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Peace at any cost is a prelude to war!
McCain's ties with Vietnam
Special US report by Ted Sampley
No. 143, 29 Nov. - 5 Dec. 1999
John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and former Navy pilot, has
emerged as the leading advocate for normalizing relations with the same
government that has repeatedly lied about torturing and killing U.S. soldiers
who were captured during the Vietnam War. McCain's high-profile and
unrelenting support for a government that brutally tortured and murdered his
fellow POWs is causing POW/MIA family members and fellow Vietnam veterans to
question the senator and his motivations.
They ask what drives McCain, who owes his public life to the tag "former
POW," to work so hard for Hanoi and so diligently to discredit any
possibility, in fact the probability, that Hanoi held back live U.S.
prisoners of war after the 1973 prisoner release. The POW/MIA families point
out that they worked hard during the Vietnam War to secure McCain's freedom
when he was held by the Communists. The families want to know why he is
betraying them in their efforts to get answers about their missing loved
ones.
None of the senators who served on the 1991-92 Senate Select Committee on
POW/MIA Affairs were as vicious in their attacks on POW/MIA family members,
veterans and activists as McCain. During the POW/MIA hearings, Fran ces
Zwenig, the $118,000-a-year staff director of the Senate Select Committee,
reported to McCain that she was told by the Vietnamese, during a July 1992
meeting with the Vietnamese, that something had to be done about the POW/MIA
activists who were opposing lifting the U.S. imposed trade embargo against
Vietnam.
Not long after, McCain started de manding that the Select Committee
investigate the activists, prompting one observer to ask: "Are the Vietnamese
now directing the affairs of the Senate Select Committee?" McCain accused the
POW/MIA families and activists who openly challenged the U.S. government's
POW/MIA policy of fraud. In his attacks he said: "The people who have done
these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of
the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a
scam."
McCain took the lead in the Senate and demanded a Justice Department
investigation of the activists. The Justice Department investigated and found
no reason to charge any of the POW/MIA activists. When Col. Bui Tin, one of
McCain's former interrogators, testified before the Senate Select Committee,
McCain did not display that same "pit bull" inclination to attack as he did
for the POW/MIA families and activists. Tin, a former senior colonel in the
North Vietnamese Army, told the committee that because of his high position
in the Communist Party during the war, he had the right to "read all the
documents and secret telegrams from the Politburo" pertaining to American
prisoners of war. He said not only did the Soviets interrogate some American
prisoners of war, but they treated them very badly.
During a break in the hearing, McCain warmly embraced Tin as if he were a
long lost brother. McCain fought a hard and successful campaign to get the
U.S.-imposed trade embargo against Vietnam lifted, despite the opposition of
all major veterans organizations, the two POW/MIA family groups and the
majority of the Vietnamese Americans in this country. The veterans want to
know why McCain, the "conservative" politician, takes such a strong stand for
the Vietnamese Communists and against such patriotic groups.
McCain was born in the Panama Ca nal Zone on Aug. 29, 1936. His father, Adm.
John McCain II, became commander-in-chief of the Pacific forces in 1968 and
later ordered the bombing of Hanoi while his son was held there as a prisoner
of war.
McCain's grandfather, Adm. John S. McCain Sr., was the commander of aircraft
carriers in the Pacific under Adm. William F. Halsey in World War II.
McCain's early years were spent in var ious places on the east and west
coasts. He attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and is a 1958
graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. At the Naval Academy,
McCain's grades in electrical engineering were satisfactory, although he had
numerous demerits for breaking curfews and infractions. He graduated fifth
from the bottom of his class.
Despite his low class standing, Mc Cain's request for training as a Navy
pilot was granted. His father's rank of admiral and family history apparently
played a part in the decision. After qualifying as a Navy pilot, McCain was
shipped to Vietnam. On his 23rd mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1967,
McCain was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
He later recalled that he was flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive
at about 4,500 feet when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came
up-the sky was full of them-and "blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive
bomber. It went into an inverted, almost straight-down spin." "I pulled the
ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection-the
air speed was about 300 knots," McCain said. "I didn't realize it at the
moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three
places and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by
parachute in a lake right in the center of Hanoi, one they called the Western
Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off. "I hit the water and
sank to the bottom . . . I did not feel any pain at the time, and I was able
to rise to the surface. I took a breath of air and started sinking again."
After bobbing up and down, McCain said he was eventually pulled from the
water by Vietnamese who swam out to get him. He said a mob gathered on shore.
He was bayoneted in the foot and his shoulder was smashed with a rifle butt.
He was put on a truck and taken to Hanoi's main prison, McCain said.
Rhinestone hero?
In Congress, McCain's peers tout him as a great war hero. On occasion, the
press categorizes McCain as one of the most tortured prisoners of the Vietnam
War. Neither is true. He was never brutally tortured and, by his own
admission, he collaborated with the communists. When one totals McCain's 23
missions over North Vietnam times the number of minutes he was actually over
enemy territory (approximately 20 to 35 minutes per mission), McCain's total
time over Vietnam before being shot down was about 10-and-one-half hours.
For those 10-and-one-half hours over Vietnam, McCain was awarded two Silver
Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze
Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and three Purple Hearts averaging over
one hero medal per hour.
Compare McCain's 10-and-a-half hours of combat and 13 medals to that of a
U.S. infantry private who spent 365 days trudging through South Vietnam's
jungle and mud, facing death on a daily basis. He was lucky to leave Vietnam
with a simple good conduct ribbon.
Compare McCain's record as a prisoner of war to that of Army Special Forces
Capt. "Rocky" Versace of Norfolk, Va., who was captured by Vietnamese
Communists (Viet Cong) on Oct. 29, 1963 in South Vietnam. Versace resisted
his captors to the end. Very few, if any, in Congress know about Versace. He
spent two years chained in a bamboo cage and endured almost daily torture by
the Vietnamese Communists. He continuously frustrated his Viet Cong
interrogators by refusing to obey demands that he denounce America and accept
the communist philosophy of revolution. He told his captors as they were
dragging him to an interrogation hut, "I am an officer of the United States
Army. You can force me to come here, you can make me sit and listen, but I
don't have to believe a damn word you say."
The Viet Cong decided that day to take no more resistance from Versace. A few
days later, on orders of Viet Cong leader Vo Van Kiet, Vietnam's current
prime minister and McCain's friend, Versace was dragged from his
filth-ridden, mosquito-infested bamboo cage for the last time and forced to
kneel with his forehead pressed into the jungle mud. Versace was then shot in
the back of the head. McCain doesn't talk about MIAs such as Versace, Sgt.
Kenneth Roraback of Fayetteville, N.C., or Army Sgt. Harold Bennett of
Perryville, Ark., all of whom were ordered executed by his friend, Kiet,
according to reports.
Compare McCain, the POW hero, to another fellow prisoner of war, Marine Capt.
Donald Cook, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Cook was
awarded our nation's highest award for valor because, during his years of
captivity, he jeopardized his own health by sharing his meager supply of food
and scarce medicines with other U.S. prisoners who were more sick than him.
He became legendary for his refusal to betray the military Code of Conduct.
On one occasion, Kiet's Viet Cong cadre put a pistol to Cook's head,
demanding that he denounce the United States. Cook resisted and calmly
recited the nomenclature of the parts of the pistol, giving the communists
nothing.
The Viet Cong were so infuriated at Cook's resistance that they isolated him
from other American prisoners. They intentionally denied him much needed food
and medicine. Like Versace, Cook disappeared and was never heard from again.
Hanoi claims Cook died as a result of malaria and that they do not know where
his remains are buried.
McCain discourages any talk about Versace, Roraback, Bennett and Cook. To
talk about such patriots would require the United States to demand the return
of their remains or, at the very least, records of their deaths. If those
MIAs are proven dead and their remains returned, then McCain's friend, Kiet,
would be forced to explain the holes in the back of their skulls and why he
ordered the POWs murdered.
McCain is no hero. He violated the military Code of Conduct and willfully
collaborated with the Vietnamese, Soviets and Cubans. It is not yet publicly
known just how much McCain collaborated and what kind of favors he received
in return. Those in the U.S. government who do know are not talking.
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without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
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purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
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