Former POW says John McCain is not fit to be president

Comments

[San Antonio Lawyer]

I think the people are the only ones who can tell who is not fit to be President

[KrisUnderwood]

And this POW is not part of that body?

This was quite interesting, especially points made on how POWs tend to not live very long and have lasting "effects" from the experience.

[Kirsten]

San Antonio Lawyer - Isn't he one of the people? I think we should hear both sides don't you?

[Dovve]

I'm the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran (D-o-v-ve) from the Navy and a FORMER McCain supporter. In 2000, I supported and even campaigned for John McCain in the New Hampshire primary. In so doing, I was nearly disowned by my father who was a Veteran of the Vietnam War who served his entire career in the Navy. My father (who passed away earlier this summer) hated John McCain. He viewed him as a traitor for signing the War Crimes Confession that allowed him to get out of solitary confinement when he was a POW. My father believed that not only did John McCain not deserve to be president, he deserved to be tried for treason for giving aide and comfort to the enemy in signing that war crimes confession. At that time, I defended McCain, saying that my father, not having gone through the experience of torture that John McCain had gone through as a POW, had no right to judge McCain. McCain had tried to kill himself, rather than succomb to the torture, but his captors had not even allowed him to do that. I told my father that if meant the difference between my father coming home from the Hanoi Hilton, or dying there, I would have preferred he (my father) signed the War Crimes Confession, too.

Now, I begin to question why I ever supported McCain in the first place. Perhaps my father was right. Every time I hear McCain fall back on his experience as a POW in answer to some other question (such as Jay Leno's question about how many homes he has) I feel sick and I know my father is turning over in his grave. McCain used to avoid talking about his experience as a POW because he was ashamed of signing that War Crimes confession. In interviews, he used to say that signing that War Crimes Confession was the thing he was most ashamed of in his life. In the recent Saddleback Forum with Rick Warren, John McCain said the incident from his life of which he was most ashamed was the break up of his first marriage--not having signed a war crimes confession and in so doing committing treason.

John McCain seems to have been given untouchable status with the media because of his POW credentials- so no longer needs to be ashamed of it, or avboid bringing it up at every opportunity that he feels criticized or cornered.

Mr. Patriotism and Mr. Country First is starting to make me sick. It's time people start talking about McCain's War Crimes Confession.

Now that my father has passed away, I am picking up his mantle and Raging against the McCain!

[HappyM]

Come on Kirsten, I think it's despicable for people like you and your father and army Colonel Earl Hopper to be ratting out John McCain for helping the North Vietnamese to set up defensive positions for future air raids and escape routes of U.S. Navy bombers. There's an unwritten, but well understood, rule amongst soldiers that "what happens in POW camps stays in POW camps," and Hopper knows this rule very well. To bring up McCain's collaboration with the enemy 35 years ago and reveal that the Vietnamese nickname for him was "Songbird", now that he's running for the Presidency, is truly playing dirty tricks Obama style. People who have never been in such a situation think that everyone can be a Jack Bauer character like on the TV show 24 and withstand all sorts of torture. John didn't want to go through all this torture and, knowing he would eventually talk, simply avoided the torture and told them what they wanted to know before hand. He's not the only one, I can assure you, and I don't think that it should disqualify him from running for the Presidency.

[David]

It's wouldn't be fair game except McCain is using the POW years as his main qualification to be President. By collborating, he survived when many didn't. When I went to Naval S.E.R.E school they didn't mention protecting traitors.