http://www.namvets.com/Reading/john_mccain_is_no_war_hero.htm
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.
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