Video- President Obama Bestows Presidential Unit Citation on the Blackhorse Regiment

Ex Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara has died

Just announced on MSNBC. More here, Wikipedia-

Robert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 — July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense. McNamara served as Defense Secretary for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1968.

Holbrooke: Afghanistan is no Vietnam

By GottaLaff

Labels, labels, labels:

Just days after President Obama announced his comprehensive plan for the next phase of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, a senior diplomat in the new administration sought to put to rest any comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam wars.

“I served in Vietnam for three and a half years and I’m aware of certain structural similarities,” Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King Sunday.

“But there’s a fundamental difference — the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese never posed any direct threat to the United States and its homeland. The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and the people they are sheltering in Western Pakistan, pose a direct threat. Those are the men of 9-11, the people who killed Benazir Bhutto and you can be sure that as we sit here today, they are planning further attacks on the United States and our allies.”

"Obama's War". "Obama's Viet Nam". The rebranding continues... Why not wait longer than, ohIdunno, two months into Obama's presidency to see the results of his policies, hmmm?

Where is the logic?

By GottaLaff

Leonard Matlovich was a Vietnam War veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Despite his excellent service record, Matlovich was discharged from the Air Force because he was gay. His tombstone reads,

“When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

Way to support some of the troops.

Mullen: Afghanistan is no Vietnam

By GottaLaff

Last night I posted about the Newsweek cover above. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disagrees with their characterization:

The top U.S. military officer cautioned Monday against comparing the Pentagon's renewed focus on Afghanistan to the Vietnam War, citing terrorism and a non-occupation strategy as "dramatic differences" between the two conflicts.

"Afghanistan is much more complex," said Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He added: "I certainly recognize - and having been in Vietnam myself - that there are those who make comparisons. I would be pretty careful about that though, for lots of reasons."

If it's anyone's war, it's Bush's. Now President Obama has to deal with the war he he has, to loosely paraphrase some war criminal named, ummm... Dummy? Scummy? Oh yeah: Rummy:

Obama's Viet Nam

By GottaLaff

After eight years of the Bush Doctrine, after six years of war/occupation in Iraq, after eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, and after 12 days of Obama as commander in chief...

...it's being called Obama's Viet Nam.

H/t: Atrios

Dan Rather's $70m lawsuit likely to deal Bush legacy a new blow

By GottaLaff

I didn't realize Bush's legacy could suffer any more than it already has.

Just kidding. Yes I did:

As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.

A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.

As Dan once said, "Feeling good about your chances... or are your fingernails beginning to sweat?"

Mrs. Gramm-pa McCain: Vietnam vets with PTSD were 18-year-olds who didn’t know what they were doing.

By GottaLaff

Is Cindy McMealTicket really this stupid? This is a new low:

Q: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you - or is it a part of history?

McCAIN: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that’s in the past. Certainly it’s a part of who he is, but he doesn’t dwell on it. It’s not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.

Q: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?

McCAIN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he’d be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.

Good to know that Gramm-pa has no symptoms, and that all that training paid off. Then there was this little tidbit:

I’ll be very frank with you: I leave the politics to my husband and to his group — although I’m very involved in it, don’t misunderstand me...

Oh really? Is that right, Cin? Is that because you're not "alert" enought?

MC: You were addicted to painkillers in the early ’90s. What’s your advice to others?
CM: Beware. Beware. It’s not anything that I ever thought I could succumb to, and it happened without my even knowing it. But I’ll tell you what it has done for me: It’s made me a much better and more alert mother.

Beware is right. Beware of hypocrites:

MC: What would be your priority as first lady?
CM: Serving a cause greater than your own self-interest.

You might think about suggesting that to your husband and a few of his 82521650 lobbyists.

1998 Gramm-pa McCain: "Is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted?"

By GottaLaff

Via TPM:

John McCain being interviewed by Mother Jones magazine in the Nov/Dec 1998 issue (emphasis added) ...

MJ: You not only have had combat experience in Vietnam, but you were also a prisoner of war. When you look at terrorism right now, with people like Osama bin Laden, do you have any reservations about watching strikes like that?

John McCain: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What's plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know.... Well, we've declared to the terrorists that we're going to strike them wherever they live. That's fine. But what's next? That's where there might be some comparison.

What foresight, huh? Who's going to ask him about this? Nobody? That's what I thought.

So, Grammps... what next?

"If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."

By GottaLaff

Noun. Verb. POW truthiness. "Make-Believe Maverick" gives us the actual truth:

The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they "give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades." Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no "statements disloyal to my country."

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead." [...]

Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was "moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated." He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.

Code of Conduct broken. Code of honor out the window.

Gramm-pa McCain, 1974: "I got a better chance of getting laid."

By GottaLaff

I've just begun reading this piece, thanks to Commenter Mainsailset. As I get further, I'll undoubtedly post more excerpts, but here's a humdinger:

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. [...]

"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."

I can't wait to read the rest. Stay tuned.

Sydney Schanberg Writes Massive Piece on John McCain Hiding 'POW Secrets'

By GottaLaff

Look what's coming to a Nation near you (apologies ahead of time for the length of the post):

Sydney H. Schanberg, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and Newsday columnist -- and author of "The Killing Fields" -- has written a 9000-word investigative piece on John McCain and his longstanding efforts to, as Schanberg asserts in his lede, "hide from the public stunning information about the live Vietnam prisoners who, unlike him, didn't return home."

Part of the piece has just gone up at The Nation web site (www.thenation.com) and will appear in its Oct. 6 issue. A full version, with graphics, appears at The Nation Institute site. [...] Now Schanberg criticizes the press for allowing this whole subject to be swept under the rug for so long.

The new piece details the evidence that hundreds may have been left behind, along with McCain promoting federal prohibitions that keep key evidence classified. Schanberg also reveals that he received a personal briefing in 1992 from high-level CIA officials who said intelligence suggested that many men were not freed -- and later executed. He raises several questions about why McCain has acted the way he has but, in any case, strongly believes that McCain owes the voter "some explanations." He also urges reporters to "dig into" the archives and complete "the historical record."

The Nation:

Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books. [...] McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them. [...]

This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain. [...]

Two defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate POW committee in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. [...T]hey based their conclusions on strong intelligence data--letters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts. Under questioning, Schlesinger chose his words carefully, understanding clearly the volatility of the issue: "I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion...some were left behind."

It goes on in some detail. More eye-popping excerpts:

McCain, whose POW status made him the committee's most powerful member, attended that hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel's work. He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of "denigrating" his "patriotism." The bullying had its effect--she began to cry.

After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned and stormed out of the room. The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. We still don't know anything about those 20 POWs. [...]

McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidence has been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the work of the "bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists." He has regularly vilified those who keep trying to pry out classified documents as "hoaxers," "charlatans," "conspiracy theorists" and "dime-store Rambos." Family members who have personally pressed McCain to end the secrecy have been treated to his legendary temper. In 1996 he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair.[...]

It's not clear whether the taped confession McCain gave to his captors to avoid further torture has played a role in his postwar behavior. That confession was played endlessly over the prison loudspeaker system at Hoa Lo--to try to break down other prisoners--and was broadcast over Hanoi's state radio. Reportedly, he confessed to being a war criminal who had bombed a school and other civilian targets. The Pentagon has copies of the confessions but will not release them. Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a nonredacted copy of McCain's debriefing when he returned from captivity, which is classified but can be made public by McCain. [...]

But even without answers to what may be hidden in the recesses of someone's mind, one thing about the POW story is clear: if American prisoners were dishonored by being written off and left to die, that's something the American public ought to know about.

This guy has so many secrets and is unscrupulous in so many ways, it makes one's head spin. Yet he's being portrayed as a war hero and fawned over endlessly. His military service should not make him immune to questions, and we should not be deprived of honest answers, if that's even possible.

Vietnam Vets Against McCain

By Paddy



From the movie "Missing, Presumed Dead". Plus The Editors think there are some things you should know.

If you have a friend, acquaintance, or family member who might be susceptible to this sort of stuff* - particularly if they have been bombarding you with mass emails about how Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, etc. - why not send them a link to the above video, and ask them why conservative boner idol (and bona fide war hero) Bob Dornan would say such things if they weren’t true. You could perhaps go on to mention the 32 anti-American propaganda tapes McCain made for the Communists (how does that qualify one to be President, I wonder?) some of the other issues real conservatives have raised about McCain’s dubious record in Vietnam, his San Francisco values, his atheism and hatred of traditional Christianity, his crazy temper, such grand unified theories of VC mind control as may suggest themselves, and other issues which might make the true conservative vote for crazy Bob Barr instead. If you don’t have an in like that, you could consider trolling right-wing message blogs and message boards and passing along this important information that the MSM won’t tell you. Outgoing people may brave talk radio call-in shows, even. Manchurian candidate references are encouraged, but no pressure.

*changed to an innocuous word to keep Gotta happy

Sen. John McCain: The ultimate "rhinestone hero"

By GottaLaff

Shhh. One must never discuss such things about the P.O.W. candidate:

From the first days of McCain's captivity, he seriously violated the Military Code of Conduct, which outlines the basic responsibilitiese and obligations of members of the Armed Forces of the United States who have been captured by the enemy.

You can read the entire piece here.

August 26, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

Arizona Senator John McCain has been making big hay with the media lately regarding the anti-Kerry "Swift Boat" ads (search)calling for the White House to denounce them. McCain, never one to shy away from the camera, carries his own baggage from Viet Nam. This two part series was originally published in my old newsletter, The Power Educator, with permission from Ted Sampley of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, July 1995. McCain has always had his own problems with Viet Nam veterans. The government's media apparatus has basically given him a free pass.

You have probably heard a lot of this, but the piece goes into some detail. One excerpt:

John McCain the second-term Republican senator from Arizona and former Navy pilot captured and held prisoner during the Vietnam War, is a fraud, collaborator, and danger to the security of the United States because he is being black-mailed by the communist Vietnamese. He is a phony--a "rhinestone hero."

While a prisoner of war, McCain was treated as a "special prisoner," with privileges including being given his own private and affectionate nurse.

Accurate? Relevant? Your turn.

John Sidney McCain: "You're lucky he died"

By GottaLaff

Oh, how I wish I heard the lead-up to this story. If anyone out there was listening to the Stephanie Miller show this morning, please help me fill in the gaps. I managed to catch the money line though.

A caller was telling a story about having attended a McCain event awhile back (I'm not sure when). Apparently, she approached him at this town hall meeting and managed to have a short conversation with him about the, er, downside of war. This is the tail end of that conversation, about Viet Nam, nearly word for word:

John Sidney McCallous: "You don't know what it's like to have a comrade die [in a war]."
Woman: "I know what it's like to have a loved one die."
McCallous: "You're lucky he died."

What a compassionate conservative he is. Hey, McCallous? You know those town hall meetings you're falling all over yourself to have with Barack Obama? Bring 'em on.