to be trusted on any touchy topics.
scscholar
(2,902 posts)I don't understand why you're saying possible.
TexasTowelie
(111,303 posts)therefore, I wanted to leave an "out" since I couldn't verify the veracity of the report.
In response to your comment, I also checked and learned that Ron Unz ran for governor of California as a Republican in 1994. My apologies for not being aware of his political background. I believe that I stumbled across the report when I went to MondoWeiss.com on a story on Netanyahu.
marble falls
(56,358 posts)TexasTowelie
(111,303 posts)I took a beating in another thread a couple of days ago (my fault) so it is nice to get some support to even things out.
marble falls
(56,358 posts)he was a hero.
McCain saved lives that day and walked through flames to do it suffering some third degree burns.
The whole thing started when an a swabie backed a jet warmer up to the nose of a heat seeking missile loaded on an aircraft. The Navy records all aspect of a flight deck and I saw the footage first in '72.
How he left his first wife after coming home from Hanoi was a major disappointment for me. Rate right up there with Newt Gingrich.
The whole Forrestal episode can be read here:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rocket-causes-deadly-fire-on-aircraft-carrier
nikto
(3,284 posts)If only he was as brave in facing-down AIPAC, arms manufacturers and The Saudis.
marble falls
(56,358 posts)Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)He did!
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)... firing from concealment because Jimmy Stewart's character, Ransom Stoddard, was too much of a wuss to drop the hammer. McCain may have taken credit for it, though. And Bill O'Reilly will say he covered the event, I'm sure.
Saw that flick in its original release when I was in high school. Christ, I can hear the theme song now! "... the man who shot Liberty Valance, he was the bravest of them all!"
Now that's gonna be stuck in my head for the rest of the day! Thanks, Gene Pitney.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)Im shocked
One more reason to hate this nasty man