05-12-2008, 03:35 PM
http://www.namvets.com/Reading/john_mcca...r_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 Washington, 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 circumstantial evidence to offer an educated opinion on the matter.
The person in Washington 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 portrayed 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 Hampshire 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 support the possibility that Americans were still alive and in captivity," This, despite documents 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 report.
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 portrayed 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 Report 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 ships 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 reported one of McCain's broadcasts.
The service reported "Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of the U.S. Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain purportedly 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 reporters 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 leadership 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.
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 Washington, 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 circumstantial evidence to offer an educated opinion on the matter.
The person in Washington 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 portrayed 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 Hampshire 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 support the possibility that Americans were still alive and in captivity," This, despite documents 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 report.
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 portrayed 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 Report 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 ships 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 reported one of McCain's broadcasts.
The service reported "Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of the U.S. Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain purportedly 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 reporters 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 leadership 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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