No matter how you stack it trump at his worse will be better than the best of Clinton. Either we can break the cycle of corrupt career politicians or make them so strong they can never be defeated.

This should be repeated for all the posters smart enough to comprehend... don't count on Paultard Hondope to get it.

You are the kind of trash that let America down. You don't have traditional American values. That is why you value fag lovers like sneak a peter.

Goto Sunday school and receive redemption for your outright lies and gooble-di-goop. After having your halo polished, feel free to tell the world you lied.

It seems another part of what's left of your brain has died.

John McCain’s 1969 “Tokyo Rose” Propaganda Recording Released

Hanoi John ...

There was no good reason to post this trash on LF. John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable. He did exactly what he was taught to do. Those of us who have been through the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program know he followed the procedures we learned there. Those who are not familiar with the SERE program need to be enlightened.

SERE provided Military Aircrew and Special Operations personnel with training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct. the program was established by the Air Force and later extended to the Marine Corps, Navy and Army. The training was for those personnel considered to be at high risk of capture. The curriculum had three key parts: survival and evasion; resistance and escape; and water survival. Some parts were (may still be) classified.

A statement by a Marine lieutenant who completed the SERE training:

While I was in the school, I lived like an animal. I was hooded, beaten, starved, stripped naked, and hosed down in the December air until I became hypothermic. At one point, I couldn't speak because I was shivering so hard. Thrown into a 3-by-3-foot cage with only a rusted coffee can to piss into, I was told that the worst had yet to come. I was violently interrogated three times. When I forgot my prisoner number, I was strapped to a gurney and made to watch as a fellow prisoner was water-boarded a foot away from me. I will never forget the sound of that young sailor choking, seemingly near death, paying for my mistake. I remember only the sound because, try as I might, I couldn't force myself to look at his face. I was next. But for some reason, the guards just dropped the hose on my chest, the water soaking my uniform. I was incarcerated at SERE for only a few days, but my mind quickly disintegrated. I became convinced that I was being held in an actual prisoner of war camp. Training had stopped, from my point of view. We had crossed over into some murky shadow land where the regulations no longer applied. I was sure that my captors, who wore Warsaw Pact-style uniforms and spoke with thick Slavic accents, would go all the way if the need arose.

The trainees at SERE were taught to resist torture as long as humanly possible before submitting and then resort first to lying. John McCain did that, many others also did that.

This was the situation with Harry Jenkins, a 6-foot-5 Navy pilot who refused to give up what his father did for a living — once they got that, they’d want more and more. Jenkins was tortured so brutally, he was sure he’d lose his hands. He passed out, and when he came to, his tormenters hung him from his wrists — still tied behind his back — from a meat hook. He had never conceived of such pain. He asked God to take him. Again, Jenkins passed out. When he came to again, he was made to kneel on gravel for hours, and only when the skin was sheared from his kneecaps did he submit. “My father grows flowers,” he said.

The POWs were thrown in tiny cells, slabs of concrete for beds, single, bare lightbulbs making sleep impossible. They were in a constant state of starvation, and when they were fed, their watery soup was laced with pebbles or feces. They were made to stand on stacked stools for days on end. They were often strapped down by 15-pound leg irons, which caused lacerations and infection, or by stocks at the ends of their beds, which kept them on their backs for days. The walls and floors were overrun with roaches and rats. When they were strapped down, they were forced to lie in their own excrement.

Nels Tanner was tortured into writing a confession of war crimes; he identified a Lt. Clark Kent and was thereafter known as the author of Superman’s confession.

While transported to Hanoi after being shot down, Jim Mulligan’s captors poured gasoline over his bound arms, fusing threads of rope into his wounds. Howie Rutledge was beaten mercilessly during his first day in captivity; refusing to give up his ship and squadron, he was told to get on the floor, and a guard thrashed his injured and dislocated leg until it pressed flat on the ground. He and Sam Johnson had both suffered over 60 boils each during one summer, and Johnson had been held in solitary multiple times, often going six days in a row without sunlight.

Ron Storz had been made to stand on a stool for seven days straight, beaten nearly to death by a bamboo stick. Hands tied behind his back,

George McKnight was held for 34 nights in an air-raid trench 4 feet long; he was 6-foot-2. They beat George McKnight for 36 hours straight; they beat and tortured Denton so brutally his arms turned black; Jim Mulligan was strung up and beaten for six days, Nels Tanner for 17.

Sam Johnson was so brutalized that when he finally submitted, he literally could not write the apology demanded by the Vietnamese. He was able only to sign it, and when he was thrown back in his cell, he heard Jerry Denton whispering to him from next door. “Sam, Sam, it’s OK, buddy.” “I made them write it, Jerry,” he replied. “But I had to sign it.” “It’s OK, Sam,” Jerry said. “You’re OK. Hang on, You did good.”

John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.

Attaboy!

SPUDS: John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.

I am pretty sure McCain was caught in the Vietnam War by the offensive military forces. That action is dishonorable all by itself, especially when the POW agrees with his captors.

John McCain did absolutely nothing as a POW that was dishonorable.

Attaboy!

I accept your "Attaboy" with great pride because I will defend the actions by any POW confined in Hanoi Hilton.

Some of my friends spent a very unpleasant time there. Other friends that were shot down, never lived to get there.

I did not vote for John McCain in the Senate race the last time. And I have condemned some of the statements and actions he made and took as a Senator.

But I will never, NEVER, condemn him, or any POW who spent time in the Hanoi Hilton for what they said or did while held captive...neither should anyone else.

Some of my friends spent a very unpleasant time there

Oh, you mean they didn't get "special treatment" like McStain did?

Good grief, you're pathetically defending a frigging traitor.

Oh, you mean they didn't get "special treatment" like McStain did?

What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?

I am pretty sure McCain was caught in the Vietnam War by the offensive military forces.

What were the "offensive military forces" that took John McCain captive?

What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?

He praised the medical care and kindness of his communist captors even though he came to North Vietnam as “an aggressor.” McCain said he wished to express his “deep gratitude” for their “kind treatment” and that he “will never forget” the kindness extended to him by the communist North Vietnamese.

That action is dishonorable all by itself, especially when the POW agrees with his captors.

This coming from an asshole who spent his short military career as a photographer stationed in Germany and was never tortured as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton...is understandable.

The assholes here wouldn't have lasted a day under captivity without giving there momma up.

What "special treatment" did John McCain receive?

He praised the medical care and kindness of his communist captors even though he came to North Vietnam as “an aggressor.” McCain said he wished to express his “deep gratitude” for their “kind treatment” and that he “will never forget” the kindness extended to him by the communist North Vietnamese.

Ah, this amazing brain fart coming from an asshole, who spent his SEA tour in complete safety at Udorn RTAFB in Thailand, sitting behind a desk during the day and his nights in the hootch drinking beer and smoking pot….while watching the action in Nam on Armed Forces Network TV.

The man was in severe pain with two broken arms and a broken leg did what he needed to do to get help. He could not care for himself. What would you have done “desk jockey?” Stand up from the hospital bed and spit your captors in the eye while telling them to take their medical care and shove it up their communist asses? Sure, you would….LOL!!!!

That action is dishonorable….when the POW agrees with his captors.

This happened a number of times.

Besides John McCain’s appearance on TV….such another event occurred in 1966, when Jeremiah Denton was also forced to appear at a televised press conference. It must be noted this was when he famously blinked the word "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" with his eyes in Morse code, confirming to U.S. intelligence that U.S. prisoners were being harshly treated.

Was everyone who was forced to agree with his captors at the Hanoi Hilton acting dishonorably….I ask you, picture taking boy?

You're so right and these people do not comprehend intelligence matters. Every f*cking moron realizes that everyone will talk and the military recognizes that this will happen. Only an IDIOT believes that McCain was a traitor for doing a tape.

The assholes here wouldn't have lasted a day under captivity without giving there momma up.

So true….so very true.

For in the end it became known that the torture was sufficiently brutal and prolonged that virtually every American POW so subjected made a statement of some kind at some time. Upon being released, one POW said that when he was finally forced to make an anti-American statement: "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

The POWs developed an internal creed: "Take physical torture until you are right at the edge of losing your ability to be rational. At that point, lie, do, or say whatever you must do to survive. But you first must take physical torture."

Ah, this amazing brain fart coming from an asshole, who spent his SEA tour in complete safety at Udorn RTAFB in Thailand,

As I recall, you were stationed not far from there at about the same time as me you pompous, self-aggrandizing hypocritical piece of shit.

You and McStain - two traitorous peas in a pod.

Go fuck yourself Major potato peeler.

This time in the AC-130 Spectre Gunship at Ubon.

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home.

Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents.

Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

SERE was not pleasant.

It definitely was not.

nearly destroyed a ship

not
true

loaded
missiles
on
deck

were
armed
prematurely

one
started
a
chain
reaction

that
could've
sunk
the
ship

killed
him
too

love
boris

https://www.intellihub.com/john-mccain-is-no-war-hero-he-has-covered-up-pows-left-behind-in-vietnam-for-years/

Gatlin, McCain, Jame Fonda, and their neocon lackeys, Trump, Pence, etc. are still covering up for the chicoms after all these decades.

I wonder, if there were North Korean collaborators running for president(R), would Gatlin support them too?

McCain had two things going for him. Both his father and Grandfather were full admirals. On the strength of that, he was admitted to the Naval Academy where he was a chronic screw-up who graduated near the bottom of his class. From there he was given his choice of becoming an airplane pilot, a position for which he was unqualified. He wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship. He would hace been court martialed, but someone who is a Admiral's son is not to be subjected to court martial. After being relaesed from being a POW and then eventually promoted to Captain and given the job of entertaining big wigs who wanted to meet an authentic war hero until his retirement. The man is a complete fabrication.

I found no record to show where McCain “wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship.” I found that he only crashed “one” aircraft that was determined to be his fault and listed in Navy records as “pilot error.” The accident investigation board determined a second aircraft was lost due to engine failure.

McCain was in no way at fault for the Forrestal disaster. He was in his A-4 Skyhawk. loaded with two, 1,000-pound bombs and waiting on the carrier deck for his turn to launch when a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft, swooshed across the carrier deck and stuck the plane next to McCain’s plane.

Of course, I could be wrong and stand to be corrected.

I will not blindly buy into hearsay and agenda driven erroneous information simply because I agree with it....as you continue to do.

"I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

I worked for the NSA (army sec. agen.) and we always discounted inteligence gained from detainees.

No matter how "bad" you think you are, they can make you talk and do whatever else they want.

I found no record to show where McCain “wrecked several planes and nearly destroyed a ship.” I found that he only crashed “one” aircraft that was determined to be his fault and listed in Navy records as “pilot error.” The accident investigation board determined a second aircraft was lost due to engine failure.

There seems to be ample evidence that McCain lost three planes and tore up some wires in Italy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-klein/mccains-secret-questionab_b_107409.html

McCain's Secret, Questionable Record

Jeffrey Klein
Huffington Post
Posted June 16, 2008 | 08:50 PM (EST)
Updated: 05/25/2011 12:35 pm EDT

"At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral.... Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral's star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could ‘do more good there,’ Mr. Lehman recalled." So claimed the New York Times in a front-page article on May 29 this year.

This story is highly improbable for several reasons, not least of all because John McCain himself has always told a very different story about his stalled naval career. For example, on page 9 of his memoir Worth The Fighting For, McCain writes:

"Several months before my father died, I informed him that I was leaving the navy. I am sure he had already gotten word of my decision from friends in the Pentagon. I had been summoned to see the CNO, Admiral Heyward, who told me that I was making a mistake.... His attempt to dissuade me encouraged me to believe that I might have made admiral had I had been in the navy, a prospect that remained an open question in my mind.... Some of my navy friends believed I could still earn my star; others doubted it.... When I told my father of my intention, he did not remonstrate with me.... But I knew him well enough to know that he was disappointed. For when I left him that day, alone in his study, I took with me his hope that I might someday become the first son and grandson of four-star admirals to achieve the same distinction. That aspiration was well beyond my reach by the time I made my decision...."

McCain's father died on March 22, 1981. McCain retired from the Navy within a week. He wrote about his retirement soon thereafter. McCain never mentioned the alleged offer of an admiralship by Lehman in any of his books, nor in the numerous interviews McCain gave during his first run for the presidency in 1999-2000.

Furthermore, articles written during the current presidential campaign quote McCain's closest friends about McCain's failure to be promoted to admiral before he retired from the Navy. For example, in an April 26, 2008, National Journal cover story, William Cohen (then a Senator, subsequently Secretary of Defense and the best man at McCain's second wedding) recounts that McCain "knew his career in the Navy was limited." Former Senator Gary Hart, who served as a groomsman at McCain's 1980 wedding, says in the National Journal story that he had been told "that [McCain] was not going to receive a star and not going to become an admiral. I think that was the deciding point for him to retire from the Navy."

John Lehman doesn't figure in any accounts of McCain's naval career, probably because Lehman was appointed Secretary of the Navy less than two months before McCain retired. The New York Times didn't note this, or the pertinent fact that John Lehman is currently serving as National Security Adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Two other top naval officers in the Times story confirmed Lehman's claim, but for unknown reasons the Times, in violation of its own guidelines, accorded them off-the-record status that makes it impossible to assess their motives and credibility.

The New York Times' front-page story about McCain declining promotion to admiral lacks credibility for other reasons as well. For example, McCain had been promoted to captain on August 1, 1979, so he wouldn't have been due for another promotion by March of 1981.

Retired Admiral Peter Booth, who was promoted to rear admiral in 1981, flatly disputes Lehman's claim about McCain. "No, John McCain was not selected for flag rank, for admiral. With all due respect, I think I was selected that same year, and I have never heard anything even remotely like that. To begin with, John Lehman did not select Navy flag officers. That was done with a very august selection board headed by a four-star admiral. The Secretary of the Navy does not appoint. He is in the approval chain, but he is not on the committee.

"I have never heard a story, even remotely, that John McCain was going to be a flag officer. I was early selected for captain, in 1976, and I was regular selected for admiral in 1981. So it's probably five or six years, I guess. I've never heard of anybody being selected for flag rank within three or four years of making captain, ever."

Retired Admiral John R. Batzler, former commanding officer of the U.S.S. Nimitz, also promoted to rear admiral in 1981, agrees with Retired Admiral Booth.

"I made rear admiral in about five years. I wasn't selected early, and I wasn't selected late. I find it incredible that someone made that statement that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be promoted to admiral two years after he made captain. First of all, telling him at all is not kosher, but we all know the Secretary of the Navy does what he damn well pleases, in particular John Lehman. This whole idea that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be promoted to flag two years after he made captain sounds preposterous to me."

All of the evidence, indications and comments that the New York Times published a flattering lie about McCain's career on its front page are easy for John McCain to refute. All he needs to do is sign Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an undeleted copy of McCain's naval file to news organizations. A long paper trail about McCain's pending promotion to admiral would be prominent in his file. To date, McCain's advisers have released snippets from his file, but under constrained viewing circumstances. There's no reason McCain's full file shouldn't be released immediately. In May 2005, six months after he lost his bid for president, Senator John Kerry signed the 180 waiver, authorizing the release of his complete military service record to the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. ** Unlike Kerry, McCain shouldn't wait until after the election to do so.

The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the Associated Press.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airedales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished, according to his own books, by mediocrity and misdeeds, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.

McCain's file should also include records and analytic reviews of McCain's subsequent sub-par performances. Here are a few cited in two highly favorable biographies, both titled John McCain, one by Robert Timberg and the other by John Karaagac.

Timberg:

"[A]fter a European fling with the tobacco heiress, John McCain reported to flight school at Pensacola in August 1958.... [H]is performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it. What he loved was the kick-the-tire, start-the-fire, scarf-in-the-wind life of a naval aviator. ...One Saturday morning, as McCain was practicing landings, his engine quit and his plane plunged into Corpus Christi. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom....McCain was an adequate pilot, but he had no patience for studying dry aviation manuals.... His professional growth, though reasonably steady, had its troubled moments. Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines, which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.... [In 1965] he flew a trainer solo to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game. Flying by way of Norfolk, he had just begun his descent over unpopulated tidal terrain when the engine died. 'I've got a flameout,' he radioed. He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."

Adds Karaagac:

"In his memoir, everything becomes a kind of game of adolescent brinksmanship, how much can one press the limits of the acceptable and elude the powers that be....The [fighter jocks'] ethos of exaggerated, almost aggressive sociability becomes an end in itself and an excuse for license. There is a tendency for people, not simply to believe their own mythology but, indeed, to exaggerate it.... Fighter jocks, like politicians around their campaign contributions, often press the limits of the acceptable. It is a type of mild corruption that takes place in a highly privileged atmosphere, where restraints are loosened and excuses made....McCain gives some hint in his memoirs about where he stood in the hierarchy among carrier flyers. Instead of the sleek and newer Phantoms and Crusaders, McCain flew the dependable Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in an attack, not a fighter squadron. He was thus on the lower end of the flying totem pole." The genius of McCain's mythmaking is his perceived humility amid perpetual defiance. Having been a rebel without cause, and often a rebel without consequences, McCain apparently was not surprised when his Vietnamese captors went relatively easy on him compared to his fellow POWs. The Vietnamese military secretly and frequently filmed the American POWs to learn their propensities. Col. Pham Van Hoa of the Vietnamese People's Army Film Department was in charge of the filming. Asked recently for his dominant impression of McCain, the now-retired Van Hoa said that McCain "seemed superior to other prisoners." How so? "Superior in attitude towards them."

But when Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide and co-author, was asked by the Arizona New Times about the first McCain memoir, Faith of My Fathers, that he was then working on, Salter said the book would showcase a humble McCain. When I worked on this book with him, he just kept saying, "Other guys had it a lot worse. I think they took it easier on me because of who my dad was. . . . When they tied me in ropes, they'd roll my sleeve up to give it a little padding between the rope and my bicep, you know, little things I noticed. The only really hard time I had was when I didn't go home, and then it only lasted a week, and sometimes I felt braver, I felt I could get away with more.'"

Is McCain now getting away with more by hiding his official history and by having his national security adviser inflate McCain's resume with a bogus promotion to admiral humbly declined? If so, McCain may be attempting to hide why the Navy was in fact slow to promote him upwards despite his suffering as a POW and his distinguished naval heritage.

One possible reason: After McCain had returned from Vietnam as a war hero and was physically rehabilitated, he was urged by his medical caretakers and military colleagues never to fly again. But McCain insisted on going up. As Carl Bernstein reported in Vanity Fair, he piloted an ultra-light, single propeller plane -- and crashed another time. His fifth loss of a plane has vanished from public records, but should be a subject of discussion in his Navy file. It wouldn't be surprising if his naval superiors worried that McCain was just too defiant, too reckless and too crash prone.

Regardless, McCain owes it to the country to release his complete naval records so that American voters can see his documented history and make an informed decision.

** An earlier version of this story may have left the impression that John Kerry had signed the 180 military waiver during the 2004 presidential campaign. It has been updated to clarify the timing of the release.

McCain was in no way at fault for the Forrestal disaster. He was in his A-4 Skyhawk. loaded with two, 1,000-pound bombs and waiting on the carrier deck for his turn to launch when a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft, swooshed across the carrier deck and stuck the plane next to McCain’s plane.

I have never seen how McCain could have been responsible, but there was a lot of controversy about the incident and whatever it was that McCain did or did not do.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081007_investigating_john_mccains_tragedy_at_sea/

Investigating John McCain’s Tragedy at Sea

Posted on Oct 7, 2008

By Mary Hershberger

John McCain’s personal account of his life has shaped a powerful political narrative that accords him deference on the full range of policy issues. His first effort at shaping that narrative received a remarkable boost when the May 14, 1973, edition of U.S. News & World Report gave him space for what is perhaps the longest article the magazine had ever run, a 12,000-word piece composed entirely of his unedited and often rambling account of his prisoner-of-war experience. Ever since, McCain has added compelling details at key points in his political career. When his stories are placed beside documented evidence from other sources, significant contradictions often emerge. One such case involves McCain’s experience in the devastating fire and explosions that killed 134 sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the Vietnam War three months before he was shot down over North Vietnam. McCain has made claims about this accident that differ dramatically from parts of the official Navy report and accounts of reliable eyewitnesses.

In considering the 1967 catastrophe, it is important to note that the official report concluded that no individual bore responsibility for the fire or its spread. There are a number of conflicting accounts of the Forrestal accident, but here is the story as based on the strongest sources. The fire started at 10:51 a.m. Saturday, July 29, 1967, as 30-year-old Lt. Cmdr. John McCain sat on the port side of the Forrestal in his A-4 Skyhawk going through preflight checks. To his right was Lt. Cmdr. Fred White, also in an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft. A Zuni rocket on another airplane accidentally fired and flew across the flight deck, passing through White’s auxiliary fuel tank and falling into the ocean. Fuel spilled onto the deck from White’s craft and ignited. McCain told his biographer, Robert Timberg, and repeats in his own book, “Faith of My Fathers,” that the rocket hit his own plane and knocked two bombs from it into the burning fuel as he scrambled out of his cockpit and raced to safety across the deck.¹

There was, in fact, a single bomb—not two—that dropped to the deck. It exploded 90 seconds after the fire broke out, intensifying the blaze until it raged out of control. White and Thomas Ott, McCain’s parachute rigger, were among the first to be killed instantly or mortally injured, along with most of the firefighting crew. McCain’s plane captain, Robert Zwerlein, was one of those who suffered fatal wounds at this point.

A camera on the deck recorded images showing that the Zuni rocket struck White’s plane. The Navy report later attributed the dropped bomb to White’s plane, although the film footage does not seem to establish this definitively. However, McCain has said many times that the Zuni rocket caused the bomb (two bombs in McCain’s version) to fall from his own craft.

Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain’s craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk. These sources—who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified—agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.

Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.

McCain has never been asked to explain why he claims that the Zuni rocket struck his plane. If a bomb or bombs subsequently fell from McCain’s plane as he has said, it seems to strongly suggests pilot error, and if a bomb or bombs did not fall from his plane, it suggests rash disregard for important facts in his accounts of the accident.

There is plenty more about this story that raises questions about McCain’s truthfulness and judgment. In the first hours after the fire, he apparently did not claim to have been injured. New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, who helicoptered out to the ship the day after the tragedy and sought out McCain as the “son and grandson of two noted admirals,” never mentioned him being wounded, although he reported on him more than on any other crew member. This would be an odd omission on Apple’s part if McCain indeed had been wounded, given that service wounds are usually highlighted in such reports during wartime. McCain’s own father, after seeing his son several weeks later, sent a letter to relatives and friends about the fire saying, “Happily for all of us, he [John] came through without a scratch.”²

A week after the fire, McCain made a statement in which he said that when he was on the hangar deck he noticed that he had a wound on his knee and small shrapnel cuts in his thigh and shoulder. He was not treated in sick bay, however, and he tells a story in “Faith of My Fathers” that seems to be at variance with the facts. He writes that he went to sick bay to have his wounds treated but when he got there, a “kid” who was “anonymous to me because the fire had burned off all of his identifying features” asked him if another pilot in the squadron was OK. When McCain replied that he was, the “kid” said “Thank God” and died before McCain’s eyes. McCain said that experience left him “unable to keep my composure,” and that is why he left sick bay without being treated.

Lt. j.g. Dave Dollarhide witnessed that encounter because he was in sick bay, having broken his hip escaping from his plane, which had been immediately to the left of McCain’s when the blaze started. Dollarhide knew McCain and also the “kid,” a young man whom McCain knew well because he was his own plane captain, Robert Zwerlein, who was terribly burned when the first bomb exploded on the ship. Notwithstanding McCain’s dramatic account of witnessing someone die before his eyes, Zwerlein did not die then but instead was evacuated to the hospital ship USS Repose, where he expired three days later. On the basis of Dollarhide’s account, if McCain left sick bay without being treated it was not because someone died before his eyes.³

McCain’s actions after the fire show a determination to exit the ship as quickly as possible. When New York Times reporter Apple finished gathering his notes on the fire, McCain boarded a helicopter with him and flew to Saigon. Given that fires still burned on the ship and some of his fellow airmen were gravely wounded and dying, McCain’s assertion that he left the carrier for “some welcome R&R” in Saigon has a surreal air. Apple, now dead, said nothing in his news reports about inviting McCain to leave the ship, although he did report talking to him in Saigon later that day. McCain does not mention receiving permission to leave the still-burning ship. Merv Rowland, a commander and chief engineering officer of the Forrestal at the time of the fire, told me that he had not known that McCain left the ship within 30 hours of the fire and that he found this “extraordinary.” Rowland added that only the severely wounded were allowed to leave the ship and that no one, as far as he knew, would have been given permission to fly to Saigon for R&R. McCain’s quick flight off the Forrestal meant that he missed the memorial service for his dead comrades held the following day in the South China Sea.

Not long after McCain left, the Forrestal set off without him on its somber voyage to Subic Bay in the Philippines, where it would undergo initial repairs. He rejoined the ship a week later when it was docked at Subic Bay. There he gave an official statement and asked for a transfer to the aircraft carrier Oriskany.

Apple filed two stories about McCain’s time in Saigon. Apple’s first story said: “Today, hours after the fire that ravaged the flight deck and killed so many of his fellow crewmen, commander McCain sat in Saigon and shook his head. ‘It was such a great ship,’ he said.”⁴ Apple’s second story was filed three months later, just after McCain was shot down over Hanoi. In that story Apple wrote: “It was almost three months ago that the young, prematurely gray Navy pilot was sitting in a villa in Saigon, sipping a Scotch with friends and recalling the holocaust that he had managed to live through. He was John Sydney [sic—spelling is Sidney] McCain, 3rd, a lieutenant commander. The day before, he had watched from the cockpit of his Skyhawk attack plane as flames suddenly engulfed the flight deck of the Forrestal, on which his squadron was based. ‘It’s a difficult thing to say,’ he remarked after a long time. ‘But now that I’ve seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I’m not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam.’ ”⁵

The record suggests that after McCain left the burning Forrestal for the greater ease of Saigon, he saw his Navy career as being in jeopardy. Soon, he went to London, where his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., was stationed as commander in chief of the United States Naval Forces in Europe. Sen. McCain has written little about the fire, and his book does not mention any conversations with his father about bombs dropping from his plane on the Forrestal or his leaving the ship. However, it is difficult to imagine that he did not discuss the tragedy and his own personal difficulties because, by McCain’s own account, his father had intervened on his behalf before. After seeing the admiral in London, McCain went to the French Riviera, where he spent his nights gambling at the Palm Beach Casino.⁶

McCain’s book skips over the weeks after the Forrestal fire, but Timberg says that the young naval officer spent the months of August and September 1967 “unsure of his status.” Following McCain’s application for a transfer to the Oriskany, his orders were delayed, and in September he returned to his home in Jacksonville, Fla. There, an old friend, Chuck Larson, saw a change in McCain: The pilot was discouraged about his future. McCain confided to Larson that he might have to get out of the Navy because, in the words of the Timberg biography, “his past had become a burden” and “whenever he joined a new outfit he was dismayed that his reputation for mayhem had preceded him.”⁷ Aside from any questions about his Forrestal actions, McCain had, in his short Navy career, crashed two planes and flown a third into power lines in Spain because of, as he put it, “daredevil clowning.”⁸

The investigation into the Forrestal fire was in the hands of Adm. Thomas Moorer, chief of naval operations and a close friend of McCain’s father. (Their friendship was why Moorer would personally convey the news to Adm. Jack McCain three months later that his son had been shot down in Vietnam.) Moorer gave the investigation to Rear Adm. Forsyth Massey, who handed in his report on Sept. 19, 1967. McCain received orders to report to the Oriskany on Sept. 30.⁹

During the period when John McCain was shot down over Hanoi on Oct. 26, 1967, less than a month after being assigned to the Oriskany, recent events—the Forrestal fire and his possible role in its growth, misgivings about “dropping more of that stuff” on Vietnam, his decision to leave the stricken ship for some “R&R” in Saigon, anxiety about his naval career—were fresh in his mind. What had been going on in McCain’s life may cast light on some of the decisions he made later as a prisoner of war. While he was a POW, he famously refused to be released early, electing not to leave his comrades behind.

After McCain made his first run for the presidency, in 2000, Gregory Freeman wrote a book on the fire, “Sailors to the End.” Freeman’s 2002 book appears to be mostly reliable, but it ignores key parts of the official report and hews closely to McCain’s claim that the Zuni rocket struck his plane, not Fred White’s, causing the two thousand-pound bombs to drop into the burning fuel.

In addition to following McCain’s misleading narrative of the Zuni rocket accident to the letter, Freeman published an uncredited hand-drawn sketch purporting to show the Forrestal deck just before the fire. In that sketch, the plane in which White died is stripped of White’s name, even though Freeman printed the names of the other pilots near McCain’s plane and told their stories. The only place that White’s name appears is at the back of the book in a list of those who died. In the narrative of “Sailors to the End,” Fred White’s name is conspicuous by its absence.

After erasing White, Freeman’s sketch presents an incorrect line between the original position of the Zuni rocket and McCain’s plane, instead of showing the actual line that the rocket took in striking White’s plane. This sketch alone will cause the unwary reader to believe there is visual evidence to support the claim that the Zuni rocket hit McCain’s plane, not that of White, the pilot lost on the Forrestal and now airbrushed out of history, at least in Freeman’s book.

McCain wrote a glowing blurb for Freeman’s book, drawing and all, calling it a “riveting account.” The presence of his enthusiastic blurb on the book cover raises another issue: Freeman relied heavily on interviews of survivors who were close to the Forrestal events but he never quotes McCain directly or mentions having requested an interview with him. Because his book pushes McCain’s misleading and unsubstantiated account, Freeman should make public whether McCain, or people around him, played a role in the genesis of “Sailors to the End.”

“I’m an old Navy pilot. I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck,”¹⁰ Sen. McCain said recently in explaining why he was temporarily suspending his presidential campaign and calling for postponement of the first debate between himself and Democratic candidate Barack Obama, which eventually occurred as scheduled. At the one time in his life when he was faced with a real crisis on deck, we now know, McCain left the crisis to others and descended to safety below. As to the question of whether the first bomb to explode on the Forrestal dropped from his plane through pilot error, it is not reassuring to hear him describe his attitude as a Navy pilot toward safety procedures. He told reporters during his 2000 presidential campaign that his motto in those days was: “Kick the tires and light the fires [jet engines]. To hell with the checklist. Anybody can be slow.”¹¹

McCain has gone much further than most veterans in using his military experiences for political purposes, but he has not allowed his military records to be released, save for the list of his awards and medals, all of which were given only after he became a prisoner of war. It is appropriate that he release those records before the election. If his actions contributed to the magnitude of the Forrestal disaster and if he left the burning ship under less than honorable circumstances, that information should be available to voters as they choose their next president. At the very least, John McCain should be asked to explain his actions in the summer of 1967 and tell American voters why he has repeatedly given a false account of Robert Zwerlein’s death.

Mary Hershberger is a historian and the author of “Jane Fonda’s War” and other books. She is a recipient of the Binkley-Stephenson Award, given annually for the best scholarly article in the Journal of American History.

1. John McCain with Mark Salter, “Faith of My Fathers,” 177-181; Robert Timberg, “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” 71-74.

2. R.W. Apple Jr., “Start of Tragedy: Pilot Hears a Blast As He Checks Plane” (New York Times, July 31, 1967) 1; McCain, 181.

3. James Caiella, “Hell 1051,” Foundation Magazine (fall 2003) 52.

4. Apple, ibid.

5. R.W. Apple Jr., “McCain’s Son, Forrestal Survivor, Is Missing in Raid” (New York Times, Oct. 28, 1967) 1.

6. Timberg, 75-76.

7. Ibid.

8. McCain, 155-156, 159, 172.

9. Ibid., 192, 182.

10. “Prepared Remarks by John McCain to the Clinton Global Initiative,” Boston Globe, Sept. 25, 2008, online.

11. Roger Simon, “Honest John, on the Loose: With McCain, you get the good, the bad, and the angry,” U.S. News & World Report, posted Sept. 19, 1999.

Aside from any questions about his Forrestal actions, McCain had, in his short Navy career, crashed two planes and flown a third into power lines in Spain because of, as he put it, “daredevil clowning.”8

Enough said!

Jame Fonda

You shit your libtarded anti war panties faster than Hanoi Jane. Hypocrite

I don't support him on anything other then his time as a prisoner of war. Don't feel I have a right to judge anyone who went through that.

I'd like our country to ship his RINO ass back to the zipperheads to let them finish what they started. Why would we want that libtarded open border loving pile of shit back?

It definitely was not.

When'd you go through? I went in Maine in January, 1989 I think. I was inclined to just hide in the snow but my colleague broke his leg in a hole, so we needed to transition to the POW phase early, to get him treated.

It was the right call, given that it is - in the end - a training exercise. But in real life, you're better off with a field dressing than relying on the tender mercies of the enemy. Maybe if we were fighting the Canadians...

Not supposed to talk about the actual camp, but it was definitely "different". I was the SRO. That was especially bad.

One thing you can always be absolutely assured of and that is Gatlin will support the TRUTH.

John McCain's "Tokyo Rose" Propaganda Broadcast---Now Found and Released!

America’s mainstream media universally portrays John McCain as one of our country’s greatest national patriots, a military hero who steadfastly stayed loyal despite suffering unspeakable torture at the hands of his Communist captors during the Vietnam War.

Last year, I published a major article pulling together the strands of evidence suggesting that this widespread narrative is actually a hoax from beginning to end. Instead of being resisting his jailers, John McCain instead seems to have been one of Hanoi’s leading military collaborators almost from the moment he was captured.

Furthermore, it’s doubtful he was ever tortured, but much more likely that McCain simply invented those claims as a preemptive defense against the danger of facing a court martial for collaboration upon his return.

John McCain: When “Tokyo Rose” Ran for President by Ron Unz

Most importantly, McCain’s very doubtful war record probably explains why later as a Senator he was so eager to lead the cover-up of the hundreds of American POWs who were probably betrayed and abandoned in Vietnam at the end of the war, as documented by Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg and others. He protected the wartime secrets of others in exchange for their protection of his own.

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up by Sydney Schanberg

Water Survival Training at Homestead AFB Florida and Jungle Survival training at Clark AFB Philippines.

SERE at Stead AFB Nevada - 1970.

Correction on date - 1960.