On Mar 30, 9:35=A0am, whizbang <Steinemsucksp...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> U.S. Sen. John McCain is no War Hero
>
> Opinion Paul E. Rifenberg:
>
> During the past 10 years, I have written a lot of articles about the
> POW/MIA issue. Aside from a few complaints about the apparent lack of
> legislative concern, primarily from the Senate side (Fred Upton's
> office has been very responsive and proactive), I have not as yet
> involved myself in any serious character assassinations.
>
> This article will change that. For years, people have asked me who I
> thought was most responsible in Wa****ngton, D.C., for undermining
> genuine efforts at reconciling this issue. While I had definite ideas
> on the subject, it has taken me this long to compile enough
> cir***stantial evidence to offer an educated opinion on the matter.
>
> The person in Wa****ngton has done more to bury the POW/MIA issue than
> any other elected official is none other than U.S. Sen. John McCain
> from Arizona. Himself a former POW.
>
> He is ****trayed by the establishment press as a "war hero." Often,
> when I. receive responses from legislators on certain POW-related
> bills, they tell me in no uncertain terms that their views were
> heavily influenced by John McCain,
>
> Who can argue with a former POW, after all?
>
> It has been a definite uphill argument for me, I admit. People seem to
> have already forgotten that he was one of the infamous "Keating Five"
> and heavily involved in the Savings & Loan scandal years ago. In fact,
> he was alleged to have been on U.S. Sen. Bob Dole's "short list" of
> possible vice presidential candidates, and he has barn notably
> mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in the year 2000.
>
> He did in fact spend six years in captivity during the Vietnam War.
> It's a tough argument to suggest that he would undermine the PO%V
> issue.
>
> For years, I was confused by his actions with respect to this issue.
> He would oppose any POW/MIA related piece of legislation, including
> the recent Missing Personnel Act, and the bill I sponsored through
> Fred Upton, the POW/MIA Rescue Act, which would have granted political
> asylum to any southeast Asian national who brought a living American
> POW to freedom.
>
> Why would anyone oppose such a bill ... particularly a former POW?
>
> He disagreed with the findings of the 1990 Senate Foreign Relations
> Committee, which concluded that our government had indeed abandoned
> some of our men when the war ended. '
>
> Then, in 1991, he was appointed to serve on the long-awaited Senate
> Select Committee, which was created to investigate the entire issue.
> Chairman John Kerry wanted to appoint him as co-chairman, but this was
> greeted by a national uproar from the American Legion, and virtually
> every national veteran's group in existence who were already
> suspicious of his previous actions.
>
> U.S. Sen, Bob Smith from New Hamp****re was chosen instead, a minor
> victory at the time by POW activists, .
>
> This particular Senate Committee was single-handedly undermined (in my
> opinion) by the actions of John McCain. During the course of their
> several month-long investigation, they heard unbelievable testimony
> from hundreds of people. No less than four former Secretaries of
> Defense testified that men were left behind. National Security
> analysts testified that they tracked the movements of our men long
> after the war ended. Radio transcripts of American POWs being moved in
> Laos were recorded in the early 1980s:
>
> There were satellite photos of pilot distress signals taken as
> recently as 1992, complete with pilot name and authenticator code
> numbers. Former Soviet Commanders testified that they debriefed our
> men in the Soviet Union, and even Boris Yeltsin admitted American POWs
> had been transferred there.
>
> No less than four committee investigators provided the Senators of
> their estimates ranging from a low of 150 to as many as 600 men who
> they believed were still alive and in captivity. This doesn't even
> include the testimony they heard behind closed doors that supposedly
> endangered our national security.
>
> The conclusions of this committee was that "no credible evidence was
> provided to sup****t the possibility that Americans were still alive
> and in captivity," This, despite do***ents from Soviet Archives that
> showed that the Vietnamese were holding more than 1,200 American POWs,
> and released less than 600, John McCain signed his name on this
> incredibly flawed re****t.
>
> I was not in Vietnam, and was certainly never a POW, so perhaps it
> could be argued that moss of this falls in the "there but for the
> grace of God go I" category, but I'm not the one who is being
> ****trayed as a war hero, a potential presidential candidate, and a
> spokesman for veterans with respect to this issue.
>
> John McCain is, and as such, his character can and should be examined.
>
> What is the real story behind his days as a POW? The U.S. Veteran
> Dispatch had an article in June of 1996 entitled "POW Songbird McCain
> Wrongly Described As A Hero." It recounted numerous instances where
> John McCain violated the Military Coda of Conduct, which specifically
> orders American personnel to give the enemy no information other than
> name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. It requires that they
> accept no favors from the enemy, and to make no written or oral
> statement disloyal to the United States.
>
> The fact is, in exchange for better medical treatment, McCain violated
> this code four days after being captured on Oct. 26, 1967. In a U.S.
> News and World Re****t interview dated May 14, 1973, two months after
> he was released, McCain admitted that he exchanged military
> information in exchange for spending six weeks in a hospital normally
> reserve for North Vietnamese Military officers.
>
> U.S. government records show that less than two weeks after he was
> taken to the hospital, Hanoi's press began quoting specific military
> information, including the name of the aircraft carrier on which
> McCain had been based, information about the location of rescue ****ps
> and the order of which his attack was supposed to take place. The
> records demonstrate, according to the Dispatch article that McCain
> continued to collaborate with the Communists after he recovered from
> his injuries. He did a number of propaganda broadcasts that were aimed
> at destroying the moral of American servicemen fighting in the jungles
> of South Vietnam, On June 4, 1969, a U.S. Wire Service story re****ted
> one of McCain's broadcasts.
>
> The service re****ted "Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot
> son of the U.S. Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain pur****tedly
> admits to having bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praised
> medical treatment he has received since being taken prisoner."
>
> McCain committed other breaches of the Code of Conduct by meeting with
> and giving interviews to foreign news re****ters and anti American
> delegations.
>
> McCain admits to talking with numerous high-ranking North Vietnamese
> leaders, including General Vo Nguyen Giap, their Minister of Defense.
>
> He also did a cozy interview over coffee, oranges, and cake wish a
> Cuban psychiatrist, which took place in the Hanoi office of the
> Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations.
>
> He failed to "evade answering questions to the utmost of his ability;"
> by actually conversing with his interviewer in Spanish.
>
> Perhaps these are some of the reasons why John McCain hip been so
> instrumental in discounting any suggestion that live prisoners of war
> still languish in Southeast Asia. It certainly does explain to me why
> he traveled to Hanoi in May of 1993 with soon-to-be Ambassador to
> Vietnam Pete Peterson, and convinced the Communist leader****p to agree
> that they would NEVER MAKE PUBLIC THEIR INTERROGATION FILES OF
> AMERICAN POWs.
>
> It should have made him ineligible to sit in judgment of those men who
> still wait for freedom. I believe it clearly makes him morally unfit
> to ever lead this nation, to be the Commander of all our armed forces
> someday.
>
> Paul E. Ritenberg of Granger. Ind., is a former Niles resident.
> Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication.
>
> This site is dedicated to the more than 58,000 Soldiers who fought and
> died serving their Country in Vietnam.
> All rights reserved Copyright=A9 1998-2007 namvets.com =A0Vietnam
Veterans=
> Inc., P.O. Box 684, =A0La****te, IN 46352
> Site last updated 03/26/07
Mr. McCain was our next door neighbor for awhile. Every morning he'd
blow revelee, raise the flag and salute it, then every evening take
the flag down and blow taps. I thought he was nuts.
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