Vietnam
Obama Vice-Presidential Pick Joe Biden used five deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam. He was eventually disqualified due to asthma, even though Biden never mentioned the asthma in his memoir, which records numerous athletic exploits as a teenager and young man:
Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s campaign released Biden’s Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia.
According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency.
“As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager,” said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.
In “Promises to Keep,” a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama’s running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school. . . .
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Here is a report by CNN's John King on Cindy McCain's trip to Vietnam to help out with a charity seeking to aid children their with facial deformities. King asks Cindy McCain several questions related to the Presidential Campaign.
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Counterpunch and Huffington Post both published smear pieces this week on McCain's military service. Specifically, they accused him of being an enemy collaborator and getting soft treatment as a POW.
For more on the filth at Counterpunch, click here
For more on the filth at Huffington Post, click here
Spread the word about these baseless, unwarranted and sleazy attacks on John McCain. This must be confronted early and often. If this escalates into full blown TV ads (which Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain threatens to do), we could have a repeat of 2004. We need to ask John Kerry AND Obama to repudiate and condemn these attacks from the lunatic fringe.
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Here is Part 5 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
Part 3 - "Communication Was Vital "for Survivial"
Part 4 - They Told Me I'd Never Go Home"
PART 5
Prayer: "I Was Sustained in Times of Trial"
I was finding that prayer helped. It wasn't a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing. I asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial.
When the pressure was on, you seemed to go one way or the other. Either it was easier for them to break you the next time, or it was harder. In other words, if you are going to make it, you get tougher as time goes by. Part of it is just a transition from our way of life to that way of life. But you get to hate them so bad that it gives you strength.
Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings. read more »
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Here is a very moving conversation between the most militarily decorated living American, Bud Day, and Tom Brokaw. Bud Day is a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, including being a POW in Vietnam, where he was a cellmate of Sen. John McCain. Day talks about honor, service, and gives some insight into those terrible days as a POW. This video ran on NBC in November 2007.
Note: He begins talking about his time as a POW at around the 7:12 mark of the video.
Here is Part 4 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
Part 3 - "Communication Was Vital "for Survivial"
PART 4
"They Told Me I'd Never Go Home"
I really didn't know what to think, because I had been having these other interrogations in which I had refused to co-operate. It was not hard because they were not torturing me at this time. They just told me I'd never go home and I was going to be tried as a war criminal. That was their constant theme for many months.
Suddenly "The Cat" said to me, "Do you want to go home?"
I was astonished, and I tell you frankly that I said that I would have to think about it. I went back to my room, and I thought about it for a long time. At this time I did not have communication with the camp senior ranking officer, so I could get no advice. I was worried whether I could stay alive or not, because I was in rather bad condition. I had been hit with a severe case of dysentery, which kept on for about a year and a half. I was losing weight again.
But I knew that the Code of Conduct says, "You will not accept parole or amnesty," and that "you will not accept special favors." For somebody to go home earlier is a special favor. There's no other way you can cut it.
I went back to him three nights later. He asked again, "Do you want to go home?" I told him "No." He wanted to know why, and I told him the reason. I said that Alvarez [first American captured] should go first, then enlisted men and that kind of stuff. read more »
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Here is an excerpt from John McCain's book, Faith of My Fathers, printed today in the Australian Herald Sun. In this excerpt, McCain speaks of the horrific torture he and other Prisoners of War endured at the hands of the Viet Cong. But he not only endured the brutality, he triumphed over it because they could not take away from him the faith of his Fathers.
EARLY in the morning I prepared for my 23rd bombing run over North Vietnam - and my first attack on the enemy capital, Hanoi, writes White House hopeful John McCain
Our target was the thermal power plant near a small lake almost at the centre of the city.
About 9000ft, as we turned inbound on the target, our warning lights flashed and the tone for enemy radar started sounding so loudly that I had to turn down the volume.
I could see huge clouds of smoke and dust erupt on the ground as surface-to-air missiles were fired at us. The closer we came to the target, the fiercer the defences.
I recognised the target sitting next to the small lake and dived in on it, just as the tone went off signalling that a missile was flying towards me.
I knew I should roll out and fly evasive manoeuvres - "jinking" in flyers' parlance - but I was just about to release my bombs and, had I started jinking, I would never have had the time, nor probably the nerve, to go back in once I had lost the missile.
So at 1000m, I released my bombs, then pulled back the stick to begin a steep climb to a safer altitude. In the instant before the plane reacted, a missile blew my right wing off. read more »
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Here is Part 3 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
Communication Was Vital "for Survival"
As far as this business of solitary confinement goes—the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it's only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. It makes all the difference.
It's vital to keep your mind occupied, and we all worked on that. Some guys were interested in mathematics, so they worked out complex formulas in their heads—we were never allowed to have writing materials. Others would build a whole house, from basement on up. I have more of a philosophical bent. I had read a lot of history. I spent days on end going back over those history books in my mind, figuring out where this country or that country went wrong, what the U. S. should do in the area of foreign affairs. I thought a lot about the meaning of life.
It was easy to lapse into fantasies. I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel. read more »
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Here is Part 2 of our series, The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire feature. This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
Part 2 - "It Looked to Many as if I Had Been Drugged"
They told me that the Frenchman would visit me that evening. About noon, I was put in a rolling stretcher and taken to a treatment room where they tried to put a cast on my right arm. They had great difficulty putting the bones together, because my arm was broken in three places and there were two floating bones. I watched the guy try to manipulate it for about an hour and a half trying to get all the bones lined up. This was without benefit of Novocain. It was an extremely painful experience, and I passed out a number of times. He finally just gave up and slapped a chest cast on me. This experience was very fatiguing, and was the reason why later, when some TV film was taken, it looked to many people as if I had been drugged.
When this was over, they took me into a big room with a nice white bed. I thought, "Boy, things are really looking up." My guard said, "Now you're going to be in your new room."
About an hour later in came a guy called "The Cat." I found out later that he was the man who up until late 1969 was in charge of all the POW camps in Hanoi. He was a rather dapper sort, one of the petty intelligentsia that run North Vietnam. He was from the political bureau of the Vietnamese Workers Party. read more »
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One of the major purposes of starting Blogs for John McCain is to provide information to voters that will help them to understand more about John McCain, his experience, his stand on issues, and what qualifies him to be President of the United States.
In my mind, a key aspect of McCain's life is his 5 1/2 years as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. Too often today, people dismiss those years as "having nothing to do with being President." I beg to differ. They are correct that a candidate does not have to have been a POW to be qualified for the Presidency! John McCain never planned on being a POW. But his years as a POW, how he acted in that incredible pressure cooker of brutality, stress, deprivation and loneliness, tells us a great deal about the character, honor, strength, and courage of John McCain. It is unlikely he will ever face anything as President any more difficult or stressful than his experience as a POW.
McCain's likely Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is a completely blank slate as far as us knowing how he will stand up to the pressure and stress of the Presidency. There is no record of him ever being tested in significant ways that reveal his courage, honor, and character. I'm not saying does not possess those qualities, but I am saying we really do not know what Barack Obama will do as Commander-in-Chief under fire. We have a really good idea of John McCain under fire.
With that said, we begin a series that focuses on The POW Years: John McCain in His Own Words. John McCain wrote a 17 page spread for U.S. News and World Report soon after his return from captivity in Vietnam. It was printed in U.S. News in May 1973. You can go there and read the entire thing. In a series of posts over the next few days, we will post portions of his account of those years here. We begin with "Shot Down." This is John McCain's account of those terrible years in his own words.
"Shot Down"
The date was Oct. 26, 1967. I was on my 23rd mission, flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet, when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up—the sky was full of them—and blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive bomber. It went into an inverted, almost straight-down spin.
I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection—the air speed was about 500 knots. I didn't realize it at the moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three places, and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the corner of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off. read more »
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