"A proven leader, and a man of integrity," the New York Post called John McCain in its editorial endorsement. "A naval aviator shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW, McCain knew that freedom was his for the taking. All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused-and, as a consequence, suffered years of unrelenting torture."
This standard summary of McCain's five and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton, repeated in thousands of media accounts during his 2000 campaign and again this election year, is the founding myth of his political career. The tale of John McCain, War Hero prompts a lot of people turned off by his politics-liberals and traditional conservatives alike-to support him. Who cares that he "doesn't really understand economics"? He's got a great story to tell.
Scratch the surface of McCain's captivity narrative, however, and a funny thing happens: his heroism blows away like the rust from a vintage POW bracelet.
In the fall of 1967 McCain was flying bombing runs over North Vietnam from the U.S.S. Oriskany, an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, the 31-year-old pilot was part of a 20-plane squadron assigned to destroy infrastructure in the North Vietnamese capital. He flew his A-4 Skyhawk over downtown Hanoi toward his target, a power plant. As he pulled up after releasing his bombs, his fighter jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile. A wing came off. McCain's plane plunged into Truc Bach Lake.
Mai Van On, a 50-year-old resident of Hanoi, watched the crash and left the safety of his air-raid shelter to rescue him. Other Vietnamese tried to stop him. "Why do you want to go out and rescue our enemy?" they yelled. Ignoring his countrymen, On grabbed a pole and swam to the spot where McCain's plane had gone down in 16 feet of water. McCain had managed to free himself from the wrecked plane but was stuck underwater, ensnared by his parachute. On used his pole to untangle the ropes and pull the semi-conscious pilot to the surface. McCain was in bad shape, having broken his arm and a leg in several places.
McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.
What if one of the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center had somehow crash-landed in the Hudson River? How long would he have lasted? Would anyone have risked his life to rescue him?
An impolite question: If a war is immoral, can those who fight in it-even those who demonstrate courage-be heroes? If the answer is yes, was Reagan wrong to honor the SS buried at Bitburg? No less than Iraq, Vietnam was an undeclared, illegal war of aggression that did nothing to keep America safe. Tens of millions of Americans felt that way. Millions marched against the war; tens of thousands of young men fled the country to avoid the draft. McCain, on the other hand, volunteered.
McCain knew that what he was doing was wrong. Three months before he fell into that Hanoi lake, he barely survived when his fellow sailors accidentally fired a missile at his plane while it was getting ready to take off from his ship. The blast set off bombs and ordnance across the deck of the aircraft carrier. The conflagration, which took 24 hours to bring under control, killed 132 sailors. A few days later, a shaken McCain told a New York Times reporter in Saigon: "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."
Yet he did.
"I am a war criminal," McCain said on "60 Minutes" in 1997. "I bombed innocent women and children." Although it came too late to save the Vietnamese he'd killed 30 years earlier, it was a brave statement. Nevertheless, he smiles agreeably as he hears himself described as a "war hero" as he arrives at rallies in a bus marked "No Surrender."
McCain's tragic flaw: He knows the right thing. He often sets out to do the right thing. But he doesn't follow through. We saw McCain's weak character in 2000, when the Bush campaign defeated him in the crucial South Carolina primary by smearing his family. Placing his presidential ambitions first, he swallowed his pride, set aside his honor, and campaigned for Bush against Al Gore. It came up again in 2005, when McCain used his POW experience as a POW to convince Congress to pass, and Bush to sign, a law outlawing torture of detainees at Guantanamo and other camps. But when Bush issued one of his infamous "signing statements" giving himself the right to continue torturing-in effect, negating McCain's law-he remained silent, sucking up to Bush again.
McCain's North Vietnamese captors demanded that he confess to war crimes. "Every two hours," according to a 2007 profile in the Arizona Republic, "one guard would hold McCain while two others beat him. They kept it up for four days...His right leg, injured when he was shot down, was horribly swollen. A guard yanked him to his feet and threw him down. His left arm smashed against a bucket and broke again."
McCain later recalled that he was at the point of suicide. But he was no Jean Moulin, the French Resistance leader who refused to talk under torture, and killed himself. According to "The Nightingale's Song," a book by Robert Timberg, "[McCain] looked at the louvered cell window high above his head, then at the small stool in the room." He took off his dark blue prison shirt, rolled it like a rope, draped one end over his shoulder near his neck, began feeding the other end through the louvers." He was too slow. A guard entered and pulled him away from the window.
I've never been tortured. I have no idea what I'd do. Of course, I'd like to think that I could resist or at least commit suicide before giving up information. Odds are, however, that I'd crack. Most people do. And so did McCain. "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate," McCain wrote in his confession. "I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."
It wasn't the first time McCain broke under pressure. After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital."
McCain has always been truthful about his behavior as a POW, but he has been more than willing to allow others to lie on his behalf. "A proven leader, and a man of integrity," The New York Post says, and he's happy to take it. "All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused..." Not really. He did denounce his country. But he didn't demand a retraction.
It's the old tragic flaw: McCain knows what he ought to do. He starts to do the right thing. But John McCain is a weak man who puts his career goals first.
_______
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Bombing with Napalm
During the Vietnam War, my dad was a Sales Mgr. for a Pharmaceutical Co., & he was well respected, a decent, honest man, who worked hard to support his family (and send ME, his daughter, to College), like he'd been working since High School, worked full time while in College to become a Pharmacist; I was very proud of him.
But, the PARENT Company which owned the Drug Co. my Dad worked for? It was DOW CHEMICAL. Can you guess what product DOW CHEMICAL manufactured for the U.S. Military?
I remember arguing with my Dad, when I came home on Break from College, about DOW Chemical making the terrible NAPALM which was being used on civilians in Vietnam. We had a "failure to communicate" on this.
Etched in my memory, like so many other Americans, is the "LIFE" Magazine photo of that poor young Vietnamese girl child, running naked down the road in her Village, her clothes burned off by the NAPALM which had burned her so badly.
Her arms were held out to her sides, like she was a little miniature FEMALE version of Jesus of Nazareth. All that was missing in the Photo, was a wooden cross.
Should my Dad have resigned from his job in protest? It wouldn't have made a difference, his company would just have hired some other guy to replace him. There was a lot more competition for jobs then, too.
Should I have left College in protest, because indirectly my education was being paid for with money from the company that MADE the Napalm that our Government used in Vietnam?
I was relieved when the War in Vietnam finally ended. I protested at my College, but like most Americans who protested, wasn't willing to make TRUE sacrifices.
The Vietnam War dragged on for years, but one reason it took so long for resistance to the War to grow was because unlike George Bush's IRAQ War, it didn't start with a gigantic televised "SHOCK & AWE" spectacle, a full-out massive bombing attack on the small country, with "embedded" reporters & "CNN" broadcasting the "INVASION" Live!!
We all share collective guilt, if we are honest with ourselves, for what our Country does "in our name". But one thing gives me HOPE for the future: the fact that even though College Students & others of draft age don't have to worry about being DRAFTED, Americans of every stripe, young & old, even the "Gray Panthers" took to the STREETS to try to STOP BUSH from repeating the mistake we made with Vietnam!
That way before Pres. Bush got his "War Party" started, THOUSANDS of people in the streets of American cities & in streets of cities around the entire WORLD, protested to try to STOP the War before it ever got STARTED.
BEFORE Pres. Bush got the "Go Ahead" from the useless pushovers in the U.S. Congress, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who VOTED to give him the POWER he needed, who totally IGNORED what was obviously a massive opposition to the War.
If the American Corporate Media hadn't been totally in the pocket of the Bush Administration in support of the Iraq War idea, maybe they would have given honest, fair COVERAGE to all the Anti-Iraq War protests. But our Voices were essentially SILENCED, when the Television Media wouldn't provide coverage!
I doubt Pres. Bush could have gotten away with it, without the T.V. News essentially blacking out coverage of the PEACEFUL protests. It truly seemed at first that we might fulfill the Vietnam Era saying:
"What if they gave a War, & Nobody Came?"
McCain's being shot down...
and I seem to recall he was shot down on his first and only combat mission.
I suspect you recall wrong
If Wiki is to be believed then
"He joined Oriskany in September 1967, for a tour he expected would finish early the next summer.[37] By late October 1967, McCain had flown a total of 22 bombing missions"
This was just before he was shot down.
Also - assuming that these missions didn't avearge less than an hour each I'd suggets more than 20 hours (combat) experience too.
He Really Is "One Of Us."
"John McCain is a weak man who puts his career goals first."
Just like 100 Million other Americans; one of the reasons he can win.
26 MEDALS FOR ONLY 20 HOURS OF COMBAT ?
John McCain's war record isn't much better than George "Poppi, don't let them send me to vietnam" Bush. McPhoney is no hero. From what I read his oldman, Admiral McCain (another traitor) greased the skids for his son all the way to the Hanoi Hilton. As soon as the North Vietnamese found out who he was they gave him special treatment. You want to know what it would be like to have McCain for president ? Well just think of the Smirkster on steroids. Take back America SUPPORT RON PAUL.
Wrong word order
"Take back America" should be "Take America back." Ru Paul wants to take us back to before the industrial revolution -- to a time that never was, except in his silly mind.
When do all the "libertarians" go back to wherever it is they hang out between presidential elections? This "Vote for Ru Paul" thing is getting a little tedious.
_______Do something constructive today. Go to your local bookstore, find a copy of George Bush's memoirs, and move it to the "Crime" section. Repeat as often as possible.
The New Hundred Years War
If we did in Vietnam, what McCain wants us to do in Iraq, he might still be a POW in Hanoi.
John McCain apparently has learned very little from Vietnam. Of course, it is more likely that he is willing to ignore his own experiences to sell his political soul to the corpo-fascist militarists that run the United States.
Why We Fight
McCain's reaction when the dark lord calls during an interview tells everything you need to know about the man. About 4 min. in the following clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAKRCZE1Rug
"Why We Fight" a great documentary. Highly recommended.
time in uniform/time as a slave...
same-o.
1. mccain is no more a war criminal than the rest of us young and dumb and full of cum teenagers who went where we were sent, thinking that some day they would make a movie of our lives. kennedy was a war criminal, and johnson, and rusk, and nixon, and kissenger, maybe even mccains admiral daddy. not mccain, not me. we were just young and stupid. there is a difference.
2. get off daddy bush. you dont know what you are talking about. any dumb man or boy who does his best, does his best, and he did at age 20. all the hero stuff is shit, except maybe when it involves saving lives directly and only saving lives. mothers are heros every day, lots of dads too.
3. NONE of having been a soldier has ANYTHING to do with being a good president, tho it certainly doesnt disqualify you. they are just different things.
4. the only place where combat experience counts for something, is if you are STILL stupid and you want to make MORE war. then you are certainly stupid, but you arent a hypocrite. mccain is REALLY STUPID (tho presumably, no longer full of cum), but not a hypocrite. bush2 and romney and most of the "conservatives" are hypocrites, never having incurred the trauma todays untermenschen are undergoing for them-- in fact, having aggressively avoided exactly that trauma (and wasting two years or more of their lives).
as for me, peace brother.
_______throwback
Re; "daddy Bush"
There are some important points in the Daddy Bush story.
1. He was a pilot at age 20 -- the youngest pilot in service -- because he was rushed through training in an effort to counteract the effects of his father's treason in trying to overthrow the government and supporting the Third Reich. They needed some good publicity.
2. Many people believed that his rush through training left him unable to make good decisions, which may have made him panic and bail out too soon, killing his crew.
3. He was flying a type of airplane known to be very sturdy, even when heavily damaged. There were reports of people landing this type of plane with the tail nearly shot off. Pilots flying near Bush reported seeing no appreciable damage to his plane -- and reported that they saw no fire or smoke. In other words, every indication was that he may have simply panicked due to youth and inexperience -- and, of course, the Bush Family trait of being cowards and traitors.
_______Do something constructive today. Go to your local bookstore, find a copy of George Bush's memoirs, and move it to the "Crime" section. Repeat as often as possible.
backseaters...
continued to fly with daddy bush when he returned to duty, which he didnt have to do, and did as quickly as he could.
im not saying he wasnt scared. im saying that the other folks who were there accepted what had happened. SAILORS (not officers) who had a choice flew with him without a question. and the old timers who were there tell me that is the test. they wouldnt fly with a man they thought was a coward.
i will always argue that combat has nothing to do with being presidential, tho i believe we are pretty much unanimous that combat veteran-daddy bush has much more character than his twit draft-dodging pup.
but it is very inappropriate to question ANYONES courage. who knows? bush2 and romney may have some, but they are hypocrites for sure. thats what we know.
the daddy bush was a coward story is plain old swiftboat-type bullshit. iran-contra and the first gulf war were his problems, not how he reacted to his damaged aircraft when he was a boy.
mccain looking forward to 100 years of u.s. occupation in iraq is HIS problem, not his short flight long ago over the peoples republic of vietnam.
dont present "what people believe" and daddy bushs fathers fascism requiring him to be rushed thru training (jfk too?) as FACTS. swiftboat opinion, clearly, which you are entitled to-- just dont call it fact.
_______throwback
Says all that needed to be said
To me that was George Bush's ultimate abdication of his presidential responsibilities, and a glaring display of his true character. The nation was under attack, people everywhere were frightened and confused about what was happening, and his response was to stay incommunicado and find someplace to hide. Rather than risk the nations' being deprived of his obviously irreplaceable governing skills by returning to DC to reassure his people and his country, he made it quite clear to anyone who was paying attention what kind of "leader" he really was. He ran and hid until the "all clear" was given.
All that tough talk atop a smoking pile of rubble at ground zero a few days later was only made after George was assured his worthless ass was secure from further terrorist threats. I can't imagine how anyone could consider the man as either brave or a leader. And the very fact that McCain deigns to suck up to such a lowlife speaks volumes about his character as well.
Stupid twenty year old
Jawohl, you are right, zey were only following orders.
Lots of twenty year olds had the morality and the guts during the war against Vietnam to refuse to slaughter millions of innocent people for the American ruling class. If everyone said, "Hell no, we won't go" the bastards wouldn't be able to do it, would they? Sure as hell the Dubyas of this world wouldn't be killing and dying for the ruling class.
A war criminal is a war criminal, unprosecuted or not.
_______Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy
The U.S. history you're not supposed to know.
http://www.mtwsfh.blogspot.com
What would you had done ?
Forty thousand young men ran to Canada to evade the draft. Nine million men and women enlisted or were drafted.Failure to comply with the draft was a felony resulting in the lost of all civil rights and prison.It is easy for a person who didn’t have to make a decision of this nature to make a judgement.However I must ask the question,would you have run to Canada,or gone to prison to evade serving in the armed forces during the Vietnam era?
_______(Pangloss2)
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
The draft
Yes. Going to Canada and staying there for good seems like it was a pretty good option. Canada was a sanctuary during the war against Vietnam just like it was during the era of slavery.
_______Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy
The U.S. history you're not supposed to know.
http://www.mtwsfh.blogspot.com
Visa info for your move to Canada!
As requested, how to emigrate to Canada.
_______(Pangloss2)
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
Weak Swift Boating!
Mr Rall is an great American patriot who has the intestinal fortitude to point out that Senator McCain and the 9,100,000 Americans who served in the US military during the Vietnam war are international war criminals .He vindicates the real American patriots of this era such as the 40,000 who moved to Canada rather than serve in the barbaric war. Also the majority of the Republican leadership of the present Administration, such as Dick Cheney who determined that his education took precedence over The world domination aims of the Kennedy , Johnson and Nixon administrations. Also Mr Romney Who instead of driving a tank , road a bicycle during the war years as a Later Day Saint missionary. It is a shame these great American leaders, have been wrongly vilified as chicken hawks . They recognized in their youth what the world really needed was education and spiritual leadership not the American jackboot of world domination .
However I am sorry that he pulled his punches. The thread is really weak. I have just found the Following threads the first by my cousin Colonel Kilgore of "Apocalypse Now", and the second by that great American military hero Jerry Kiley famous for his successful Swift Boating of John Kerry.
These threads don’t pull any punches. Mr Rall if you are going to Swift Boat someone. Put a little more research and effort in it.
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_hacker_2.htm
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_aboutvvajm.htm
_______(Pangloss2)
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
joke, right?
hackworth i am familiar with as a blowhard self-promoter, kiley is new to me, but their "work" speaks for itself.
this "you're not a hero" shit (and implictly, the objector IS) is far beyond the point.
note that some folks have done the same thing (impeach some of his medals) regarding hackworth, who certainly inflates his "accomplishments." i am told that he is really steamed that he didnt make bg.
i just glad to have gotten out of the army in 1968.
lets stay after mccain for being a warmonger and asssucker of the current bunch of corporate fascists, not blast him for being less than a real-enuff hero. i know that he while he plays the modest veteran, he lets others toot the hero horn. let it be.
drop it. stay on task. get a democrat into the white house and push for criminal trials of the real war criminals, bush, cheney, rumsfeld, and the rest. after you get them, go for the surviving criminals from gulf1, bush sr (and additional indictments against cheney and rumsfeld), grenada, and THEN get mcnamara and kissenger (actually he has had his evil hand in some of the rest too).
by the time you get around to me (for criminal direction finding?) or my friends (for criminal radio maintenance?) we will be pretty old, and we were kids when the 9 million of us committed those crimes.
_______throwback
Right Joke!
I too am a war criminal. Not only was I in the military but served 4 1/2 years in South East Asia( not in a war zone) and Europe,as a clerk in units doing work for the NSA. Not only a war criminal, but a spy deserving execution.
I agree with 99% of your comments, however not on Hackworth. I have left some links obits and the result of the audit of awards. You can't write your own obits, and what counts in the end is not the truth but perception.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2005/05/15/obituarios/1116128711.html http://www.hackworth.com/CBS_1.html
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/05/30/to_the_end_colonel_a_man_of_the_troops/?page=3http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/national/06hackworth.html
(Pangloss2)
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
quizas...
elmundo tiene razon, pero...
i never said hackworth was a coward or an asshole, i said he was a blowhard selfpromoter. and he was.
it certainly seems that hackworth loved having others rave about what a hero HE was. kind of like mccain.
hackworth impeaching mccains sop-pow awards is unworthy of him.
the main thing is not let anyone confuse medals with political worthiness. my experience is that they may be testimony to political SKILL, nothing more.
peace brother.
_______throwback
McCain was one of Nixon's Pawns!
“hackworth impeaching mccains sop-pow awards is unworthy of him.the main thing is not let anyone confuse medals with political worthiness. my experience is that they may be testimony to political SKILL, nothing more.”
I agree Hackworth should not have impeached McCain’s military awards.I also agree that medals should not be confused with political worthiness as they can be testimony to political skill. Best example in our history, is Douglas McArthur one of his conditions for leaving the Philippines was the award of the Congressional Medal of Honour.
McCain’s did not use political skills to obtain his awards. He and the other POWS Were simply pawns in Nixon’s game of portraying their release as a symbol of our victory.The POWS were one of the few examples of veterans being treated honourably by the Government.
All were submitted for promotion to boards when their time for consideration for promotion arrived.100% were promoted. Normal promotion rates was 0-3 to 0-4 80%, 0-4 to O-5 40% etc. The military decorations they were awarded were only for the purpose of dressing up the uniforms, they were wearing when they were returned. I believe that Nixon could have negotiated the same terms in 1969 that were concluded in 1973. The end result would been the same , however tens of thousands of American and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodian lives would not have been lost.
Hackworth like all author’s whose books were based on their life story was selling a product. Look at Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize winner. Using normal standards of reference Hackworth was a blowhard and self promoter. However we are being unfair if we use our own standards to judge him. Your and my life stories would be worth about 10c on the publishing market,while Hackworth’s was worth millions, if sold properly.
The link below is Hackworth’s defence of John Kerry’s purple hearts.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-15-hackman_x.htm
_______(Pangloss2)
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
War Criminals as President
Most U.S. presidents only become mass murderers and war criminals after they have ascended (or is it descended?) to the presidency. They have to learn on the job. By his own admission, McCain already has the experience. Maybe he's the man for the job.
_______Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy
The U.S. history you're not supposed to know.
http://www.mtwsfh.blogspot.com
John McCain
I have very little respect or support for anyone that comments on another's military service especially during time of war, even greater in a time of unwanted war. To comment on another's service especially service that caused one to be a guest of North Vietnam's infamous prisoner of war system is utter self involvement. Most people that I have read comments from didn't serve, never served a day in their lives. To me, one has to have walked a mile in someone's shoes in order to comment. If you haven't been to war Then you weren't there to see how wonderful our American boys behaved in Vietnam. Despite the few times of illegal kills over the 10 years of US troop involvement not to focus first upon the worst case scenarios of continued, under reported NVA/VC slaughter of Vietnamese civilians is a crime against the Vietnamese people and traitorous to our nation. After all the proofs against the communists in Vietnam have come to light since war's end the only conclusions any well read person can make is the fact of the North's insane murderous treatment of civilians during and after the war.
Just to let you know, during the war the South Vietnamese people never ran to NVA/VC troops for safety, they always ran to US/ARVN troops for safety. NVA/VC attacked almost exclusively, Vietnamese towns, villages, hamlets and killed civilians first, that drew out US and ARVN troops to defend the people. NVA/VC would shell the refugee columns of civilians attempting to escape the slaughter by NVA. I could go on and on ad infinitum but one must have a willingness for the unvarnished truth without propaganda against the US or the Republic of South Vietnam.
South Vietnam is still leading the Vietnamese people through business, education and a whole host of Westernized and capitalist ideas. To this day the North has yet to treat the South with equality. If you still believe that the Vietnam war was about Vietnamese independence then you have never paid mind to what the Vietnamese people themselves have undergone in the communist economic failures and that the South still is the economic engine of Vietnam. South Vietnam gives the greatest amount of taxes and receives the smallest portion of the fruits of the state.
There has been no reconciliation, no acceptance between the North and South, they have been and will be two different nations. Vietnamese are still not free politically, spiritually and the party officials still take the choicest homes and land parcels for themselves, now they are millionaires while the average worker earns less than $80 month.
It will take another 200 years at least for Vietnam to heal from the war that started in 1930 . The war dead still lay in unmarked graves all over South Vietnam, millions of moldering dead lie without honor, in the grossest end possible in Vietnamese culture, no incense, no caring family members to enrich their lives amongst the dead. North Vietnam cared little for its troops lives and even less for their deaths. North Vietnam has mistreated the remaining graves of South Vietnamese soldiers. What is even more appalling the only graves of North Vietnamese soldiers that were dug, maintained with names were those NVA who died in POW camps in the South. NVA were forbidden to carry any ID's so that the North could say that all troops in the South were of Southern origin. No dog tags for NVA. Most parents of NVA soldiers never received any information about their son's death or that he died. It was common not to release information about the dead so that the North could lie about casualty rates. Now that Vietnam needs money from the US they cynically declare their dead to the press but not to their people. Only when family members complain and ask about the whereabouts of their lost sons do they even get a death certificate from the govt.
Just as cynically the Vietnam govt complains about dioxin and Agent Orange damage. Dioxin was not an ingredient in AO but a contaminant in some batches. Yes, it has adversely affected troops on both sides but AO was not sprayed in populated areas. Dioxin is fat soluble not water soluble. Therefore dioxin does not migrate by water but by fat ingested by human beings. Vietnam was warned that its widespread use of low quality coal for electric generation, home heating/cooking, smelting and other widespread industrial uses was generating vast amounts of dioxin in densely populated areas. The Vietnamese govt reaction is not to stop using its hand mined low quality coal that spreads intense dioxin creation in homes and in dense populations but to start selling large amounts of low quality coal to China. Vietnam govt recent lawsuit thrown out of court stipulated that dioxin from unpopulated areas migrated by water. Dioxin is fat soluble and readily sediments into clays and soils beneath human activity. Therefore much of dioxin sprayed in hinter regions of Vietnam has long since sedimented beneath human activity. Communist propaganda instills the beliefs that are needed and wanted by the govt and have nothing to do with facts or reality.
It is best to second and third guess with good investigative tools whatever communists hold up as reality, no matter how appealing and rewarding it is to believe it.
Horseshit....
"To me, one has to have walked a mile in someone's shoes in order to comment."
Commenting on US military involvement in Vietnam, the VC/NVA resistance against occupation, and the policies of the (South)Vietnamese government, after that statement of yours, MUST mean you "walked a mile" in a lot of different shoes.
So, unless you were a US soldier in Vietnam, AND a soldier of the North Vietnamese army, AND a member of the Vietcong, AND a member of the (South)Vietnamese gov't, then you've clearly overstepped the self-defined limits of YOUR fucking right to speak.
_______“When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me.
I said, "Well, what do you need?”
― Steven Wright
service in Vietnam
Yes, I served in Vietnam, there were so many micro-environments that to say one served in Vietnam means very little without an extensive list of where, how, what unit, that sort of thing. Since I cannot serve in the NVA nor ARVN your ridiculous point is farcical. I can tell you didn't serve and yet, you are bound to have the biggest mouth with the deepest convictions based upon your egotistical self involvement. You are a very important person. Most vets that served in Vietnam don't have your Patina of self involvement based upon self importance. Most vets have just the opposite to deal with, they gave so much of themselves that they have to find a new way back to something of themselves. Self involved people are only involved with themselves and think so much of themselves that they give nothing but attitude to the world and smear it like the world should be grateful for the dosing. They sit back at home and become big know it all critics of people that go out and risk everything for their country and suffer terrible wounds, psychological and physical. The pain I endure every day from my wounds will never go away and I must bear them for the rest of my life. I would like to see your kind wear that mantle of pain just long enough for you to get over yourselves.
You didn't "walk a mile" in....
....NVA, VC, ARVN, or South Vietnamese government shoes, so you are not qualified to give an opinion. Those are YOUR stated conditions for commenting, NOT mine.
And stow the fucking guilt trip, general. You certainly weren't fighting them commies on my behalf. The US got it's ass kicked servicing someone else's agenda. Go whine to them.
So how did you end up in Vietnam? Were you dragged kicking and screaming, or did you volunteer for that bullshit lie of a war?
_______“When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me.
I said, "Well, what do you need?”
― Steven Wright
Good one!
throwback wrote:
drop it. stay on task. get a democrat into the white house and push for criminal trials of the real war criminals, bush, cheney, rumsfeld, and the rest. after you get them, go for the surviving criminals from gulf1, bush sr (and additional indictments against cheney and rumsfeld), grenada, and THEN get mcnamara and kissenger (actually he has had his evil hand in some of the rest too).
Sounds like a plan. And if at first it doesn't succeed, we can try, try again.
Learning from our mistakes and not repeating them is some kind of Communist propaganda.
Oh wait....what an idiot I am for not paying attention....throwback was serious and not trying to be funny at all. I didn't look at the date. That comment was posted back in 2008 before Obama was elected and was meant in all seriousness, not as a joke. In fact it was posted before Obama even got the nomination and there was still hope that his warhawk Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, or even the "anti-war" Democrat, Dennis Kucinich, who was close friends with both of them and later promised to throw his support to whichever one won the nomination, might be nominated.
In fact, it was posted way back when I'd only been an election boycott advocate for two years, and was coping with a lot of angry responses from people who really believed that electing a Democrat could bring about change and end the war.
My apologies. I'll try to pay more attention in the future.
Electoral politics in the U.S. is like professional wrestling, carefully choreographed, but meant only for entertainment purposes. When Obama and McCain weren't pretending to be opponents, they were getting together to plan out their joint statement in support of bailouts, or playing golf with the corporate executives who supported both of them. Democrats and Republicans in Congress stage fearsome fights, and then go to the same exclusive country clubs and five-star restaurants to compare notes and plan the next day's entertainment for the masses. Oligarchs are oligarchs, and no matter which political label they wear, their interest is in representing the interests of rich people like themselves, and ignoring the will of the public.
Maybe McCain was weak, or maybe he knew that the Bush family is much more vindictive than the Vietnamese. But McCain was such a pathetic excuse for a "greater evil" that they had to enlist Sarah Palin to make him look bad so that Obama could win. And Obama had to win because the powers that be couldn't trust McCain to continue the torture agenda as he seemed to have developed some kind of aversion to torture. That would have been bad for business, if you happen to be in the torture business, which we are.
_______Paradigms of Republican vs. Democrat or Conservative vs. Progressive have been designed for obfuscation and entertainment. --Catherine Austin Fitts
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Another War Criminal
Give it a rest John! There were dozens of other POW's in Hanoi with you. Do we see them running around telling all who will listen that they too were in the camps?
Besides John, you are a war criminal. You were on a mission to bomb civilians and hopefully burn them to death with napalm. Look at your children and grandchildren and imagine what they would look like with their faces burned off, forever paralized or mentally ruined by the blasts of your ordinance.
But that's OK John. You were just following orders!
When you came back and had on your dress blues, collecting all of your ribbons and awards bestowed upon you by our " Grateful Nation", those who you slaughtered were being buried in dirt.
As one writer so aptly stated this morning, you were treated pretty well in the camp. Can you imagine if a Mig got through and dropped bombs and napalm on a Los Angeles civilian neighborhoods, and the pilot was shot down, don't we know that the population in that area would have tore him a new asshole then killed him!
John McCain, you are no different than the Nazi war criminals tried after WWII. But then again, you were just " following orders".