The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: txradioguy on July 20, 2015, 08:47:41 AM
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No this isn't new...this isn't Trump's latest...this is the Dems and the MSM from 2008!
The highest voltage third rail of this presidential campaign may not be race, sex, or age, but Senator John McCain's military service.
McCain's campaign Sunday issued a pair of outraged statements after retired general and Barack Obama supporter Wesley Clark said he didn't think that McCain's service as a fighter pilot and prisoner of war was relevant to running the country. Obama has consistently praised McCain's service, and called him "a genuine American hero."
But farther to the left - and among some of McCain's conservative enemies as well - harsher attacks are circulating. Critics have accused McCain of war crimes for bombing targets in Hanoi in the 1960s. Sunday, a widely read liberal blog accused McCain of "disloyalty" during his captivity in Vietnam for his coerced participation in propaganda films and interviews after he'd been tortured.
"A lot of people don't know… that McCain made a propaganda video for the enemy while he was in captivity," wrote Americablog's John Aravosis. "Putting that bit of disloyalty aside, what exactly is McCain's military experience that prepares him for being commander in chief?"
"Getting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience," Aravosis wrote in the blog post, entitled "Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?"
McCain's camp responded sharply to the Americablog posting Sunday night.
"The American people know that John McCain's record of service and sacrifice is not a matter of debate. He has written about and discussed his service as a POW extensively-often in excruciating and painful detail," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. "The American people will judge harshly anyone who demeans or attacks that service."
McCain has written repeatedly of his service, including a long 1973 magazine article and in his memoir, Faith of My Fathers. A Navy aviator from a military family, he was shot down on his 23rd sortie over Vietnam on October 26, 1967. His mission was to bomb a power plant in the North Vietnamese capital. Already suffering from broken limbs, he was beaten by a crowd before being taken to a POW camp. After being tortured there, he participated in some Vietnamese propaganda efforts.
"I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine," he later wrote.
But he later defied his captors by refusing to meet with anti-war delegations from abroad, he wrote, and also refused the most valuable special treatment he was offered: Early release.
"I did not want to go out of order," he later wrote. He was finally released on March 14, 1973.
Obama and the Democratic establishment haven't challenged McCain's record. Indeed, even Clark's words came in response to a direct question from CBS's Bob Schieffer on the specific relevance of McCain's service to the presidency.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller in April cut a bit closer, suggesting that McCain's days as a fighter pilot were themselves a critique of his character.
"What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground?" he asked. "He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."
Rockefeller promptly, abjectly apologized, praising McCain's "honorable and noble service to our country" and deploring his own "inaccurate and wrong analogy." His apology reflected a conventional political wisdom that McCain's heroism is too well established, and a climate of respect for soldiers too strong, for attacks on his service to do anything but backfire
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-mccains-war-record-fair-game/
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Hmmm...I don't remember the media uproar when this was happening in 2008. A Dem Presidential candidate AND a sitting U.S. Senator were saying far worse than what Trump is being misquoted on.
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Hmmm...I don't remember the media uproar when this was happening in 2008. A Dem Presidential candidate AND a sitting U.S. Senator were saying far worse than what Trump is being misquoted on.
I believe Trump's intent was to call him out for the RINO that he his but his mistake was making a generalization about all POW's.
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I believe Trump's intent was to call him out for the RINO that he his but his mistake was making a generalization about all POW's.
You're the first person I've seen that beleived Trump tried to smear all POW's.
My point is that the MSM and the GOP clown car full of wannabe Presidents has their panties in a twist over this. "HOW DARE HE question whether McCain is a hero!" when the MSM and the left...same people who are fueling this kerfuffle with Trump right now were more than happy to run long articles on whether McCain was a hero just 7 short years ago.
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TL,DR. His service deserves respect, but it's also true that there's nothing in it that gives him any particular qualifications to be President, either.
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TL,DR. His service deserves respect, but it's also true that there's nothing in it that gives him any particular qualifications to be President, either.
I always respect those of you wonderful folks who served, including McCain. What happened to him as a POW was horrific.
But I disagree with him on policy, doesn't mean I disrespect the man.
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TL,DR. His service deserves respect, but it's also true that there's nothing in it that gives him any particular qualifications to be President, either.
Most presidents have nothing in their past that gave them qualifications for being president. here has never been a candidate, that everyone thought was qualified to be president.
Obama however had less to recommend him to be president than anyone I've known, but that didn't stop idiots from electing him twice.
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Most presidents have nothing in their past that gave them qualifications for being president. here has never been a candidate, that everyone thought was qualified to be president.
Obama however had less to recommend him to be president than anyone I've known, but that didn't stop idiots from electing him twice.
No argument there, I'm just saying that unlike, say, Eisenhower, McCain's military record is pretty irrelevant to whether anyone should actually vote for him, as I see it. On all the domestic policy issues, there really wasn't anything to distinguish him from a Centrist Democrat.
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TL,DR. His service deserves respect, but it's also true that there's nothing in it that gives him any particular qualifications to be President, either.
Besides courage and character, which he has in spades, and no lib/dem/socialist (including Weaselly Clark) I have ever seen has.
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Most presidents have nothing in their past that gave them qualifications for being president. here has never been a candidate, that everyone thought was qualified to be president.
Obama however had less to recommend him to be president than anyone I've known, but that didn't stop idiots from electing him twice.
Successful head of the 8th largest economy in the world seemed to work well. Note the word "successful."
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Successful head of the 8th largest economy in the world seemed to work well. Note the word "successful."
For Ronald Reagan?
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I'm a nam vet and the guy who crowned my step daughter (As Miss Mechanicsville) was also a pow and is a family friend .. He has nothing good to say about McLame.
He was at the Hilton when McLame was, for seven years.
Paul E. Galanti
Paul Galanti was a prisoner of war for nearly seven years in North Vietnam's infamous Hanoi Hilton complex. He not only maintained his sanity, he has managed, since his return in February 1973, to excel in several different fields. He maintains a positive attitude despite having been deprived of "what should have been some of the best years of my life."
"Not so," says Galanti, "the best years are here, now"
In 2002, Paul was appointed as the Director of National Services Officers for the American Ex-Prisoners of War and currently is National Director as well as a service & legislative officer for that organization.
He writes a monthly column for American Ex-POWs' excellent monthly American Ex-POW Bulletin.
In 2003, he was appointed by Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony J. Principi to serve on the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Former POWs.
Galanti was named to serve on the Board of Virginia's new Department of Veterans' Services by Governor Mark Warner. He was reappointed by Governor Tim Kaine and elected Chairman of the Board of Veterans Services in 2006.
http://www.nampows.org/pgbio.html