Maybe they just used "enhanced interrogation techniques." You know, like the ones we use.
'When John McCain was my captive'
- Thread starter uscitizen
- Start date
Maybe they just used "enhanced interrogation techniques." You know, like the ones we use.
An ad would show that it was the main concern.
People need to know about something for it to have the effect claimed here. Nobody knows about these attacks yet. They don't know about them because they were not what made McCain lose. I don't for a minute suggest that Bush wouldn't have pressed it hard if his team felt he needed it, but it simply wasn't what knocked him from that race. And if Bush went there, he'd be in desperation-land and on his way to defeat.
McCain dropped from the race when Cynthia's addiction became public knowledge and they hadn't controlled the release of information.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
How so .. they attack Kerry, a veteran, and he lost. There was no backfire.
They attacked Gore, a veteran, and he lost.
But NOW .. attacking a veteran is unholy.
That's bullshit. If you run for the highest office in the land, any reasonable scrutiny of your past is warranted .. including vets.
uscitizen
Villified User
I think there was, just not enough of one to get him the victory against a President at War, but it was closer than ever in the past, I think much of it was that backfire.
And I said back then that attacking Kerry was a mistake as well. You keep attempting to put the swiftboaters on me, they don't fit there. There is only one person in this thread using "information" from that source, and it isn't me.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I never claimed that attacks on his record were the sole or even the main reason why he lost. My claim is that Bush and Rove attacked his military record .. that's a fact ad or no ad, main reason he lost or not.
It won't be the main reason he's going to lose this election either. McCain is a seriously flawed and unstable candidate .. his fairy-tale war hero status is only one example of why this man should never .. make that WILL never be the president.
Somebody else suggested it was WHY he lost, I answered them by suggesting they show me how it was, how the ads against him were shown, how people know this stuff you are putting out now. You jumped in with more of this stuff, that actually shows that I was right. This was not why he lost, shoot most people in the US have never heard this crap. And if Obama has his way they won't.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Then go do something else .. you don't know what you're talking about here anyway.
His fellow POW's have said the same thing .. and so has McCain .. that he got "special treatment" because he was an Admiral's son.
Read the thread. I've already put forward my opinion on that. It certainly wasn't from this stuff that nobody knew about.
The push-poll in SC hurt him, losing that combined with Cynthia's addiction getting out...
McCain dropped out of the race at the same time that Cynthia's addiction became public knowledge and they had not controlled the release of information.
True, he says they offered to release him because of that. Instead he chose to stay as there were people there who had been there longer than he had.
Yes. If you control how a story gets out, the effect changes on your campaign and the message that attaches to it.
In order to inoculate yourself from information like that it is important that you control the release, otherwise a story about "a struggle against addiction" becomes a story about "criminal theft and seedy drug abuse"...
How the message is heard can be simply an effect of who puts out the information first. They were stupid and tried to hide it rather than control its release.
Another way to inoculate is to wait, once the information is already there and with time, one can get a message out about the incidents... But that one takes time.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
By your own words you speak of the ignorance and gutter-feeding of YOUR OWN PARTY. In other words, that which you find disgusting .. you vote for.
Democrats won't use McCain's wife to beat up on him .. your party did.
Democrats won't use "McCain has a black child" or any other gutter trash that YOUR PARTY did.
His military record is fair game and if it is as sterling as you seem to claim, then why woul;dn't he WELCOME any and all looks at who he is and his military and POW record?
uscitizen
Villified User
It was controlled, by Bush's people.I think your timeline is a bit off. Cindy McCain's drug abuse was public knowledge in 1994.
I think he will. As I stated I think it will backfire. Especially with a POW who chose to stay.
I think it is the Obama campaign that wants you to be quiet about it, it is why he has tried to shut down and control the 527s as well... Controlling the message will be vital to his campaign because things like this will harm it, irreparably, if it becomes a political football.
I believe that Obama won't use it, but Dems already have tried. That they more than happily would have continued to use it had Obama's campaign not (masterfully IMO) shut them down. Yet you vote for them...
uscitizen
Villified User
Hmmm
McCain reached Hoa Lo in the worst physical shape of any prisoner during the war.[91] His captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information; they beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth[92][93] (all that is required under the Geneva Conventions). Soon thinking he was near death, McCain said he would give them more information if taken to the hospital,[92] hoping he could then put them off once he was treated.[94] A prison doctor came and said it was too late, as McCain was about to die anyway.[92] Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care[92] — calling him "the crown prince"[91] — and announce his capture. At this point, two days after McCain's plane went down, that event and his status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times[75] and The Washington Post.[95] Interrogation and beatings resumed in the hospital; McCain gave his ship's name, squadron's name, and the attack's intended target[96] (disclosing this information was in violation of the U.S. Code of Conduct, which McCain later wrote he regretted, although he saw the information as being of no practical use to the North Vietnamese).[97] Further coerced to give future targets, he named cities that had already been bombed, and responding to demands for the names of his squadron members, he supplied instead the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.[96][98]
McCain spent six weeks in the hospital,[85] receiving marginal care in a dirty, wet environment.[99] A prolonged attempt to set the fractures on his right arm, done without anesthetic, was unsuccessful;[100] he received an operation on his broken leg but no treatment for his broken left arm.[101] He was temporarily taken to a clean room and interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried months later on CBS.[102] McCain was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including Defense Minister and Army commander-in-chief General Vo Nguyen Giap.[103] Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that McCain must be part of America's political-military-economic elite.[104] Now having lost fifty pounds (twenty-three kilograms), in a chest cast, covered in grime and eyes full of fever, and with his hair turned white,[85] in December 1967 McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Hanoi nicknamed "the Plantation".[105] He was placed in a cell with two other Americans (one was George "Bud" Day, an Air Force pilot and future Medal of Honor recipient), who did not expect him to live a week.[106] They nursed McCain and kept him alive;[103] Day would later remember that McCain had "a fantastic will to live."[107]
In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.[108] Unknown to the POWs, in May 1968, Jack McCain was named Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC) effective in July, stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.[109][3] John McCain was soon offered a chance to return home early.[110] The North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful,[111] and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially.[110] McCain turned down the offer of release, due to the POWs' "first in, first out" interpretation of the U.S. Code of Conduct:[112] he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.[85][113] McCain's refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese senior negotiator Le Duc Tho to U.S. envoy Averell Harriman, during the ongoing Paris Peace Talks.[114]
In August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain.[115] The North Vietnamese used rope bindings to put him into prolonged, painful positions and severely beat him every two hours, all at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[115][85] Teeth and bones were broken again, as was McCain's spirit; the beginning of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.[85] After four days of this, McCain signed and taped[116] an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said, in part, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died, and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."[115][85] He used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal that the statement was forced.[98] He was haunted then and always with the feeling that he had dishonored his country, his family, his comrades and himself by his statement,[117][118] but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[89] His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head.[23] Two weeks later his captors tried to force him to sign a second statement; his will to resist restored, he refused.[115] He sometimes received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal;[119] the sustained mistreatment went on for over a year.[107] His boxing experience from his Naval Academy days helped him withstand the battering,[35] and the North Vietnamese were never able to break him again.[115]
Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements,[120][121] with many enduring even worse treatment than McCain.[122] Under extreme duress, virtually all the POWs eventually yielded something to their captors.[123][120] On one occasion, a guard surreptitiously loosened McCain's painful rope bindings for a night; when, months later, the guard later saw McCain on Christmas Day, he stood next to McCain and silently drew a cross in the dirt with his foot.[124] In October 1968, McCain's isolation was partly relieved when Ernest C. Brace was placed in the cell next to him;[125] he taught Brace the prisoners' tap code method of communication.[126] On Christmas Eve 1968, a church service for the POWs was staged for photographers and film cameras; McCain defied North Vietnamese instructions to be quiet, speaking out details of his treatment then shouting "Fu-u-u-u-ck you, you son of a bitch!" and giving the finger whenever a camera was pointed at him.[127] McCain refused to meet with various anti-Vietnam War peace groups coming to Hanoi,[128] such as those led by David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory based on his connection to his father.[89] McCain was still badly hobbled by his injuries, earning the nickname "Crip" among the other POWs,[129][130] but despite his physical condition, continued beatings and isolation, he was one of the key players in the Plantation's resistance efforts.[131]
In May 1969, U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird began publicly questioning North Vietnamese treatment of U.S. prisoners.[132] On June 5, 1969, a United Press International report described a Radio Hanoi broadcast that denied any such mistreatment.[132] The broadcast excerpted from McCain's forced "confession" of a year before, including a statement where he said he had bombed "cities, towns and villages" and had received "very good medical treatment" as a prisoner.[132][133] In late 1969, treatment of McCain and the other POWs suddenly improved.[134][135] North Vietnamese ruler Ho Chi Minh had died the previous month, causing a possible change in policy towards POWs.[134] A badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected,[89] and the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, including McCain's brother Joe, heightened awareness of the POWs' plight.[136] In December 1969, McCain was transferred back to the Hoa Lo "Hanoi Hilton";[137] his solitary confinement ended in March 1970.[138] When the prisoners talked about what they wanted to do once they got out, McCain said he wanted to become President.[57] McCain consented to a January 1970 interview outside Hoa Lo with Spanish-born, Cuban psychologist Fernando Barral, that was published in the official Cuban newspaper Granma.[139] In it, McCain talked about his life and expressed no remorse for his actions in bombing North Vietnam,[139] and Barral proclaimed him "an insensitive individual without human depth."[140] The POWs issued an edict forbidding any further such interviews,[139] and despite pressure McCain subsequently refused to see any anti-war groups or journalists sympathetic to the North Vietnamese regime.[140]
McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times, but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before.[89] Unbeknownst to them, each year that Jack McCain was CINCPAC, he paid a Christmastime visit to the American troops in South Vietnam serving closest to the DMZ; he would stand alone and look north, to be as close to his son as he could get.[141] By 1971, some 30–50 percent of the POWs had become disillusioned about the war and less reluctant to make propaganda statements for the North Vietnamese.[123] McCain was not among them; he participated in a defiant church service[142] and lead an effort to only write letters home that portrayed the camp in a negative light;[143] he spent much of the year in a camp reserved for "bad attitude" cases.[123] Back at the "Hanoi Hilton" from November 1971 onward,[144] McCain and the other POWs cheered the resumed bombing of the north starting in April 1972, whose targets included the Hanoi area and whose daily orders were issued by Jack McCain, knowing his son was in the vicinity.[145] Jack McCain's tour as CINCPAC ended in September 1972,[146] despite his desire to have it extended so he could see the war to its conclusion.[141] The POWs cheered even more during the intense "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972, when Hanoi was subjected for the first time to repeated B-52 raids.[145] Although its explosions lit the night sky and shook the walls of the camp, the POWs saw it as a forceful measure to compel North Vietnam to finally come to terms.[145]
Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, ending direct U.S. involvement in the war, but the Operation Homecoming arrangements for POWs took longer.[147] McCain was finally released from captivity on March 14, 1973,[148] having been a POW for almost an extra five years due to his refusal to accept the out-of-sequence repatriation offer. For his actions as a POW, McCain would be awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, three more instances of the Bronze Star, another instance of the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Purple Heart.[82][48] He also gained an appreciation, from the help and organized resistance of the POWs, that his earlier individualism needed to be tempered by belief and sacrifice causes greater than self-interest.[118]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_military_career_of_John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war
Not like it was coming out in the campaign. Most in the US still didn't know. As I said, controlling the release would have helped them...