McCain and the POW Cover-up (Mega Barf Alert)

The Nation ^ | September 17, 2008 | Sydney H. Schanberg

[DJ Taylor]

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 people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

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Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

[MARTIAL MONK]

Anyone who believes this crock of crap is mentally deficient. Do you think Jesse Helms would have abandoned surviving POWs? Would Bob Smith? They signed off on everything that McCain signed off on.

McCain was not Chairman of the committee. He was not co-Chairman. He was a committee member along with every Vietnam vet in the Senate, save for Al Gore. It was not the first investigation into the POWS or even the second. It was the third and it happened 20 years after the war.

There was NO credible evidence that there were surviving POWs anywhere in SEA. There were rumors and outright lies from people who stood to gain from the frenzy. The committee chased thousands of these leads and found nothing. The report of the Select Committee is available online. It is a very balanced and fair assessment of the POW issue and worth a read.

[griswold3]

Ted Sampley.
Well, if this had any legs, soon we’d see a group of POW’s coming out against McCain....
Ping me when that happens.
As far as the hearings, John McCain, IMHO, was adamant that this country wouldn’t leave them behind. It wouldn’t fit in with his ideology of honor and duty.

[Will88]

“Guys, keep in mind that FR was asking these same questions too. I remember the McCain threads on 2000 asking questions about his POW status and criticizing his military service. So don’t act all trifled over this.”

And this was a much more frequently heard topic from the early to mid-’90s. There is just nothing new here, and those items mentioned in “The Nation” were being mentioned during the early ‘90s.

But I do wonder how many of the dismissive posters actually watched the hearings in 1992-1993.