Report threads that break rules, are offensive, or contain fighting. Staff may not be aware of the forum abuse, and cannot do anything about it unless you tell us about it. click to
report forum abuse »
If one of the comments is offensive, please report the comment instead (there is a link in each comment to report it).
McCain Was No Maverick on POWs
Written by R. Cort Kirkwood
McCain Was No Maverick on POWs
The predictable hosannas to Senator John McCain, who died Saturday of brain cancer, came surging in like a category 5 hurricane. The Washington Post published 14 items on its front webpage today; the New York Times a mere six.
The Republican from Arizona was a “maverick” and a “hero” and, as the Post put it, “a force of nature in Washington with an unrivaled global stature.”
True perhaps, and McCain’s tenure in school, the Navy, and in Congress, stories about which are legion, are legendary. But not always in the best way.
McCain On POWs
One would think that McCain’s nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam would have made him a natural to lead the effort to recover the POWs the Nixon Administration left behind. But alas, the “maverick” toed the government line: It had “no evidence” we left men there.
McCain fought tooth and nail against anyone who attempted to disclose the truth. And as The New American reported in its most recent print edition, quoting the late Vietnam war correspondent Sydney Schanberg, McCain was quite vicious about it when he served on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (see our article “Evidence of POWs in Vietnam”).
The evidence the committee gathered showed without doubt that at least 700 men were left behind in Vietnam. But McCain didn’t want to hear the truth.
Wro
McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidence — documents, witnesses, satellite photos, two Pentagon chiefs’ sworn testimony, aborted rescue missions, ransom offers apparently scorned — has been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists.” He has regularly vilified those who keep trying to pry out classified documents as “hoaxers,” “charlatans,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “dime-store Rambos.
As well, TNA reported, McCain “browbeat expert witnesses,” while family members who “pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper. He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears.”
When POW activist Dolores Alfond, of the National Alliance of Families, appeared before the committee, and cited iron-clad electronic intelligence that showed Americans alive in Vietnam in 1974, McCain, the “maverick,” showed up to pound her into the ground. Alfond’s brother, Victor Apodaca, was a Air Force pilot shot down over North Vietnam.
“McCain attended that committee hearing,” Schanberg wrote, “specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel’s work.”
He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of “denigrating” his “patriotism.” The bullying had its effect — she began to cry.
And that wasn’t the only time McCain erupted in a furious rage. McClatchy Newspapers reported McCain’s angry outburst four years after he went after Alfond.
Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.
As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.
“McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelcha