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This long biographical profile of McCain is very revealing. Here's how it starts:
At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.The whole article is worth reading. There's even some economic policy towards the end.
McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.
There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."
On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.
"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."
"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.
"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.
"Why? Where are you going to, John?"
"Oh, I'm going to Rio."
"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"
McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.
"I got a better chance of getting laid."
Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."
3 comments:
Thought this was "economists for obama" not "try to slander a guy who actually served and was tortured". Would like to see how most of us, including you, would hold up to torture. This is garbage, not news.
Dear anonymous,
A slander is a defamatory untruth. But if we go with your moral calculus and decide that it's "slander" to criticize anyone who's served and was tortured, you're in a bit of bind, since the bit above is from the account of John Dramesi, who served and was tortured himself.
I'm happy NOT to see how we would hold up to torture. If you read the account in Rolling Stone, it turns out that contrary to received mythology, McCain didn't hold up well himself.
I am not a fan of McCain's at all, in part because I used to be but he's changed so much I just can't respect him anymore. But reading this excerpt made me uneasy because it feels sort of Swift Boat-y. True or not, my guess is Obama himself wouldn't condone spreading this sort of stuff about McCain - one of the reasons I support Obama is he gives me hope that people can actually rise above this sort of thing.
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