Former P.O.W.: "Why I Cannot Support Senator John McCain for President

I was just listening to Thom Hartman. Turns out that McCain told his little story of the cross being drawn by a Christian while he was a POW, may have come from Ivan Solonevich and not McCain's memory. A lot of other things were pointed out on his show aside from the sudden story of this event that may not have happened and did not appear in his books.

What really got to me was the mention of this. Thom said it was over on Military.com but I wanted to do some digging. Looks like this piece of information has been around since McCain took a stab at the presidency in 1999. If I had read this back then, I wouldn't have voted for him either when he was running against Bush in the primary. I ended up voting for Gore. Back then I thought a lot of McCain, but it looks like he was not honest even then.

Former P.O.W.: "Why I Cannot Support Senator John McCain for President"
Posted by Calpernia
USA at 4/21/2008 3:42 PM and is filed under Mia,veterans,pow,Vietnam,McCain

29 August 1999 - by Mark A. Smith, Major, USA, Retired

"I wish I could support John McCain as a fellow returned POW. I have found I am expected to support him, but I cannot.

If I cannot support him, then the next best thing I find is that I am expected to remain mute and say nothing. As I have proven in a terrible jungle prison, I have the ability to remain mute in the face of those who wished to trade me my very life for just a few words. My remaining mute then, is the driving factor behind my feeling compelled to speak out now.

When John was blown from the sky over that lake in Hanoi, did the enemy already know whose son he was? No, they did not until John told them. He was seriously hurt in his ejection and he needed medical attention. In exchange for what the rest of us would call "First Class" care, he talked. He not only told them who his father, the Admiral was, but he expounded in detail on the Chain of Command and then built himself up by describing himself as one of the "very best pilots". You will not find this form of "resistance" in the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or in the Code of Conduct. As a matter of fact, it is expressly forbidden. Now, if the US Navy wants to give John a pass on this, it is all right with me, but that free Pass negated John's pointing fingers at others, or at least it should have.

Just ask Robert Garwood, or anyone else who crosses him, if he is a finger pointer. He is the worst.

After McCain was recovered from his wounds, did he cease and desist from making propaganda? The answer is an emphatic "NO". So we go back to the same question again: Should John get a free pass on this from the Navy?

Well, the Navy and some of the Air Force got together and supported the "Return with Honor" scenario. I darn sure did, even from my hole-in-the-ground in Cambodia. But I do not now support, nor would I ever have, if I had known, "Return with Honor" would be some kind of "amnesty" program. The main reason was simple. No one, not Stockdale or the real Senior POW Colonel John Peter Flynn, USAF, had the authority to grant "amnesty" for collaboration in the prisons of Vietnam. The recommendations of these Senior, honored POWs must be given weight in the consideration of charges or amnesty. They could fail to file charges, but they could not grant amnesty or "absolution". The problem is that they did so. Of course, one rarely hears of John Peter Flynn these days, as he somehow ceased to be the Senior POW, and Admiral Stockdale is described by nearly everyone as having filled that role. That it is not true seems to have no import on the media, historians nor my fellow POW's.

Most of all, McCain has never made the correction.

One must realize, it's as if we are some self-promoting, social club rather than a band of honorable men , welded together by common suffering. Our group says a lot of things which are not true. I have seen them stand Ev Alvarez up time and again in front of the nation and proclaim him as "America's longest-held Vietnam POW". It is not true, but this line has gone on for so long, it has entered the history books. Not one time has the man John S. McCain, not the Senator, the sailor, the pilot, the Ex-POW, but the man ever stood up and said; "Now hold it right there, Floyd James Thompson, Major, US Army Special Forces, was captured before all of us".
go here for more

http://blog.barofintegrity.us/2008/04/21/former-pow-why-
i-cannot-support-senator-john-mccain-for-president.aspx

As you can see McCain is not only a bad pilot and student, he is also not a very nice person either. He prides himself of being bad and trying to look good. He wants to run as a veteran but has run away from them when it came to his votes. No wonder why he calls everyone "my friend" because he does not know what one is. Strangers are his friends because a lot of the people who really know him, don't like him at all.

Is John McCain Able or is he Cain?

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Veteran
by don mikulecky [Subscribe]
Wed May 21, 2008 at 04:56:50 PM PDT
Is it disrespectful of a veteran's service if one wonders about certain behavior patterns and the possibility that they are related to combat experience? I wrote a diary in December of 2007 reviewing the book: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character by Johnathan Shay, M. D. Ph.D. I think the subject needs to be brought up again relative to certain behavior exhibited by a well known public figure who is also a Vietnam War Veteran and was a POW during that war. The book jacket tells us that Shay is a staff psychiatrist in the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston. His patients were Vietnam combat veterans with severe, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Shay examines the devistation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD. Allthough the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets. The historical legacy of war goes back at least that far yet we still tend to wish it away. Denial is of little value to anyone when the issue becomes pertinant to our Nation's future. Let us look at what Shay learned about this horrible effect of combat experience.
(go below for link and more of this)

My reply

McCain must have it
First time

But one Saturday morning, while practicing take-offs in his A-6 Skyraider off the Texas Gulf Coast, the engine suddenly quits. McCain’s plane plunges into Corpus Christi Bay.

Then there was the Forestal. The following is from Against All Odds

On the Forestal John McCain prepares for war.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): We'd only been in combat for a few days, so the adrenaline and excitement was still quite high.

On July 29, 30-year-old McCain climbs into his A-4e Skyhawk.

After a pre-flight check, his plane gets into take-off position.

But as captured in this real-life video, another plane's rocket ignites and soars across the flight deck. It punctures McCain’s external fuel tank, which erupts into a huge fireball.

Video cameras mounted on the flight deck record the raging inferno surrounding McCain’s plane.

Timberg: McCain is essentially engulfed in it. Very quickly and very cooly he realizes that his only way out is to pop open the cockpit. He climbs out, and there's this lake of fire. He drops into it, rolls and rolls through it.

But just as he turns around to help his fellow pilots escape, the first bomb goes off.

Timberg: Planes are exploding and rockets are exploding. Men are coming out and trying to put the fire out only to have the explosions kill them.

McCain is blown backward by the explosion. Dazed, but conscious, he drags himself to sickbay.

Sen. McCain: And I went up to the sickbay and I walked in and there were a whole lot of people lying around that had been terribly burned, third-degree burns, unrecognizable. And one of them called me over and he said, "Mr. McCain, Mr. So-and-so, he didn't make it, did he?" And I said, "Well yeah, he did I just saw him around in the other room. And he said, "Oh thank God." And he died.

The fire rages for hours. Planes are tossed overboard to prevent even further explosions. A curtain of fire-retardant foam is pumped out onto the deck in a desperate attempt to save the ship.

Down in sickbay, McCain looks on in helpless horror as a video monitor plays the scene.

Joe McCain: Here was this disaster occurring all around him, in which he could see his fellows, his comrades, his pilots, his beloved enlisted men just get cooked, and he's in the middle of this enormous chaos. This disaster was happening to everybody else.

Finally, after 24 hours, the fire is brought under control. The ship is saved, but at great human cost; 134 men lose their lives.

McCain is one of the lucky ones.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

The POW time is really the only time mentioned when talking about McCain and PTSD. We forget about the other times.

100% of people who have been tortured develop PTSD. No question about that. This I discovered when training to be a Chaplain.

He shows the signs of it as well. I've been working with PTSD vets for over 25 years now, as well as being married to one of them.

Shay's first book got right to the point. I have it on my blog as my favorite book. He got nothing wrong in any of it.

Aside from the fact I think McCain would be very dangerous as a President, he is also the least likely to take care of the veterans and the troops. He has shown no regard for their lives, even early on as you read above. He wants to run as a veteran, but he runs away from what other veterans need. Check his voting record.

by Kathie Costos on Thu May 22, 2008 at 05:55:36 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/21/17840/8730/798/519924

Ex-POW was tough, but for a good reason

Epilogue Wallace Marston Sr.
Ex-POW was tough, but for a good reason

Published Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:03 PM


DUNEDIN — Wallace Marston was friendly, unless you stepped on his toes.

He fished and hunted and stayed to himself. He taught his kids to box. His son knew how to shoot a Winchester rifle by the age of 3.

"He was real wiry, and he could kick the hell out of an elephant," said his son, Wallace Marston Jr. "Nobody messed with him."

Mr. Marston died Monday after a battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 84.

He never backed down from a fight in his life, probably because he spent years surviving one.

• • •

At 16, Mr. Marston was underweight. He ate 5 pounds of bananas to bulk up.

He wanted to join the military. The service was something lasting and permanent in his eyes. He grew up in Dunedin but had moved out of his parents' house at age 12 amid family fighting, his son said.

Mr. Marston's father signed the papers. The teenager became a soldier.

In 1941, his battalion went to Manila, Philippines. Mr. Marston was stationed at Clark Field. One day, he passed the time shooting craps underneath his tank. Bombs started dropping, exploding a mess hall full of soldiers.

"They didn't know it was the beginning of the war," said his son.

Mr. Marston survived the attack, but he wasn't free. In the Bataan Death March, he and about 100,000 other prisoners taken by Japanese forces walked for days without food or water. Later, they were crammed into railroad cars and boats, bound for camps.

He lived in captivity for 3 1/2 years. In 1943, he was shipped to the Hirohata POW camp in Japan, where he hauled coal and iron, and cleaned furnaces.

He ate one bowl of rice and a cup of soup each day, he told his son. He had one canteen of water for both bathing and drinking. He was forced to hit and slap other inmates, he said.

On Aug. 23, 1945, U.S. planes began buzzing overhead outside the camp. Mr. Marston was the first to run to the door to get a glimpse. Guards stabbed him with bamboo spears.

The scars stayed for life.

• • •

In 1945, he found himself on another boat. But this one was bound for San Francisco.

He had been rescued.

The boat sailed through the night. Early in the morning, the soldiers saw city lights. On shore, hundreds of people stood ready to welcome and cheer them.

As Mr. Marston passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, he decided he was going to make it.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com
or (727) 893-8857.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/article470392.ece

There is so much we don't know about these veterans and we are running out of them. Let's try to not forget them.

First Gulf War POW's push for reparations

Gulf War POWs push for Iraqi reparations

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jan 25, 2008 14:30:59 EST

U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who were captured and tortured by Iraqi forces are renewing their efforts to get President Bush to relent and allow them to pursue damages against the Iraqi government that were awarded by a federal court in 2003.

Bush vetoed the 2008 defense authorization bill Dec. 28 over a provision that, in essence, would allow former prisoners of war to sue Iraq for damages for their torture while in captivity. Bush claimed that enacting the provision would, among other things, “allow plaintiffs’ lawyers to tie up billions of dollars in Iraqi funds for reconstruction that our troops in the field depend on to maintain security gains.”

According to a Dec. 28 report in Congressional Quarterly, Bush issued his veto after lawyers for the Iraqi government threatened to withdraw $25 billion worth of assets from U.S. banks if the provision was allowed to become law.

The American POWs were granted damages by a U.S. federal district court in July 2003. But earlier that year, after signing a bill that allowed Americans to collect court-ordered damages from the frozen assets of terrorist states — a list that included Iraq at that time — Bush had confiscated what was then $1.7 billion in Iraqi assets held in private banks. He allowed the payment of two judgments, including one for so-called “human shield” hostages held by Iraq in 1990, but none for the Americans taken prisoner in the 1991 Gulf War.
go here for the rest
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/01/military_gulfwar_pows_080125w/

Bush and Rumsfeld refused to honor these men from the Gulf War. Was it because what was done to them is still being done to those held by them? Or is it because Bush never cared about those he sent to risk their lives or those sent by his father? Why would he refuse to honor these men who suffered at the hands of Saddam?
This is just one of their stories

Time as POW in Iraq haunts veteran

Report of captives revives Racine man's memories
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 24, 2003
Joseph Small III was watching television Sunday morning in his Racine home when the first reports of American POWs flashed on the news.

He had nightmares, sometimes quite vivid ones, in the years after his release. Often when he was awake, he would get flashbacks. For the most part, Small said, he no longer has flashbacks or nightmares.

But he couldn't help but relive his experience when he saw reports Sunday of the American POWs.

"It brought back the fear I was feeling 12 years ago. I try to keep that experience in a compartment of my brain, and I dust it off every now and then. This did that for me," as he gazed at a television broadcasting war news.

Even though Small, like most soldiers, went through survival training, it didn't prepare him for a group of Iraqi soldiers pointing their guns at him. It didn't prepare him for a truck full of soldiers attempting to run the vehicle he was being transported in off the road so they could kill him. Or beatings from his captors, who tried to break his eardrums.

"The emotions and fear you get cannot be duplicated" in training, Small said.

What helped him get through his ordeal was thinking of images, such as a high school football game, that reminded him of home. Before he was shot down, he had read accounts of soldiers who were imprisoned in World War II and Vietnam. He found strength from their stories.

Small's oldest son is an Air Force captain whose unit has not been called to the Middle East yet. If his son goes to fight in Iraq like the sons and daughters who are already there, Small said, it's for a just reason. He does not doubt Saddam Hussein would use weapons of mass destruction if he has them.

"I believe in the cause of what we're trying to do, which is to rid the world of a sadistic regime," he said.

Small hopes and prays the American POWs will soon be returned to their families. They will face difficulties, Small knows, and they will need the help of their friends, spouses and parents to cope with the loss of their liberty.

"There's nothing like freedom. Once it's taken from you, you greatly appreciate getting it back," he said.


While a nation held its breath and the families of the prisoners waited for word of their loved ones, Small felt a different kind of fear.

Small, 51, is one of a handful of Americans who know what it's like to be held captive by the Iraqi military.

"They're probably in a state of shock. I can tell you they're terrified," Small said of the American prisoners of war. "I'm sure they're in an extreme state of terror."

Small now pilots DC-9s for Midwest Airlines, but during the Persian Gulf War, he flew OV-10 Bronco reconnaissance planes. His aircraft was shot down in Kuwait on Feb. 25, 1991, the second day of the ground war against Iraq, and Small spent nine days in captivity until he was released along with other captives.

He injured his leg and shoulder when he parachuted out of his stricken plane and landed 50 feet from Iraqi soldiers. They tore his rotator cuff as they wrenched his shoulder. His shoulder still hurts.

Small and the other American POWs were fed contaminated food, beaten, whipped and imprisoned in areas the Iraqi military knew were bombing targets - all violations of the Geneva Convention, designed to protect prisoners of war.

The Geneva Convention protections mean "everything to American and British soldiers. They mean nothing to the Iraqi military," Small said.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar03/127995.asp

Still Fighting
Senator Pushes Bush To Release Money To POWs From 1st Gulf War

Nov. 20, 2003

CBS) During the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, a number of American soldiers who were captured and became prisoners of war were brutally, brutally tortured by the Iraqis.

Eventually, though, the POWs came home, put the pieces of their lives back together - and largely remained out of the public eye. But today, a different battle is being fought by some of those American POWs, all these years after they returned. Correspondent Mike Wallace reports.

It was back in 1991 that the POWs came home from Iraq to a hero's welcome and were greeted by the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, and then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

"Your country is opening its arms to greet you," said Cheney.

Many of the POWs had suffered wounds both physical and psychological. Some of them suffer to this day, more than a decade after they were captured and appeared on Iraqi TV.

“They had broken my nose many times. And I was just getting used,” says Col. Cliff Acree. “You just, kind of, get used to it.”

Acree was shot down during the second day of the war. He said his interrogations always began the same way: “They would have these six or eight people just beat you for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Just no questions asked, bring you into the room, and beat you with fists, feet, clubs, whatever.”

“Hearing Cliff talk about it, we never really talked like this before, in such detail,” says Dale Storr, now in the National Guard, who was shot down by Iraqi ground fire. “But it brings back memories. It's almost like I'm back in my cell again.”

Jeff Tice, now retired from the military, was captured after his F-16 was hit by a surface-to-air missile. He was tortured with a device he calls "the Talkman."

“They wrapped a wire around one ear, one underneath my chin, wrapped it around another ear and hooked it up to some electrical device. Asked a question. I wasn't interested in answering,” recalls Tice.

“They would turn on the juice. And what that does is it, it creates a ball of lightning in your mind or in your head. Drives all your muscles simultaneously together and it drives your jaw and everything together. And, of course, I'm chained to a chair. I can't move freely. So everything is jerking into a little ball. And your teeth are being forced together with such force. I'm breaking pieces and parts off.”

Tice’s jaw was dislocated so many times that he says he was lucky to be able to put it back into place.

Jeff Fox, also retired from the military, was shot down over southern Iraq. “Same type of experience where they would beat you and blindfold you, handcuff you, drag you around,” he says.

Some of the POWs endured mock executions, threatened castration, were urinated on, and had to survive on a starvation diet.

The torturers fractured Acree’s skull. “After 16 years in the Marine Corps, you develop a certain hardness. That hardness really helped me in captivity. But the people that treated us so terribly, right early on, made me so angry that it only stiffened my resolve,” he says.

“It only made me resist more. Because, in the back of my mind, I just know, it is so, what they were doing was so completely out, out of any Geneva Accord.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/20/60minutes/main584810.shtml

Capt. Larry "Rat" Slade retired in Norfolk on Thursday after 22 years in the Navy. u.s. navy


Slade spent 43 days as a prisoner of war during the Gulf War, above.



NORFOLK

CAPT. LARRY "RAT" SLADE served 22 years in the Navy, flying in the backseat of a Tomcat fighter over four combat zones, graduating from Top Gun school and winning the naval flight officer of the year award.

But one moment of Slade's career, honored this week at a retirement ceremony, fails to fold neatly into a shadow box with a flag, ribbons and medals.

On Jan. 21, 1991, a cloudy, damp night over Baghdad, an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile blew the tail off his Oceana-based jet at 25,000 feet.

Slade and the pilot, Lt. Devon "Boots" Jones, ejected safely and floated into the enemy's desert a mile apart.

Jones was rescued. Slade was captured.

For the next 43 days, Slade endured interrogation, torture and starvation at the hands of Iraqis. The military code burned in his mind: "I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability."

It still smolders: Did he resist to the utmost of his ability?

"I struggle with that question today," he said.

Slade retired on Thursday as perhaps the final prisoner of war in the active Navy ranks. At a Norfolk Naval Station ceremony, fellow sailors praised Slade, 42, for a no-nonsense career as a top aviator, skilled leader and aggressive advocate for new technology.

According to Slade, who stays in touch with other POWs, his retirement marks the first time in a century the Navy has not had a former POW in its active-duty ranks. A spokesman for the Naval Historical Center said researchers there do not track such information.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1855130/post