McCain Unhinged

In one fascinating display, you get McCain's temper, McCain's incompetent surrogates rushing to his defense, McCain's mock humility about "not wanting to talk about his time as a POW" and then McCain talking about his time as a POW.

McCain bristled at the comments on "Face the Nation" last weekend by an Obama supporter, retired general Wesley Clark, who belittled the relevance of McCain’s wartime experience as a qualification for the Presidency.

"I think it’s up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose," McCain said.

McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"Please," he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain’s wartime service as well.

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

Asked about one of his former jailors from the notorious Hanoi Hilton who has now endorsed his candidacy for President, McCain chuckled.

"Yeah, I saw that," he said. "He also said that he and I used to have these nice, long philosophical chats. The ones that I recall is, confess or else."

It's a wonder he didn't grab the reporter and have Huckleberry and Holy Joe sit on him.

But Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain - who had won election to the Senate that year - and other members of a bipartisan committee of lawmakers called the Central American Negotiations Observer Group - met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the left-wing political party known as Sandinistas, about tensions in the region..."McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention," Cochran said. "But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don't know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."

And for Graham to bring up McCain's stance on the treatment of detainees is to invite ridicule--McCain was for giving the detainees a trial before he was against it, he was against waterboarding before he decided he needed to sell out his principles and run to the right so he could appeal to the craven wingnuts in order to win the nomination. I wish Graham could speak for McCain all day and every day--it's like a gift to the Democratic Party.

--WS

American Died in Chinese Custody

This is a quick diary that I posted at Vote Vets, and it speaks to an issue which many people raised all kinds of hell about in the 1980s and early 1990s--and nowadays you don't hear about it all that much.

The Korean War was the forgotten war in more ways than one.

Another damned good reason not to trust the people in power to do what's right. And why the hell didn't the DoD say or do anythign in 2003 when they first received this notification from the Chinese?

After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ill," according to documents provided to The Associated Press.

China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels opens another chapter in this story and raises the possibility that new details concerning the fate of other POWs may eventually surface.

Chinese authorities gave Pentagon officials intriguing new details about Desautels in a March 2003 meeting in Beijing, saying they had found "a complete record of 9-10 pages" in classified archives.

Until now, this new information had been kept quiet; a Pentagon spokesman said it was intended only for Desautels family members. The details were provided to Desautels' brother, Rolland, who passed them to a POW-MIA advocacy group, the National Alliance of Families...

How many more? Will we ever know? And who in their right mind would trust our government to tell us the truth after this incident?

-WS